House of Commons

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Commons Chamber

Tuesday 25 October 2011

The House met at half-past Two o’clock

Prayers

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

business before questions

London Local Authorities and Transport for London (No. 2) Bill [Lords] (By Order)

Transport for London (Supplemental Toll Provisions) Bill [Lords] (By Order)

Second Readings opposed and deferred until Tuesday 1 November (Standing Order No. 20).

Oral Answers to Questions

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

1. What assessment he has made of the economic situation in the Palestinian territories; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)]

May I first offer the apologies of the Foreign Secretary to the House? As I think the House knows, he is on his way to Australia—not, this time, to liberate it or meet a new regime but to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. I am sure we all wish him well.

There has been growth in the occupied Palestinian territories over the past couple of years, variously rated at between 6% and 10%. Things are easier in the west bank than in Gaza, but the United Kingdom has been supporting economic development in both areas.

[Mike Freer]

Will my hon. Friend update the House on what steps have been taken, and what more can be done, to increase the flow of goods into the Palestinian territories?

[Alistair Burt]

Last year, following the difficulties over the flotilla, Israel moved from having a list of 120 goods that were allowed in to a less restrictive list. Efforts have been made to ease the amount going in, but more can still be done. For instance, 18 times the amount of concrete that goes into Gaza legitimately goes in through the tunnels, thus losing revenue and not providing the support that is needed for the construction of schools and so on. There is more to be done, and we press Israel to ease the restrictions still further for political and economic reasons.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

As we are talking about the economy of the west bank, I point out that more than 100,000 families depend on the olive oil industry, which accounts for 40% of the west bank’s agricultural production. Some 7,500 olive trees have been uprooted by Israeli settlers since January, and the Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din has reported 97 incidents, but none has led to any prosecutions or indictments. Does the Minister agree that that is unacceptable, and that the UK Government should make representations to the Israeli Government?

[Alistair Burt]

We continue to make representations on all examples of activities that we believe will damage the economy of the occupied Palestinian territories. The hon. Gentleman’s point about agricultural produce is a good one. Agricultural exports from the Palestinian territories were 10 times greater in 2010 than in 2009, but one tenth of what they were in 2006. That gives a measure of the problem. We do indeed raise the matter, and we ask both sides to continue their efforts towards negotiations on a final settlement that would, of course, ultimately be in the economic interest of both.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

The prisoner exchange involving Gilad Shalit has been presented by Hamas in Gaza as a victory. Does the Minister agree that the cause of moderate Palestinian opinion, and perhaps even the Palestinian economy, could receive a boost from a successful bid for recognition of its statehood at the United Nations?

[Alistair Burt]

There are two issues there. First, the unconscionable detention of Gilad Shalit by Hamas was no cause for any victory celebration. We certainly welcome the fact that he has been released and hope that it indicates at least some degree of movement between the two parties. Ultimately, of course, what will benefit all is a negotiated settlement that leads to an independent Palestine side by side with a sovereign and recognised Israel. All the work that the United Kingdom does is to ensure that that is the most likely outcome of the various discussions that are taking place through the Quartet and the UN alike.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

Businesses in the Palestinian territories repeatedly stress that economic progress fundamentally depends on political progress. As the position of the UK Government is to support the establishment of a viable Palestinian state, will the Minister update us on their position on the recognition of such a state by the United Nations?

[Alistair Burt]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his position on the Front Bench. We know that he will acquit himself of his duties extremely well.

Economically, an ultimate settlement of the issue between Israel and Palestine will bring benefits to all and is essential. We play our part by supporting the economy, with some £80 million this year going to the west bank and Gaza. However, the ultimate settlement will depend not so much on any universal declaration as on the process of negotiation. At present there has been no resolution put forward for the United Kingdom to vote on, and it is still not clear whether the UN process would be through the Security Council alone or through the General Assembly. However, the UK will always use its vote in the best interests of ensuring that the likelihood of negotiations towards a final settlement is assisted rather than hindered.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

2. Whether he has made recent representations to the Government of Ukraine on the treatment of former President Tymoshenko.

[The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)]

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister denounced the selective use of justice in Ukraine in the House on 12 October, and in late September my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister told President Yanukovych directly that cases such as Mrs Tymoshenko’s were a threat to parliamentary ratification of Ukraine’s association agreement with the European Union.

[Mr Llwyd]

I thank the Minister for that reply. Does not the behaviour of the Ukraine Government towards ex-President Tymoshenko show that Soviet-style show trials are unfortunately not a thing of the past? Does he agree that if Ukraine wishes to be taken seriously as a true democracy, it should start acting that way?

[Mr Lidington]

Since President Yanukovych took office, he has declared that his prime foreign policy objective is to secure Ukraine’s closer integration with the EU through an association agreement. We need to keep reminding the Ukrainian Government that that integration involves not only economic reforms but reforms of the political and judicial systems to bring Ukraine into line with what we expect of a modern European democracy.

[Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)]

I share the sentiment of both the right hon. Gentleman’s question and the Minister’s answer: the treatment of Mrs Tymoshenko is totally unacceptable. Does the Minister agree that Mr Yanukovych is trying to play the EU against Russia, but that he is succeeding with neither? Is not the message for him that he should comply with the rule of law or face international isolation?

[Mr Lidington]

As I said, if Ukraine wants to make progress with its declared objective of closer integration with the EU, it must realise that that involves a clear and permanent commitment to political reform to establish modern democratic institutions.

[Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

The Government are right to make clear their deep concern about the legitimacy of the trial and conviction of Mrs Tymoshenko, but does my right hon. Friend agree that it is in the interests of both our countries that we continue to press Ukraine, and that we negotiate for it to join the association agreement and to sign the deep and comprehensive free trade agreement? Does he also agree that although we should register a protest, it would be a grave mistake to break off those talks?

[Mr Lidington]

I do not believe that isolating Ukraine will help us in persuading the Government there to continue to move towards full membership of the European family of nations. I certainly welcome the fact that friends of Ukraine, including my hon. Friend, deliver that message clearly to the Ukrainian authorities.

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

3. What the Government’s priorities are for the European Union in the next year; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)]

The Government’s immediate priority is for the eurozone to find a sustainable response to the current economic crisis, and to do so in a way that protects the rights of all 27 member states to take decisions over areas such as the single market. Beyond that, we shall continue to press for tight limits on EU spending and action to promote growth and jobs, through free and open markets, and by cutting regulatory costs on European business.

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the Minister for his reply. Just in case the House has not debated Europe enough in the past 24 hours, can he shed any light on why the Leader of the Opposition thinks that the Prime Minister was mistaken to stand up to the French President at the weekend? Is it not essential that Britain is represented at the EU meetings this week for the sake of our economy?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. This question is on the responsibilities of the Prime Minister and not those of the Leader of the Opposition.

[Mr Lidington]

My hon. Friend is right. Not just this House but the country will be glad that they have a Prime Minister who will stand up for the interests of this country, even at the cost of an occasional row.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

But how is UK influence enhanced by the loose talk by the Prime Minister and other senior Cabinet Ministers of the repatriation of powers? What exactly is the Government’s policy on that? Can the Minister name a single other EU country that would support it?

[Mr Lidington]

The reality is that if the eurozone proceeds, as economic logic demands, towards closer economic and fiscal integration, there will be consequences for the whole EU. As part of that negotiation, we intend to insist that, as a first step, the interests of the 27 are protected over matters such as the single market, and that the particular British interest in financial services is properly safeguarded.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Those of us who opposed the creation of the single currency when John Major’s Government were sitting on the fence view with horror the prospect that its failure may now lead to the economic unification and economic government of Europe. Will the Minister reassure us that Britain would not countenance supporting such a mad and undemocratic idea?

[Mr Lidington]

Part of the critique that both my hon. Friend and I have consistently made of the single currency is that, in the absence of closer fiscal and economic union, a single monetary policy and interest rate would not be sustainable. However, it is the sovereign right of other European countries to choose whether to pursue closer integration now, and it would be disastrous for the UK were the eurozone to suffer a financial collapse or prolonged recession.

[Mr Douglas Alexander (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)]

I want to take the Minister back to the repatriation of powers. The Government’s coalition agreement from last May promises that the Government

“will examine the balance of the EU’s existing competences”.

What progress has been made on this examination, has it come to any conclusions and, if so, will the Minister place them in the Library of the House of Commons?

[Mr Lidington]

The work has started. It is in its early stages, though, because in our first year in office we gave priority to implementing the referendum lock to try to repair the damage done to public trust in the EU by the right hon. Gentleman’s Government and their denying people the referendum on the Lisbon treaty that had been promised. That work will continue, and I would welcome constructive suggestions from the Opposition as much as from any part of the House as that work is carried forward.

[Mr Alexander]

I thank the Minister for that elucidating answer. This morning, the Deputy Prime Minister said that the return of powers from the EU to Britain was not going to happen. How does the Minister reconcile those remarks with the earlier remarks this morning from the Education Secretary? Do these remarks suggest that the coalition Government have no intention of seeking the transfer of powers and that all the Conservative party’s talk on this issue is simply an attempt to placate its own Back Benchers?

[Mr Lidington]

My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister spoke about rebalancing the responsibilities of the EU and member states in the light of potentially dramatic changes to how the EU is organised. Frankly, it is a bit rich for the right hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander) to lecture us, given that his party leader will not rule out joining the euro, rejects the idea that Brussels has too much power and claims that the President of France speaks for the British people. That makes the right hon. Gentleman a spokesman for a party that has no relevant contribution to make to the future of Europe.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

4. What recent reports he has received on the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission in Sri Lanka.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)]

We expect the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission to report in November. We are interested in its recommendations and conclusions, and we trust that it will deal with some of the credibility issues raised by the international community. We will also expect it to deal with some of the issues raised by the Channel 4 documentary during the summer.

[Stella Creasy]

The UN panel of experts concluded that the commission was “deeply flawed” and did

“not meet international standards for an effective accountability mechanism.”

Do the Government agree with that assessment? If not, why not? If they do, what are they doing about it?

[Alistair Burt]

In the first place, the responsibility lies with Sri Lanka to carry out its own investigation, which is why we want to wait for the results of the commission in November. We are aware that it will deal with some of the criticisms offered by the UN panel of experts, but we will make a judgment, not on what comes before but on what the commission actually says. We have made it clear that we expect to see progress by the end of the year on a series of matters that has already been raised with Sri Lanka, and if that is not the case we have other options to pursue.

[Mr Lee Scott (Ilford North) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that if the Sri Lankan Government’s report does not answer the questions about the atrocities committed against the Tamil people, this issue will have to be taken forward as a matter of urgency?

[Alistair Burt]

It is all about the base of reconstruction and reconciliation for the future. The British Government and a number of others have sought to make it clear, in accordance with the wishes of the Government of Sri Lanka, that if reconstruction and reconciliation are to be properly based, that will involve looking back on the past as well as forward to the future. Progress has been made in Sri Lanka since the end of the conflict, but serious issues still need to be addressed and we expect the Sri Lankan Government to be in a position to do that.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Given the obvious sensitivities of the Sri Lankan situation, can the Minister confirm that the Foreign Office has in its possession a full minute of all meetings, both in Sri Lanka and on the topic of Sri Lanka, that the former Defence Secretary had during his time in office?

[Alistair Burt]

I welcome the hon. Lady to her position, and I wish her well in performing her duties.

The Foreign Secretary has made it clear that he is well aware of the visits to Sri Lanka by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), the former Secretary of State for Defence, who had a particular link with Sri Lanka during his time as a junior Minister at the Foreign Office. I have no knowledge of whether any minutes were prepared of those meetings, but I will inquire. I am absolutely certain, however, that the Foreign Secretary was well aware of the meetings, and that he was absolutely confident that Foreign Office policy would be properly reflected by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

There is continuing concern around the world about human rights protection and press freedom in Sri Lanka. Will my hon. Friend tell the House what action Her Majesty’s Government are taking, particularly in the context of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Australia, to ensure that Sri Lanka does not take a high-profile position in the Commonwealth in the future?

[Alistair Burt]

There are two issues involved there. The concerns about press freedom have been raised with the Government of Sri Lanka. The disappearance of a number of journalists has not been fully investigated, for example, and the Sri Lankan Government have been tasked with dealing with that matter. We welcome the lifting of the emergency regulations, although we have yet to see how clear the replacement legislation will be. As far as the Commonwealth is concerned, Sri Lanka will not be the sole focus of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. We expect any Commonwealth country hosting the meeting to meet the Commonwealth standards of good governance and respect for human rights, and that will be the same in 2013 as it is in 2011.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

5. What recent discussions he has had with his EU counterparts on the future of the European single market.

[The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)]

My right hon. Friends and I take every opportunity with our EU colleagues, formally and informally, to argue that we need to deepen and widen the single market to secure economic growth and create jobs.

[Steve Rotheram]

Will the Minister tell me how much of the Foreign Secretary’s valuable time was spent on the diversion of trying to appease rebellious Tory Back Benchers instead of trying to achieve reforms to the European single market, which might benefit Britain’s interests? An estimate will suffice.

[Mr Lidington]

If the hon. Gentleman had been studying the conclusions of last Sunday’s European summit rather than the brief from his Whips Office, he would realise that the summit agreed to give priority to EU action to benefit jobs and growth. He would also know that it called for full implementation of the services directive, completion of a digital single market by 2015 and a reduction in the administrative burden of European regulation on business by a quarter by next year. That is a European agenda that could have been written in London, and it was achieved because of the intensive diplomacy of my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

European free trade through the single market is clearly a good thing for this country, apart from the fact that we have recently seen an alarming increase in this country’s trade deficit with our European partners. What can Her Majesty’s Government do about that?

[Mr Lidington]

I am glad that my hon. Friend has raised that matter. I took note of the points that he and others raised in the debate yesterday evening, and I have looked at the latest figures. I am glad to be able to tell him that the trade deficit has narrowed since the figures that he and others cited yesterday were produced. The way to get the trade deficit down is, in part, through Government Ministers making every effort through commercial diplomacy to help our businesses to sell British goods and services in Europe and the wider world.

[Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

Now that the Prime Minister has managed to secure a seat at tomorrow’s summit in Brussels, what specific proposals will he put on the table, and which alliances will he build, or rebuild, to ensure that the eurozone 17 do not start to take decisions about the single market without us?

[Mr Lidington]

I am sorry that the hon. Lady, whom I welcome to her new responsibilities, overlooked the commitments already made on Sunday by all 27 Heads of Government to ensuring that the integrity of the single market is protected and that the rights of the Community at 27 are safeguarded. My right hon. Friend will be seeking both political and legal or administrative ways to ensure that the position of the Euro-outs is protected. He will find allies—my own experience in the General Affairs Council on Saturday certainly showed this—not only among other countries outside the eurozone, but among a number of eurozone member states that do not wish either the UK or other Euro-outs to be excluded from discussion.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Of course, as the Foreign Secretary pointed out yesterday, a real prize for this country will be completion of the internal market for services and liberalisation of the energy sector. Is that likely to be achieved under the Polish presidency?

[Mr Lidington]

I think that we will make some progress under the Polish presidency. I would like to think that we will accomplish everything my hon. Friend urges, but it is certainly our intention to continue to press forward with that agenda under the Danish and, if necessary, the Cypriot presidencies next year.

[Gemma Doyle (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab/Co-op)]

6. What recent discussions he has had with the Egyptian authorities on the protection of human rights.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)]

On 12 October, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary had a conversation with the Foreign Secretary in Egypt, in which human rights issues were raised. Also, on 20 October, my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister paid a visit to Cairo, when human rights were again part of the subject of his conversation with the Prime Minister.

[Gemma Doyle]

May I press the Minister to ensure that a fair proportion of the Arab Partnership fund is used to support women’s political participation in Egypt? I urge him to look at what percentage of the applications received for the fund were from women’s organisations and what proportion of grants awarded will support women’s rights.

[Alistair Burt]

Yes, I will. Clearly, the Arab Partnership work with Egypt is now under way on capacity building and democracy building, and about £1 million has been spent. I am not sure how easy it will be to divide it in the manner she described, but I will look at that. What has been clear from talking to activists who have been to the UK to talk to us is the determination to be involved in the processes. We have been very keen to make sure that they have been involved, and our work has been designed to assist women to participate at all levels in respect of the future of Egypt.

[Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the work of the Arab Partnership fund in Egypt and I encourage him to try to find even more resources for it as quickly as possible. Does he agree that the best way to protect human rights in Egypt is to help the country to acquire the kind of stable democracy that we in the west take for granted? Is that not the right way forward for that part of the world?

[Alistair Burt]

It is. My hon. Friend, whose work through the Westminster Foundation has been a great asset to the Arab Partnership, is absolutely right. There are various things that we look at. The constitutional declaration by the Egyptian Government on 30 March made equality and freedom of expression and opinion very clear, and we are waiting to see enacted a unified law on the construction of places of worship, which will grant equality to Copts and Muslims in that particular area. There are whole areas of equality where the statements by the Government there have been good, but it is essential that they are followed by actions. That will be underpinned by democracy.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

7. What recent guidance he has issued to overseas posts on implementing the new Government strategy on human trafficking.

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Jeremy Browne)]

My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary wrote to all overseas posts on 19 July welcoming the strategy and outlining its aims. We soon expect to finalise with the Home Office the strategy for priority countries. When that process is complete, the Foreign Secretary will write to ambassadors and high commissioners in those countries, instructing them to incorporate trafficking objectives into their work.

[Mr Bone]

I thank the excellent Minister for that response. Prevention is better than cure. If a young woman is trafficked into this country, she will be rescued, but it is better that she is not trafficked in the first place so that she does not have to suffer modern-day slavery and all that goes with it. It is our ambassadors and delegations abroad who are our first step in warning people of the dangers of trafficking. Does the Minister agree?

[Mr Browne]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. We are working with foreign Governments to build their capacity to disrupt human trafficking—for example, we are working with judges and prosecutors in priority countries to increase prosecutions; we are working with the Serious Organised Crime Agency to prevent trafficking by building capacity; and we are addressing the root causes by alleviating poverty through our work with the Department for International Development.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

The key necessity is to track down and prosecute those who are responsible for trafficking. Four international organisations are involved: Europol, Interpol, the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative, and the European Union. How are the Government attempting to co-ordinate those organisations?

[Mr Browne]

I agree that it is desirable to co-ordinate that kind of international work, but we are also working in tandem with countries where our embassies are developing programmes of the type that I have just mentioned. We are not ruling out any ways of trying to achieve our common objectives.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

8. What recent steps he has taken to strengthen relations with countries in central Asia; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)]

Central Asia is increasingly important to British economic and strategic interests. We shall be opening a British embassy in Kyrgyzstan early next year, and we are maintaining high-level bilateral contact with all five republics. The most recent such contact took place during a visit to central Asia by my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department for International Development.

[Nigel Mills]

When I was doing voluntary work in Tajikistan recently, it was noted that despite the good work of our ambassador, there was a very low-key British presence. Will the Minister ask the British Council whether it can raise its profile in that country? The council currently deals with it from Uzbekistan, and relations between the two countries are pretty poor.

[Mr Lidington]

I pay tribute to the voluntary work that my hon. Friend did in Tajikistan earlier this year. It is good that the interests of that important part of the world can be highlighted in the House of Commons. I will happily pass on what my hon. Friend has said to the head of the British Council.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Until fairly recently central Asia was awash with nuclear weapons, but following the declaration by Kazakhstan and a number of other nations, a nuclear-weapon-free zone has been established there. Does the Minister welcome its establishment, and will he guarantee that NATO will comply with the zone and not overfly it with any nuclear weapons or nuclear-armed aircraft so that we show respect for that attempt to introduce peace to what was once a very tense region?

[Mr Lidington]

We welcome any moves to reduce the threat from nuclear proliferation worldwide, and we look not only to the central Asian republics but to all signatories to the non-proliferation treaty to live up to their obligations fully.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

9. What recent discussions he has had with the Mexican authorities on progress in the investigation into the abduction of Lydia Hunt.

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Jeremy Browne)]

I raised the case directly with the Mexican Deputy Foreign Minister during my meeting with her in Mexico City last Tuesday, and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary also raised it when he met the Mexican Foreign Minister in London in June. We expressed our concerns about Lydia Hunt’s welfare, the delays in locating her, and the slow progress in resolving the case through the courts.

[Stephen Timms]

I am very grateful to the Minister. My constituent Jonathan Hunt has been seeking his daughter’s return for three years since she was abducted to Mexico, although the country is a signatory to The Hague convention, which requires the determination of cases involving minors within six weeks. What more can the Minister do to help Lydia, and how can he tackle non-compliance with the convention by member states such as Mexico?

[Mr Browne]

That, in essence, is the point that I put to the Minister when I saw her last week. We are keen for progress to be made as quickly as possible, but we are told by the Mexicans that legal obstacles prevent it from being made as quickly as we should like. We continue to press the case of the right hon. Gentleman’s constituent.

[Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)]

10. What assessment he has made of the political situation in Syria.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)]

The situation in Syria continues to be a matter of grave concern. Estimates suggest that at least 3,000 people have been killed since the unrest began, including the documented total of 187 children. We continue to call on the regime to stop killing its own people and to free political prisoners, and we continue to urge other international action in order to show that the legitimacy of the regime has gone.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

Syria, much like Iran, continues to brutally suppress its own people, flagrantly abuses human rights, and is still funding international terrorist organisations such as Hamas and Hezbollah on Israel’s borders. What pressure can the Government exert on Syria to stop further bloodshed?

[Alistair Burt]

The Government have been in the lead in promoting action in the European Union and the United Nations. The European Union has imposed seven rounds of sanctions on Syria, involving some 56 individuals and 19 entities, and most recently has put pressure on its oil exports, which constitute some 25% of its revenue. Further efforts will be made in the United Nations, although unfortunately a resolution that we had helped to draw up was vetoed by Russia and China on 4 October. It is vital for the United Nations to speak with one voice in its condemnation of what is happening in Syria.

[Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)]

The Minister is absolutely right that the veto by Russia and China was a disgrace, but what can be done to achieve solidarity from Turkey and Arab neighbours of Syria, who can have enormous influence both on Damascus and at the United Nations?

[Alistair Burt]

Yes, they can; the hon. Gentleman knows that from his own background knowledge. Last week I met Foreign Ministers representing Arab League countries. They have a delegation that is due to go to Syria on 26 October, and they have increasingly stepped up their concern. The hon. Gentleman is right that they must ensure that their leverage in relation to Syria—which may well be greater than ours—is used to benefit the Syrian people. We have been in close contact with Turkey, which continues to lend support to our efforts for more to be done internationally. It is essential that the international community speaks with one voice and that the Syrian regime stops killing its people and begins a transition.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

11. What assessment his Department has made of implications for UK foreign policy of the EU’s enhanced observer status at the United Nations.

[The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)]

The EU’s formal status as a non-voting observer at the United Nations has not changed. The key difference is that now, where agreed, the High Representative, rather than the rotating presidency, speaks on the EU’s behalf at the General Assembly. The practical implications for our foreign policy have not been noticeable, but we have had to hold some tough discussions with those who thought Lisbon meant an automatic increase in the EU’s competence in international bodies.

[Stephen Phillips]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that answer. We have recently witnessed major foreign policy crises in respect of Libya and elsewhere. What difference has the EU’s new status made to the way in which we and the United Nations have handled those crises?

[Mr Lidington]

I have to tell my hon. and learned Friend that it made very little difference indeed in practice, in part because the EU itself was divided. When we had to pursue a military campaign and the need arose for quick political decisions, it was individual member states’ Foreign Ministries, Defence staffs and intelligence agencies who made the decisions and took things forward. The EU has an important role to play in helping to rebuild Libya and integrate it into the wider community of nations.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Will the Minister confirm that on every working morning at the UN and all its agencies there is a co-ordination meeting of all the EU ambassadors, including the UK’s, and that when they decide to speak with one voice they have far more impact than a cacophony of 27 different voices? We have to stop appeasing the “Mad-Eye Moodys” who hate anything to do with the European Union; and when we can speak as one, we should speak as one.

[Mr Speaker]

Minister?

[Mr Lidington]

I am waiting for the right hon. Gentleman to find his Harry Potter analogies. He is right to the extent that if the 27 EU member states are able to speak with one voice, that can often add to the weight of their voice, but it is important that that is done in a way that does not compromise the delineation of competences between the EU and member states as set out in the Lisbon treaty, which is why I am glad that at the General Affairs Council on Saturday we all agreed a framework agreement to make sure representation should not affect competence.

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

12. What recent assessment he has made of the Afghan High Peace Council’s role in the political process in that country.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)]

The High Peace Council leads the Afghan Government’s reintegration and reconciliation efforts. Following the tragic assassination of former President and council chairman Rabbani, President Karzai has been reviewing the approach the High Peace Council takes to its work. We will continue to stand by his Government’s efforts to support Afghan-led reconciliation through the High Peace Council.

[Susan Elan Jones]

I am grateful to the Minister for his answer, but what is the UK’s latest assessment of the Afghan High Peace Council’s commitment to the inclusion of women in Afghanistan’s political process?

[Alistair Burt]

This issue is very important to the United Kingdom, and to the many Members who have written to me about it over the past few weeks. Women are represented on the High Peace Council; nine of its 70 members are women. They have also been represented in Parliament and in last year’s peace process. We continually stress to the Afghan Government that the commitment they have made to the equality of all their citizens and the inclusion of all in future processes must be met by action as well as words, and we will continue to take that forward as we look towards the Bonn summit.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I am encouraged by my hon. Friend’s reply. Will the Government do all they can to ensure that women attending the Bonn peace conference will be representative of the true aspirations of Afghan women, and will not just be placewomen put there for the benefit of the Afghan Government?

[Alistair Burt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I recently met Fawzia Koofi, an Afghan woman MP who was outspoken in her determination to ensure that she and others like her should be properly represented, both at the Bonn summit and in other aspects of life. She reminded all of us that Afghan women have traditionally taken part in a great deal of decision making at local and provincial level, and she was keen to ensure that the gains made over the past 10 years in women’s lives should not be lost. We should stand absolutely beside those who believe that.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

13. What recent reports he has received on the continued detention of Palestinian children in Israeli military prisons.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)]

We receive regular reports about the detention of Palestinian children from a non-governmental organisation, Defence for Children International. We remain concerned about the detention of children in military jails and the prosecution of children through military courts.

[Ian Lavery]

Will the Minister confirm the UK Government’s full support for UNICEF, which is calling for the immediate release of the 164 children in Israeli military prisons? Will he assure the House that as the relevant Minister he will do everything in his power to get these kids reunited with their families?

[Alistair Burt]

When I was in Israel a few months ago, I raised this matter directly with the Minister responsible, indicating the UK’s concerns about both the detention and the treatment of children. The Israelis have recently raised the age of criminal responsibility in the territories from 16 to 18, so it is the same as for Israeli children. None the less, I know that the Israeli Government do take seriously the fact that children are detained in circumstances that cause concern to NGOs and UNICEF, and we will continue to press them on this.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the tragedy of some of these Palestinian children in Israeli prisons has arisen because some of them have been groomed as terrorists by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which goes against the Geneva convention and all kinds of international law? [Interruption] Will he take steps with the Palestinian Authority to try to ensure that children are not used in that way?

[Alistair Burt]

I hear comments from others, but my hon. Friend makes a fair point; the tragedy is that children have been used. There was a regrettable incident in which a Down’s syndrome youngster was a suicide bomber. It is not wrong for anyone to be alert to those risks. None the less, the majority of these children are not detained for such reasons and it is essential that Israel makes the right distinction between the two in order to retain international credibility and to ensure its own security.

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

14. What recent assessment he has made of political progress in South Sudan; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Henry Bellingham)]

President Kiir and South Sudan face many challenges, as the country has to build capacity and structures from scratch. For example, there are only 20 km of tarmacked road in a country the size of France. Furthermore, the country has to deal with hundreds of thousands of south Sudanese returning from the north. Britain is not only working with the international community, but taking the lead in a number of key areas of development.

[Andrew Rosindell]

The Minister will be aware that one of the first decisions taken by the Government of South Sudan was to apply for membership of the Commonwealth of Nations. Will Her Majesty’s Government give support to that application? Should the country wish to apply to become one of Her Majesty’s realms, would the Government also support that application?

[Mr Bellingham]

On my hon. Friend’s first point, that is obviously a matter for all members and key criteria will have to be met, especially those relating to the core values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. South Sudan is making good progress, however, and we should be ambitious and aim for membership in 2013. On his second point, it is obviously up to the Sudanese to decide whether to have an elected presidency or move to a constitutional monarchy with Her Majesty the Queen as Head of State.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

What steps are the Government taking to assist with the resolution of the outstanding border issues between South Sudan and the north, particularly the situation in Abyei?

[Mr Bellingham]

I certainly share the hon. Gentleman’s concern about Abyei. A framework agreement is in place, which states clearly that both sides must disengage, and we are urging them to do so as soon as possible. The UN-backed force of Ethiopians is in place and is deploying, but both sides—the Sudanese armed forces and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army-North—must disengage.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

15. What his policy is on sanctions against Iran; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)]

We strongly support the use of targeted sanctions in relation to our concerns about Iran’s nuclear activity, its human rights abuses and the recently discovered international terrorist activity in the United States. The choice is clear: those who continue to follow such a course can either remain on it and face further sanctions and isolation or they can respond to the wishes of the international community and have those sanctions lifted.

[Mel Stride]

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. Will he share with the House the Government’s assessment of the military dimensions of the Iranian nuclear programme, particularly given that the Iranians continue to refuse to co-operate with the International Atomic Energy Agency?

[Alistair Burt]

The IAEA is, in a sense, the keeper of the conscience of the world in relation to the bargain between those with nuclear weapons and those without. It has reported recently its increasing concern, as my hon. Friend says, about the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear programme, and a further report is expected in November. Concerns have increased because of the news that the centrifuges are going to be moved to Qom, underground, and there is no civilian justification for the enrichment programme that Iran is working on. All those things are rightfully our concern.

[Gordon Banks (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Lab)]

The IAEA called the weapons programme in Iran “extensive and comprehensive”. May I ask the Minister whether sanctions are working, what more the UN should do and whether he favours an extension of sanctions into oil and gas exports?

[Alistair Burt]

The process of sanctions has been cumulative over time. There is evidence that they are beginning to have an impact on the economy in relation to Iran—above all, targeted on the individuals who are most responsible—but as well as the sanctions track there is a negotiations track. Nuclear powers have made it very clear, as have the E3 plus 3, that there is an opportunity for negotiation with Iran if it would be open about its nuclear policy. We urge Iran to follow that track so that sanctions can be lifted and the world can be convinced of the civilian purposes of Iran’s programme if that is, indeed, the case.

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)]

I am sure that the whole House will want first to send its sympathy to the Government and people of Turkey in the wake of the devastating earthquake that has struck there. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has assured Prime Minister Erdogan that the United Kingdom is ready to help in whichever way Turkey thinks best.

At the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting that opens in Perth on Friday, we believe that the key focus of discussions should be on how to strengthen the Commonwealth for the future. We are committed to working to strengthen the Commonwealth as a force for democracy, development and prosperity and we believe that this CHOGM can and should be a defining one for the organisation.

[George Eustice]

I thank the Minister for that answer. The coalition agreement states:

“We will examine the balance of the EU’s existing competences”.

Will the Minister explain to the House when and how this Government policy will be delivered?

[Mr Lidington]

This work is under way. I am sure that as it continues there will need to be opportunities to debate the outcome in the House. I hope that my hon. Friend will contribute to that debate and come forward with constructive proposals of his own.

[Mr Douglas Alexander (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)]

The House will be aware of disturbing reports this morning of an explosion at a fuel tank that has left more than 50 people dead in the Libyan city of Sirte. Of course that event needs to be investigated fully but it surely reminds us that Libya is still awash with weapons, including heavy weapons left over from the Gaddafi era. What steps are the British Government taking to support the Libyan authorities in securing those weapons so that they threaten neither the Libyan people nor international security?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to focus on this, as, indeed, we have. A team from the United Kingdom is already assisting in dealing with the collection of weapons—small arms—and with the issue of surface-to-air missiles that have gone missing in the area. We also have people involved in de-mining and decommissioning, so the United Kingdom takes this issue very seriously. It is essential that the militia come under proper national transitional council control, that there is proper direction of them, that arms are returned and that the politics of Libya can now get on and work for the future.

[Amber Rudd (Hastings and Rye) (Con)]

T2. There is a dangerous disagreement in Zimbabwe among the fragile unity Government about the process and preparation for elections next year. What aid can we give to the Southern African Development Community in preparing for and supporting fair elections in that country?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Henry Bellingham)]

We support fully the role that SADC is playing as guarantor and facilitator under the global political agreement. We applaud the work that President Zuma has been doing and his personal leadership in producing an election road map. We support fully his and SADC’s efforts to create the conditions for credible and properly monitored elections in Zimbabwe, but the violence and intimidation must stop forthwith.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

T3. Sakina Mohammadi Ashtiani has been in detention for six years and still remains under sentence of death. Her lawyer has fled; his lawyer is in detention; and the lawyer’s lawyer has also fled. Will the Minister update the House on what recent representations have been made in her case?

[Alistair Burt]

Representations have been made in relation both to Miss Ashtiani, who, indeed, remains under sentence of death and in detention, and to her lawyers. The House might like to know that some 61 individuals are now under EU sanctions because of human rights abuses, and that pressure will continue. We continue to raise the cases of all human rights abuses in Iraq, because they remain a stain on that country’s position, and we wish to see Miss Ashtiani given a fair trial as soon as possible.

[Mr Edward Timpson (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

T4. Brave constituents of mine who served in Afghanistan with 1st Battalion the Mercian Regiment know all too well that Afghanistan does not sit alone in a vacuum and that the regional dimension is crucial to its future stability. To that end, what prospect does the Minister believe that the Istanbul conference has in helping to bring about the regional co-operation and peace that is needed?

[Alistair Burt]

My hon. Friend is right: it is essential for Afghanistan’s future not only that its internal politics evolve—that involves the relationship with its near neighbours—but that its regional context is regularised. China, India and Pakistan all have a role to play, as well as countries further afield. The Istanbul conference is an opportunity to bring those nations together, with a common purpose in securing Afghanistan’s future and giving the Afghan people the opportunity of a viable, secure and democratic future.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

T5. Earlier this month, a blast ripped through the Education Ministry in Mogadishu, killing at least 70 people. As fighting continues between the transitional federal Government and al-Shabaab and thousands continue to die from famine in the region, what steps are the Government taking to provide international leadership in promoting a lasting resolution to the conflict in Somalia?

[Mr Bellingham]

The UK Government are doing all that we can. We are playing a vital part in the Djibouti process. We are supporting an uplift in the African Union Mission in Somalia to its mandated level of 12,000 troops. We are also doing all that we can to ensure that the transitional federal Government and the transitional federal institutions adhere to the benchmarks in the road map. If they do that, there is a chance for peace and progress, not just in the troubled capital but in the whole country.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

T6. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister for his diligence in meeting, on a number of occasions now, constituents of mine who originally come from the Chagos islands. Will he update the House on what progress his Department has made with regard to visits to the Chagos islands by those islanders?

[Mr Bellingham]

First, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work that he has done in engaging the Chagossians in his Crawley constituency. He has been an absolute pillar of strength for that community. We have organised a number of visits back to the Chagos islands this year for Chagossians from the UK, the Seychelles and Mauritius. We will organise more visits in the future, and I want to get more members of the Chagossian community involved in environmental, conservation and heritage work in the territory.

[Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)]

Much has been said about the protection of human rights in Egypt. Has the Minister raised with the Egyptian authorities the recent brutal attacks on the Christian minority in Egypt that have led to personal injury and the destruction of property, while it seems that the police and security forces stood idly by?

[Alistair Burt]

The hon. Gentleman might be referring to the attacks of 9 October, which were particularly serious. They were indeed commented on and raised by my right hon. Friends the Foreign Secretary and the Deputy Prime Minister. The precise circumstances are unclear, but the Egyptian authorities have said that they will hold an inquiry to find out what happened. I return to my previous answer: the Egyptian authorities are very clear in words about the protection of all elements of the community in Egypt; it is essential that their authority carries through to deeds and that those who wish to see harmony support the authorities in ensuring that that happens.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

T7. The forthcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting is an opportunity to raise the persecution of gay men and women—indeed, all minorities. What steps can the Minister take to promote equality and tolerance?

[Mr Bellingham]

I agree with my hon. Friend. CHOGM is an opportunity to ensure that the Commonwealth becomes a stronger force for promoting democratic values, human rights, the rule of law and, of course, equality and tolerance. That is why we warmly welcome the recommendations of the eminent persons group and the ministerial action group.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Government take this opportunity to congratulate the people of Tunisia on their free and fair democratic election of a constituent assembly today, praise them for the number of women elected and pledge to work with the democrats and all forces that were elected in Tunisia for a democratic and pluralistic future?

[Alistair Burt]

I am so glad there has been an opportunity to raise the matter. I would like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr Gale) who took part in the observer process as a strong friend of Tunisia. Indeed, the elections appear to have passed off peacefully, with a huge turnout and engagement which confounded the critics. I am pleased that the United Kingdom was able to provide support in the form of capacity building through the election process. For the people of Tunisia, who in a way started what we have been living through for all these months, it has been very important to see it through to a determined election process. We congratulate them and look forward to the next stage, which is the not unfamiliar territory of putting together a coalition in order to take matters forward.

[Mr Speaker]

Following reference to him, let us hear from the hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr Gale).

[Mr Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

The outcome of the first Arab spring elections in Tunisia at the weekend is likely to have an effect throughout the middle east, most particularly in Egypt where elections are supposed to be held next month. It is early days yet; we do not know the results, but given the likelihood of a significant dominance by the Ennahda party in Tunisia, what assessment has my hon. Friend managed to make already of the likely effects upon the situation in Egypt and elsewhere?

[Alistair Burt]

Again, I thank my hon. Friend for his work in Tunisia and for reporting back so quickly to the House. First and foremost, the fact that even in a relatively short time a community can come through a state of dictatorship to free and fair elections is a good example. Secondly, it will be the example to follow. There is no doubt that Islamic parties will be well represented in the Parliaments of states in north Africa that have elections, but as we know, the label encompasses quite a wide range of opinions about democracy. What we wish to see now is the Tunisian Government established and able to put into practice their determination of a pluralistic democracy. We hope that those in Egypt will see that example and begin to work through their own processes—

[Mr Speaker]

We are much obliged to the Minister.

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

I should like to declare an interest.

Following the self-immolation of nine Tibetan monks in the past few weeks, what representations have the British Government made to the Chinese authorities to stop the consistent and systematic eradication of Tibetan culture, religion and language, and to give the Tibetan people their much needed and correct desire for self-determination?

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Jeremy Browne)]

The Government continue to have the same policy as the previous Government with regard to Tibet’s position in China, but we still make representations on a regular basis with respect to human rights and the conditions of the Tibetan people.

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

T8. As Shaker Aamer approaches the 10th anniversary of his incarceration without charge in Guantanamo Bay, can the Minister update the House on the Government’s representations on his behalf?

[Alistair Burt]

As many hon. Members know from correspondence, the return of Shaker Aamer to the United Kingdom remains an objective of the United Kingdom Government. His case continues to be raised both by officials and at ministerial level. It is a matter for the United States Government to determine, but our own determination and our efforts to return Shaker Aamer to the United Kingdom will certainly continue.

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

Given the Minister’s warm words on democracy and human rights in the middle east, in what practical ways are we helping countries such as Tunisia and Egypt?

[Alistair Burt]

The Arab Partnership was set up with a total budget of more than £100 million to cover a number of years and these countries in north Africa and beyond. Money is there to support capacity building, for people to go out to talk about election process, for party building and for basic communications. Bearing in mind that some of these countries have not had any sense of this, we have sent out skilled operatives, including Members of the House, to convey what Parliament and parliamentarians do, and to help build up the process through officials and others. That work is continuing. In places such as Iraq for example, although not part of the Arab Partnership, where that work is still needed to create a fully functioning relationship between Executive and—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. That is enough material for an Adjournment debate. We are very much obliged. We have heard enough, Minister. We are extremely grateful to the Minister, but the answers are simply too long.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

T9. While rightly celebrating the elections in Tunisia, may I draw the Minister’s attention to the other geographic end of his responsibilities, to Kashmir? Will the Minister meet the Prime Minister of Azad Kashmir, who is visiting the United Kingdom this week, and will he make the case for self-determination of all Kashmiri people within an independent Kashmir state?

[Alistair Burt]

The position of the UK Government in relation to the resolution of Kashmir has been long held. It is a matter for the Indian and Pakistan Governments to settle with regard to the wishes and the interests of the Kashmiri people.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Is the Minister concerned at the reputation that the UK is acquiring in Egypt and other post-revolution Arab countries as being a safe haven for criminals from the anciens regimes there? What steps is he taking at the moment to ensure that fugitives from justice in those countries and their ill-gotten gains are returned?

[Alistair Burt]

I do not recognise the reputation that the hon. Gentleman describes, unless they are all going to Ealing. [Interruption.] Maybe just next door; I am sorry. Where a case can be proved against those who have come to the United Kingdom, which involves either seizure of assets or criminal activity, for which it is possible to remove people from the United Kingdom, we will respond to those requests.

[Sir Menzies Campbell (North East Fife) (LD)]

Do the Government share my revulsion at reports that supporters of Gaddafi have been subject to revenge executions without any semblance of due process? Should not our satisfaction at the military outcome now be accompanied by a determination to persuade the new Government of Libya not to allow any descent into brutality?

[Alistair Burt]

Unequivocally, yes. But we should pay due tribute to the work of the national transitional council, which set out a clear set of principles on which it would seek to remove the regime and by which to govern, and Chairman Jalil has made it clear on a variety of occasions: no reprisals, no revenge, and respect for human rights. In the circumstances of conflict, that can be very difficult to deliver, but there is no doubt that the new Government have made clear their aims, objectives and principles. They wish to be different from the previous regime and we are right to stand by them and their determination to make those principles stick, no matter that circumstances may be difficult.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

With regard to the eventual vote at the United Nations on Palestinian statehood, if the Government were to adopt a position that they would vote in favour of such a motion only if a comprehensive peace agreement had first been agreed, does not that effectively give the Israeli Government a veto over Palestine ever becoming a state?

[Alistair Burt]

I am not sure that that does represent the United Kingdom’s position. Attempts have been made to tease it out of me and the Foreign Secretary on many occasions and we will not succumb on this one. No resolution has been put to the United Nations on which a decision needs to be taken. We have made it clear that we wish to see a negotiated settlement, which is the only way in which this will finally be settled, and any vote we use in the UN, whether in the Security Council or the General Assembly, will be used to best effect to ensure that those negotiations continue and are successful rather than anything that might be a hindrance.

[Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)]

Would my hon. Friend please provide the House with an update of the situation regarding the convicted Lockerbie bomber, al-Megrahi? The fact that this convicted terrorist remains a free man is not only a complete disgrace, but a cause of real concern for all the families affected around the world.

[Alistair Burt]

There are two or three legacy issues that need to be dealt with. There are also issues relating to the provision of Semtex to the IRA and, of course, the death of WPC Fletcher. All those will be considered. That is an important part of the new bilateral relationship between the United Kingdom and Libya, but not all the issues are presently settled. The legal position of Mr Megrahi appears to have been settled by past actions, but the legacy issues will be examined anew by this Government and by the new Government of the national transitional council.

Petition

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Commons Chamber

Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)

- Hansard - - Excerpts

I present a petition from more than 3,000 people on behalf of the Support Wharfedale Hospital campaign, which is a campaign group in my constituency formed for the whole community to show its support for Wharfedale hospital in Otley.

The petition states:

The Petition of residents of Leeds,

Declares that the Petitioners oppose the decision by Leeds University Teaching Hospitals Trust to close Ward 1 at Wharfedale Hospital and oppose any further loss of services at the hospital.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to encourage Leeds University Teaching Hospitals Trust and NHS Leeds to commit to Wharfedale Hospital's future as a genuine community NHS hospital.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.

[P000971]

European Union Act 2011 (Amendment) (No. 2)

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Commons Chamber

Motion for leave to bring in a Bill (Standing Order No. 23)

15:35

[Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to apply the terms of the European Union Act 2011 such as to require approval by Act of Parliament and by referendum of provisions for the creation of a fiscal union or economic governance amongst those Member States of the European Union which comprise the Eurozone; and for connected purposes.

After last night, I hope that the Government will now at least agree to have a referendum on the proposed eurozone fiscal union and that the Prime Minister will set out an agenda for renegotiation of all the treaties. As I have made clear in my pamphlet, “It’s the EU, Stupid”, it is time for the coalition to wake up to the dangers that come from advocating full fiscal union and its imminent threat to the UK’s national interest. Indeed, the front of the pamphlet has a cartoon showing a compression chamber in the European Union and the necessity of having the safety valve of a referendum at Westminster.

We are now faced with a two-tier Europe, which I wrote about in the 1990s, with a dominant Germany, fiscal union and a hard-core economic federation with which we have a massive trade deficit—minus £38 billion last year in the eurozone alone—with no serious attempt to deregulate burdens on business and a massive European financial crisis. I am told that The Daily Telegraph will tomorrow reveal the full exchange between the Prime Minister and Nicolas Sarkozy and how the Prime Minister’s attempt to protect us in relation to the single market was rebuffed. I am not surprised. Indeed, serious rows are going on between France and Germany and between France and ourselves, which merely demonstrates the depth of the crisis.

The Government believe that it is in the interests of the eurozone, the EU itself and the United Kingdom to promote the idea of fiscal union and economic governance of the eurozone, led by Germany and France. That is a dangerous gamble, the balance of judgement for which must be thrown against the project, certainly for the UK, just as the opt-outs for Maastricht did not prevent the creation of a European Government, which has failed, with damaging consequences for the United Kingdom. Indeed, the Prime Minister yesterday conceded that we should have had a referendum on Maastricht, as I argued when I set up the Maastricht referendum campaign all those years ago.

There are a number of reasons why fiscal union will not work for either the eurozone or the United Kingdom. The Chancellor’s claim that there is a “remorseless logic” towards it avoids the fact that it is the deep-rooted cause of the structure of the treaties and the attempt to create unity out of diversity, with over-regulation and employment laws, that actively prevent growth and, therefore, prosperity and employment in the EU and the UK. There is no evidence of growth in the eurozone, except in Germany, and it is insisting on conditions that would have to be complied with, but given the state of the other European countries, the evidence suggests that that will not succeed.

The sovereign debt of many eurozone member states, including the original PIGS—Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain—is evidence enough. They have no prospect of retrieving the situation without growth, but that will come only with, among other things, the repeal of social and employment laws, redundancy laws and other impediments to increasing the prosperity of small and medium-sized businesses, which need the oxygen and space to grow. We also must have structural renegotiation.

There is a certainty that the eurozone will not be a trading entity, and therefore our own stability will not be enhanced by its fiscal union and economic governance. There will be further debt crises, followed by the need for further monumental bail-outs, but there will be no money to pay for them, Germany’s conditions will not be met and there will be a dangerous and chaotic fiscal union within the eurozone. It would be better to recognise that immediately. When the implosion comes, there may even be a greater probability of the rise of the far right or the far left, because the electorates of Germany and other contributors will simply not put up with the burdens they would be expected to carry under such a debt transfer union.

As far as the UK is concerned, the solidarity in relation to the single market within the eurozone would lead to eurozone countries that are part of the fiscal union voting together against us. Professor Roland Vaubel of Mannheim university indicated in his article on raising rivals’ costs and regulatory collusion that that would do immense damage to our ability to compete, and the single market would be in disarray.

Apart from that, the United Kingdom’s trade deficit with the rest of the European Union increased by £40 billion in the last year alone, and would be even worse with fiscal union in the eurozone. Our trade deficit with the eurozone increased by £34 billion last year. The eurozone’s zero growth undermines our growth and, according to the British Chambers of Commerce, EU regulations cost us no less than £8 billion a year. The whole project has failed, and must be structurally and fundamentally renegotiated. Acquiescence in this has left us compromised. The coalition’s advocacy of fiscal union is a grave misjudgement. Indeed, fiscal union within the eurozone would mean solidarity between those 17 member states, and we would be outvoted by 213 votes to 132.

In a seminal article on the failure of the euro, Martin Wolf of the Financial Times said on Wednesday 19 October that fiscal union is not the answer, and that

“if creditworthy members were to transfer resources to the uncreditworthy on a large enough scale, the eurozone might be kept together. But, even if such a policy could be sustained (which is unlikely), it would turn southern Europe into a greater Mezzogiorno. That would be a calamitous outcome of European monetary integration”—

and of course Germany would not bail out everybody anyway. Agreeing to, let alone promoting, fiscal union is short-termism at its worst. Acquiescing in the determination of France and Germany, with whom our relations are increasingly difficult, to maintain the political will of the union, will lead to the predominance of Germany, which in turn will be faced with monumental difficulties in its hopeless struggle to maintain an unworkable eurozone.

Germany benefits enormously from the European Union for one reason: its investment in other countries. In the past 10 years, German unit labour costs have gone up by only 2%, but the average of those costs for all the other member states put together have increased by no less than 25%. Furthermore, the justification for the coalition Government is said to be the reduction of the deficit. That will not be reduced without growth when 50% of our trading is with a moribund Europe, and bearing in mind the trade deficit that we carry with the rest of Europe.

We are at a critical crossroads, and the Government are taking the wrong turn by endorsing fiscal union and creating two Europes without renegotiating the treaties. We need an association of nation states, led by our Prime Minister in his negotiations at the summit to come. Allowing eurozone member states to go ahead towards fiscal union will create two Europes, to which we would remain bound by treaty and law, although both would be built on sand. It would have profound economic, political and constitutional consequences for UK vital interests, fundamentally changing the UK’s relationship with the whole of the European Union, not only our relationship with the eurozone. We must have a referendum in the light of such a profound change in our political relationship with Europe. Indeed, the Prime Minister said yesterday that we must have fundamental reform, and I believe that that requires a referendum.

The proposals for European economic government require a referendum. Against that background, which involves a fundamental change in the United Kingdom’s relationship with the European Union, and the creation of a critical mass of a fiscal union, it is impossible to conceive that there will be anything other than irretrievable damage to the United Kingdom. We have had riots, protests, crisis in the PIGS countries, the failed Lisbon agenda, over-regulation, low growth, and the breaking of rules—and fiscal union will not prevent further monumental bail-outs. The bottom line is that that does not work. There will be political upheaval in other countries in the eurozone, and all this can be avoided as we speak.

On the single market, the Deputy Prime Minister has specifically ruled out any repatriation of powers, and the Liberal Democrats effectively have a stranglehold over any change in the European treaties. That is what largely lies at the root of what happened last night. We need only look at the impossible trade balance that I have described, which is massively destroying British businesses and British jobs. When I asked the Prime Minister in the Liaison Committee if there would be a treaty to underpin the new arrangements, he said that there would not be a treaty as far as he was aware. In fact, of course, we now know that there will be.

So where did things go wrong? The European Union Act got it badly wrong, because section 4 says that there will not be a referendum where there is a eurozone-only exercise of competence. The fact is that we must have a referendum for all the reasons that I have given.

15:45

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

My speech last night consisted of six words. I may take a little more time today, although I will try not to take the full 10 minutes, and it is certainly not my intention to divide the House.

I rise in opposition to this Bill, and in wonderment and admiration for the extraordinary chutzpah of the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) in introducing it; I mean that in a flattering sense. He regularly lectures the House on his objections to anyone from Europe in any way commenting on, or having a view on any aspect of, British affairs, yet the Bill says that there should be a referendum in this country if the members of the eurozone decide to move forward to an agreement on economic governance or on fiscal union. I think they will consider that to be a wonderful example of English irony—the notion that we should have a referendum to tell them whether they might move to a stronger or alternative system of governance. It is about time that we stopped lecturing the rest of Europe on what to do and got our own house in order. This country, with zero growth, rising unemployment, the highest inflation in Europe and a rising public debt and deficit, is in no position to tell any other European country what to do. We are part of the Euro-problem and we have to contribute to being part of the Euro-solution—and this Bill certainly does not so do.

That said, I share the hon. Gentleman’s expressions of concern, which I raised earlier in questions, about the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s remarkable insouciance—I think it is shared by the Prime Minister—in saying that there should be fiscal union and a single economic governance for about 75% of the EU economy. Throughout British history, we have opposed the notion of any single dominant European power, whether it is a religious power, a single state, an ideology such as fascism or communism, or one single trading or commercial model. We have liked Europe to move in different ways at different speeds so that Britain can find the interstices in which to make a profit and gain political support. But now we have our Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a Conservative Eurosceptic at that, calling for the creation of a European hegemon. The minds of all our historians and previous statesmen would boggle at that proposition. To that extent, I am with the hon. Member for Stone, because he brings these arguments to bear.

Right now, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is going in front of the European Court of Justice to insist on the French proposition that all eurozone bond trading should take place within the eurozone itself. That is a protectionist smash-and-grab raid on a huge chunk of the money that the City makes, and makes more efficiently and effectively than any other financial centre. So our Eurosceptic Chancellor is praying in aid the European Court of Justice against a proposition which, if carried through, could do serious damage to the UK.

Fiscal union conjures up the concept of a single unitary Europe. The United States is a fiscal union. California is bankrupt, but it does not stop using the dollar. New York was bankrupt in the 1970s and did not stop using the dollar. American states have different taxes, different industrial, employment and labour laws, and different investment policies. The use of a common currency is not the same as common policy. We certainly need stricter rules, and I think we all accept that.

Equally, we have to say to our German friends—we should be in this discussion—that not every European country can run a balance of trade surplus. It is economically illiterate to proclaim that. The European Union is a transfer union. We have been transferring wealth to Germany for the past 50 or 60 years. If we all stopped buying Mercedes and BMWs and bought Kias or cars made in India, the Germans would be the first to complain. We have to say gently to our German friends and other creditor nations such as China, which make a fortune from European consumption, “You have to be part of the solution as well.”

We also have to say to the European Central Bank, “Stop fighting the wars of yesteryear.” It is locked in a permanent struggle, like Moriarty against Sherlock Holmes at Reichenbach or Voldemort against Harry Potter, to curb inflation at all costs. Right now, we need more demand in our economy and we are not getting it from the ECB.

I am happy to support stronger economic governance. It allows variable tax-and-spend policies. One can spend a lot and tax a lot, provided that one remains in equilibrium. Our Nordic friends, on the whole, have maintained that policy. This does not mean a single tax rate or a single public expenditure rate. Those are still matters for sovereign Parliaments, even in a system of fiscal union and economic governance.

We ought to understand that it is the purpose of the European Union not to construct a fiscal union heaven, but to protect us—including this country—from the disintegrating hell of a Latin Americanised Europe, where every country maintains its currency against every other currency and its trade policy against every other trade policy. If we revert to 27 competing currencies, let us not imagine for one second that the single market will be maintained.

I would prefer it if it was our Prime Minister, Chancellor or Foreign Secretary making these points, rather than a humble and irrelevant Back Bencher like me. It is vital that Britain connects and engages again. I do not want to enter into curious political alliances with failed parties in Poland, Latvia or the Czech Republic, like at the Council of Europe, which we will debate again on Thursday, where our Conservative colleagues sit with the Kremlin-appointed Putin nominees, rather than work with likeminded centre-right parties. We have a serious political problem in our entire approach to Europe.

The Prime Minister, I presume, will make a report after the summit meeting tomorrow. On Thursday, we will be back to discussing the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights. He will have a little break at the Commonwealth Heads of Government conference. I would like him to persuade most of our Commonwealth allies and partners, who have far more protectionist policies against British exports of goods and services than any European country, that they should be opening their markets. He will then return to the kinds of scenes that we saw yesterday.

I am sorry, Mr Speaker, if these few remarks in opposition to the Bill have been a little longer than my speech last night. I promise that the next time we discuss Europe, I shall try to be silent or to speak in fewer words than I used last night.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Mr William Cash, Mr Bernard Jenkin, Mr John Whittingdale, Mr John Redwood, Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, Mr Greg Knight, Mr Graham Stuart, Mr Richard Shepherd, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Chris Heaton-Harris, Zac Goldsmith and Mr Peter Bone present the Bill.

Mr William Cash accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 20 January 2012, and to be printed (Bill 239).

Public Bodies Bill [Lords] (Programme) (No. 2)

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Commons Chamber

15:55

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

I beg to move,

That the Order of 12 July 2011 (Public Bodies Bill [Lords] (Programme)) be varied as follows—

1. Paragraphs 4 and 5 of the Order shall be omitted.

2. Proceedings on Consideration shall be taken in the order shown in the first column of the following Table.

3. The proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the times specified in the second column of the Table.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Prime Minister said yesterday that if there were any treaty change to shore up the euro, we should press for the repatriation of social and employment policy. Given that he has just been completely contradicted by his Europe Minister, could you advise us how we might clarify Government policy in that important area?

[Mr Speaker]

I have known the hon. Gentleman since long before his election to this House last year—indeed, for the best part of two decades—and I know of no one who surpasses him in ingenuity. I trust that he will deploy his ingenuity through the use of the Order Paper and other mechanisms in order further to convey his own views and to highlight his concerns. I think the Deputy Leader of the House may now continue with his oration.

[Mr Heath]

I am most grateful, Mr Speaker. I think I can safely assume that that point of order was not related to the programme motion in respect of the Public Bodies Bill.

It is important that I first pay tribute to both the Chairs of the Public Bill Committee, the hon. Members for Southend West (Mr Amess) and for Glasgow North West (John Robertson), and my fellow members of the Committee. It scrutinised the Bill rigorously, but with good humour and professionalism that meant we were able to conclude consideration a full day ahead of schedule. It was a joy to serve on the Committee.

I also remind the House, because it is relevant to the programme motion, that the Bill is paving legislation. Although it is right and proper that we consider the inclusion of specific bodies in the Bill, as we did in Committee, there will be a further chance for the House to scrutinise its effect on particular bodies when the necessary orders are taken through the House, after the Bill has, as I hope, received Royal Assent.

The motion has been tabled to allow the debate to take place with schedules grouped alongside their associated clauses, as was the case in Committee. Following discussions with the usual channels, the use of a knife at 7.45 pm was agreed to, to facilitate debate on clauses and schedules of significant interest. There is a further change from our discussions in Committee, in that we are happily joined by some of our colleague Ministers from relevant Departments, who will be able to explain in far better detail than I could muster the consequences of the Bill’s proposals on their Departments.

I hope that the House will be able to come quickly to a decision on the motion and proceed with the Report stage of this important Bill. I commend the motion to the House.

15:58

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

There will be time later to pay tribute to the Chairs and other members of the Public Bill Committee, if and when we get to Third Reading. First, we have in front of us the programme motion. It is perfectly true that, as the Deputy Leader of the House has just said, the Committee concluded its deliberations somewhat earlier than had been predicted, but we did so on a clear undertaking from Ministers that no significant amendments would be brought forward, other than technical amendments. We therefore felt it appropriate not to continue to the final Thursday.

The Opposition object to the programme motion. I have no doubt that you, Mr Speaker, the Clerks and even Ministers have done their best to accommodate some of the key debates that arise from Committee—we are particularly thrilled that we will have a proper debate on the chief coroner, which is an important matter—but the process remains totally unsatisfactory, because at no stage has it allowed proper consultation on or scrutiny of the Bill.

You will no doubt remember, Mr Speaker, because you have a compendious memory, that the Opposition pressed the programme motion to a Division on Second Reading and in Committee. Given the scale of the changes made to the Bill in the other place, we thought it important to provide the opportunity for witnesses to come forward to make representations to the Committee, so that we could consider in detail their points of view.

The Bill changed fundamentally in the other place, and witnesses—above all, those from the Royal British Legion—should have had their views on the chief coroner heard by Ministers, shadow Ministers and Back Benchers in Committee. Similarly, many tens of thousands of quango employees, whose futures are being discussed—indeed, they are in jeopardy—might well have wanted to come forward to give their points of view. Finally, many users and clients of the services provided by quangos might also have wanted the opportunity to make representations to the Committee. They were all denied, which was a fundamental mistake, particularly in view of the scale of the changes that the Government envisage.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

On that point, my hon. Friend will be aware that many people who work in those public bodies are very concerned about TUPE arrangements and feel that the arrangements in the Bill are not strong enough. It would have been good to hear from them in Committee and to get a chance to debate those issues in full then and today.

[Jon Trickett]

I totally understand and agree with my hon. Friend. The TUPE provisions of the Bill are covered by the programme motion, but the only way we can arrive at discussion of them is by compressing the debate on the chief coroner proposal, which I fear could be substantial given the scale of the concern in the country.

The Opposition pressed programme motions to a Division in the House and in Committee, but the Government then told us that debate on Report would take place next Tuesday, which would have allowed time to consult stakeholders and others. On Thursday, it was suddenly decided that the debate would be squeezed in today instead. That left all the stakeholders—organisations, clients, employees and everybody else concerned with quangos—only a few working hours while the House was sitting to make representations and to suggest amendments. Thus we saw the list of amendments only yesterday.

Clearly, there has been no opportunity to consult widely on the nature of the amendments. However, the most disturbing thing is that 30 of the 62 amendments are Government amendments, some of which are far beyond merely technical amendments. Frankly, it is reprehensible that things have been handled in that way.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

Does the hon. Gentleman appreciate that the problem was compounded by the fact that the business was announced when a large number of Wales MPs, who have a great interest in S4C, were at the Welsh Grand Committee in Wrexham, and therefore could not table amendments without making specific arrangements?

[Jon Trickett]

I was not aware of that. It is clear that S4C is a major issue in Wales. It was debated at some length but not comprehensively in Committee, and the House therefore deserved proper notice so that it could debate the provisions. It will not do for the Minister simply to say, “Well, you had a debate in Committee, so it is okay to proceed at short notice to a debate on the Floor of the House.” The reason that it will not do is that many thousands of people in Wales will have listened to his arguments, might have been persuaded by some of them but not by others and would have wanted to make representations to the House before today’s debate. However, the timing has been so compressed that it has been impossible to listen to the views of people in Wales and elsewhere.

We now have five hours to discuss the fate of several hugely important organisations, which shows that the Government had no interest in consultation or scrutiny of the Bill. Do they think it appropriate to engage in what can only be represented as a shambolic process, given that such important issues are at stake? The bodies involved include the Agricultural Wages Board, which protects 152,000 low-paid workers in England and Wales; the Youth Justice Board, which oversees the interaction between youth organisations and ensures that young people are properly protected when taken into custody, and without which it would have been nearly impossible to open the courts on a 24-hour basis during the August disturbances; S4C, which we have just mentioned; and the TUPE arrangements, which my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) mentioned. All those things are vastly important, and debate on them ought not to be compressed into the time available this afternoon.

Furthermore, there is the matter of the chief coroner, about which I have no doubt we will hear more. The House should have had the opportunity to reflect on the arguments made in Committee and to listen to the bereaved families and people who have lost loved ones who have had experience of the coronial service. We have not had the time to listen to their representations, however, and now we have a maximum of one and a quarter hours to debate those issues. I do not think that the programme motion allows us to deal with these matters appropriately.

Other issues are not programmed for debate at all, such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which is important to human rights in our country, the regional development agencies and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. We could have discussed all those bodies had we been given enough time.

These are not minor issues. The Bill’s ramifications have not been properly scrutinised, but they could well be huge. The Bill effectively gives powers to Ministers to do almost whatever they want with the quangos named in it. Their powers would stifle the ability of most of those organisations to work from day to day, leaving the public without the necessary services and employees uncertain about their future. No doubt Ministers will say, “All of this is simply enabling legislation and therefore the programme motion is fine”, but given how they have handled the programming, the problems with the Bill and the lack of consultation, I have no confidence that the processes to be set in train if the Bill becomes an Act will be satisfactory. I therefore put it on the record that we oppose the programme motion. As the House knows, the problem is that if we push the matter to a vote, it will take time away from the debate, and therefore I shall not seek to divide the House. However, that in no way means that I think that the programme motion is adequate.

16:08

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

I rise to observe that the programme motion does not allow sufficient time for discussion of Government amendments 47 and 48. It would have been good to have had time to ensure a full discussion of the matter, because, on a rare occasion that I wish to raise an important constituency issue—concerning the future of the Dover harbour board—I would have been able to make the case for Ministers reconsidering the amendments. With that time in the programme motion, I would have been able to speak on the matter, without it being crowded out by the debate on the chief coroner, and to have explained to Ministers how, in a statutory public referendum in my constituency, 98% of people voted in favour of the people’s port as opposed to a sell-off of the port of Dover.

There would also have been time to tell the House that the unions, business and the community had united and were in agreement on this matter, and to acquaint the House with the fact that seeing that kind of thing happening in public life is actually the most incredible rarity. There might also have been time to tell the House of the unity around the desire for the big society to be built in Dover, where our English border is to be found, and where we keep watch upon our friends across the channel, in the European Union and elsewhere. It would have been most welcome to have had time to tell the House that, rather than carrying out the sell-off, it would be really great to have a community-owned port and a flagship landmark of the big society.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. May I put it on record that he spoke eloquently and convincingly to his amendment in Committee? How disappointed was he that he won his argument only because of the support he received from Labour Members, and despite limited support from those on his own side?

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that helpful intervention. As so often happens, he sparkles in the Chamber and puts across his fabulous point of view in trying to give me problems with my own party. Had there been time, I would have explained to him that, just as Rome was not built in a day, so the port of Dover was not sold—[Hon. Members: “Sold?”] I mean that it was not saved in a day. Work in progress takes a long time, and it is not always easy to get straight into the harbour to safeguard oneself from the storm. I am confident, however, that the ship is heading in the right direction—

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

The ship of state.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Indeed, the ship of state is moving in the right direction, and I am confident that a safe harbour and place of safety will be found, and that the people of Dover will find great contentment with the end result. I am grateful to have had the time to make those few points, and to make the case for my constituency.

16:12

[Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) on being better off than many Opposition Members and perhaps some of his own colleagues, in that his proposals have been selected for debate, even though they might not be reached.

I want to make the general point that this whole approach is a disgrace and an insult to previous Members of the House of Commons who, over many hours, days and years, laboured over the establishment of the various public bodies in question. We are now being asked to dispose of them in an afternoon. I am particularly interested in the fate of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, and I have checked the various debates in the House of Commons on its original establishment and on its improvement. Those debates took up more time than this Bill is taking to shift it around, mess it about and do away with it and a large number of other useful public bodies.

I do not think that this is the way to legislate. It is a disgrace, given that the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister prated on about a new approach to government. I think that everyone expected a more liberal—with a small l—approach, but it has turned out to be a more absolutist one. I believe that Members of both sides of the House will eventually realise that it is a good idea to allow enough time to debate the things that need to be debated.

16:14

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

May I add my voice to those of my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) and the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), while supporting what my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) has said? This is a shambles. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority was not even consulted about whether it should appear in the Bill and the same goes for the Human Tissue Authority. I, too, want to express my disappointment at the fact that amendments on these issues have not been selected for debate. More importantly, provisions on the Equality and Human Rights Commission are not included, yet it does amazing and important work on equality issues.

I thus add my voice of concern about these proceedings, which seem to mimic the passage of the Bill generally. Yes, I agree with the Minister that we had a good time in Committee, but we managed to air the issues that were a matter of concern. We are talking about huge swathes of public servants who are carrying out their jobs without understanding what is going to happen to them. My right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras was right about the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and it also applies to the Human Tissue Authority. There are some parents in the Gallery whose children’s organs have been removed without consent. Such institutions are the guardians of consent regarding human tissue and the protection of the embryo. I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth said; we should have been allowed time to debate such issues.

16:16

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Briefly, I echo the thoughts of hon. Members of all parties about the short time available for debate. My particular interest is in the debate on S4C, although the debates on agricultural wages and rural affairs are also substantial, to which I know hon. Members from Wales are keen to contribute. I support them in that intention.

I am glad to say that we had a good debate on S4C in Committee. I note that there were positive contributions from Members of all parties, and I am grateful for those extended debates. However, as already noted by the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams), there have been subsequent changes, not least the fact that Members from Wales were up in Wrexham at the time when we could have tabled amendments on Report. In the meantime, there has been further discussion between S4C, the BBC and the Government, and only today has the substantial agreement between the BBC and S4C been published. I have had the opportunity to look at it, but I know that other hon. Members have not had time to do so, let alone digest it.

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

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that throughout discussion of the Public Bodies Bill—whether in Committee or anywhere else—fewer than four hours have been spent debating S4C and that, although there might have been substantial coverage and publicity, that happened thanks only to the energy and enthusiasm of Welsh language campaigners across Wales and had absolutely nothing to do with the shambolic performance of the Government in this place?

[Hywel Williams]

I rather agree with the hon. Lady. I would add that I was fortunate to get a Westminster Hall debate on S4C for half an hour, which was well attended and a contribution to the debate. The problem that I have, as I have said, is that further significant changes have occurred. Given that the amendments on S4C are the last to be dealt with before 7.45 pm, I am concerned that we might not reach them. In that case, I will take my own advice and shut up.

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. It is not possible to intervene on someone who has finished his speech. I think I am correct that the hon. Gentleman has finished.

16:18

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

It is inappropriate and against the rules to criticise the Speaker’s selection of amendments, but may I say that that selection is often influenced by the availability of time in which to debate those amendments? A number of staff of different organisations will be disappointed to know that we are not having a debate on the Floor of the House on amendments dealing with the Equality and Human Rights Commission or the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I have been struck by the fact that the Government are not only being bullies in the amount of time allotted for debate on the subject of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, but have nationalised—it is the only word I can use—the commission’s grant-giving power, showing that even without this Bill they can behave like Henry VIII.

[John McDonnell]

The problem for those of us who are not members of Bill Committees as a rule—goodness knows why not—is that such points can only be made to them at this stage in the process.

Let me say briefly—because I do not want to take up any more time—that, although the TUPE amendments that I tabled are critical, it seems highly likely that they will not be reached because of the timetable motion. They are critical because tens of thousands of staff will be transferred from one body to another, and eventually, regrettably, many will lose their jobs. In Committee the Minister read some further commitments from the Government into the record, but it would be much more valuable if we had a brief opportunity to engage in further discussion on the Floor of the House, and if the Minister could read the letter that he sent to me today into the record as well. That would provide some comfort and security for the staff members whose positions are under threat.

I urge the House to enable us to reach those amendments, if only for a few minutes, so that more clarity can be given to public servants whom the Bill will affect.

16:20

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

Some political gamesmanship took place during Thursday’s business statement when the debate on the Bill’s remaining stages was moved forward by a week. That left only 24 hours for Members to table amendments. At the time only one had been tabled, but over the past few days Members have made a gigantic effort to table a number of further amendments, which demonstrates the extent of the continuing concern about the Bill.

Of the 35 amendments that we shall debate today, 21 are Government amendments. Amendments that I tabled dealing with unfinished business relating to consumer advocacy in Wales were not selected owing to the shortage of Government time allocated to the Bill. It is clear that a single day’s debate will not be sufficient.

16:21

[Mr Heath]

The hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) tried very hard to persuade the House that this was an outrageous proposal from the Government on the grounds of lack of opportunity to consult, but written into the Bill at every stage is a statutory duty to consult on proposals before they become substantive, so consultation is not an issue.

The right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) and the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) were concerned about matters that had not been selected for debate. It is not the Government who select amendments for debate; we can only table programme motions relating to the selection that is before us.

I am grateful for the way in which the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) presented the important case relating to Sianel Pedwar Cymru in Committee, and I hope that we shall have yet another opportunity to discuss those matters today. As the hon. Gentleman said, and as I think most right-minded people will recognise, progress has been made during our consideration of the Bill, and we are keen to ensure that the outcome is right for S4C.

The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) raised an important point about TUPE. Let me say, in case his amendments are not reached, that I will ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd)—who gave him all the assurances that could be given—to place his letter in the Library, so that it is on the record and there can be no doubt that those assurances were given.

I believe that we have an opportunity to engage in substantive debates this afternoon on an important Bill which, despite being paving legislation, opens up the possibility of further debate at a later stage, and I think that we should not delay progress any further.

Question put and agreed to.

Public Bodies Bill [Lords]

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Commons Chamber

Consideration of Bill, as amended in the Public Bill Committee

[Relevant documents: The Fifth Report from the Public Administration Select Committee, Smaller Government: Shrinking the Quango State, HC 537, and the Government response, Cm 8044.]

New Clause 1

Delegation of functions by Environment Agency

‘(1) The Environment Agency may make arrangements with a person exercising Welsh environmental functions who is not a cross-border operator for that person to exercise a non-devolved function of the Agency.

(2) The consent of the Secretary of State and the Welsh Ministers is required for arrangements under subsection (1).

(3) The Secretary of State may by order with the consent of the Welsh Ministers make provision about how the function of making arrangements under subsection (1) is to be discharged (including provision about the extent to which a fee may be charged in respect of anything done under the arrangements).

(4) An order under subsection (3) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.

(5) For the purposes of subsection (1) a person is not a cross-border operator merely because functions exercisable in or with respect to England have been delegated to that person.’.—(Mr Hurd.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

16:24

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[Mr Speaker]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Government new clause 2—Delegation of Welsh Environmental Functions.

Government new clause 3—Shared services.

Government new clause 4—Shared services: Forestry Commissioners.

Government amendments 5, 6, 12 to 20, 7, 21 to 25, 8, 9, 26, 27, 10, 28, 11 and 29.

[Mr Hurd]

This is a long list of amendments, but I hope we can deal with it quickly, as I sense that the mood of the House is in favour of moving on swiftly to what might well be more contentious issues. First however, it would be wrong of me not to join the Deputy Leader of the House in thanking the members of what was a very good Committee for their work and the spirit in which they undertook it.

This group of Government amendments relates to four aspects of the Bill, and to matters which I hope the House will agree are sensible and uncontentious. New clauses 3 and 4 and amendments 25 to 29 will provide powers to enable certain bodies carrying out public functions—specifically the Environment Agency, Natural England and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, as well as the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, the Marine Management Organisation and internal drainage boards—to share back-office functions with other bodies. The powers also apply to other bodies carrying out Welsh environmental functions.

New clauses 1 and 2 and amendments 12 and 16 to 20 will provide powers to enable the Environment Agency to delegate non-devolved functions to Welsh environmental bodies. They also incorporate provisions currently in clause 16 relating to delegation of Welsh environmental functions. Amendments 5 and 8 to 11 will extend the definition of “eligible persons” in clause 1(3) to include co-operative and community benefit societies and charitable incorporated organisations. Finally, amendments 6, 7, 13 to 15 and 21 to 24 are minor and technical drafting amendments.

Turning first—and briefly—to the issue of shared services, there is a move across government to reduce the cost of back-office functions such as human resources, IT and payment processing. Freeing up bodies to share back-office services is an important way of rationalising and delivering economies of scale. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has some large non-departmental public bodies, such as the Environment Agency, which could serve as centres for delivering back-office services to other bodies in its network. However, these bodies do not currently have clear legal powers to be able to provide such services. That is because providing these back-office services to others is not always incidental or related to their main or primary purpose. The aim of these amendments is to provide a clear power so that, for example, the Environment Agency could provide back-office services such as accounting services to a body such as Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, or operate contracts for vehicles for the DEFRA network. That would be beneficial in efficiency and economic terms, and there are likely to be many more such examples as sharing of services becomes more common.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I understand why these amendments have been tabled, but it is not a God-given right that the organisations in question will win these contracts. Surely some of the contracts will be sufficiently large to have to be put out under the Official Journal of the European Union—or OJEU—notices.

[Mr Hurd]

That is a separate issue. We are trying to make the powers clearer so that more circumstances arise whereby such bodies can share services and seek efficiencies. These amendments will therefore enable the Environment Agency—

[Mr Jones]

The hon. Gentleman did not answer my question. The fact of the matter is that these measures will give the powers he describes, but they do not necessarily mean that the organisations in question will be able to circumvent European competition law in respect of contracts they put out to tender.

[Mr Hurd]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that everything will be subject to appropriate procurement regulations, but the purpose of these amendments is to make it easier for such bodies to share services.

These amendments will therefore enable the Environment Agency, Natural England, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, the Marine Management Organisation and internal drainage boards, which are bodies performing public functions, to provide back-office functions to other bodies carrying out public functions. The Bill already provides a similar power for Welsh environmental bodies, so this step will provide parity for these English bodies.

The amendments also carry forward arrangements in clause 16 whereby forestry commissioners may share services with Welsh environmental bodies carrying out functions in Wales. This power does not extend to the Forestry Commission making arrangements with non-Welsh bodies. As this is an enabling power, it will be used only where a body listed wished to use it, and where it would be financially beneficial to share back-office services. Also, it could not be exercised without the consent of the relevant Ministers. This power is in many respects similar to the provision in the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 enabling internal drainage boards to agree that one should provide back-office services to another. In debate, this was warmly welcomed by all parties. As in the case of these amendments, the express purpose was to make the delivery of administrative functions more effective and cheaper. I hope that right hon. and hon. Members will agree that, with public funding under severe constraints, it is sensible to ensure that bodies are able to share services, thus leading to increased efficiency and potential savings in the delivery of back-office functions.

16:30

On the delegation of functions, the amendments will correct a technical issue relating to cross-border powers affecting the Environment Agency. The Bill provides for the devolved and non-devolved functions of the Environment Agency, which covers both England and Wales, to be split and for a separate Welsh environmental body to be created. Although the Bill allows Welsh environmental bodies to delegate devolved functions to the Environment Agency, it would not allow the Environment Agency to delegate non-devolved functions to Welsh environmental bodies. That means, in effect, that the Environment Agency would not be able to apply existing flexibilities to delegate to its Welsh counterparts. That could have significant effects in an emergency, such as flooding in the border area, and in specialist areas, such as management of the Dee estuary. We are therefore seeking to correct this gap through these amendments to ensure that the Environment Agency can delegate non-devolved, as well as devolved, functions to the new Welsh environmental body.

[Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)]

We have only recently had sight of these new clauses. The water framework directive, which needs to be in place by 2015, deals with river catchment areas and so rivers such as the Wye and the Severn would have both a Welsh and an English context. Do these new clauses enable these bodies to work better together to achieve the desired outcome?

[Mr Hurd]

In large part these measures are designed to make existing flexible arrangements clearer, precisely to make more effective the sort of cross-border work needed in exactly the type of situations to which the hon. Gentleman refers.

As I was saying, the amendments are similar to the current provisions relating to the delegation of Welsh environmental functions in clause 16. The amendments delete those provisions and incorporate them in a slightly revised clause so that the delegation of functions is covered in concurrent clauses.

Amendments 5 and 8 to 11 will extend the definition in clause 1(3) of “eligible persons” to whom the functions of a body or office holder can be transferred under the general order-making powers of the Bill and to whom property can be transferred under clause 24 to include co-operatives, community benefit societies and charitable incorporated organisations. This issue was raised in Committee, not least by my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), at which point I made a commitment to consider how alternative models such as co-operatives and community benefit societies could be supported to deliver public services, where appropriate. It has always been the intent behind this section of the Bill to ensure that the reform of public bodies is effective by enabling the transfer of functions to a range of persons, so I am therefore pleased to be able to introduce these amendments.

In addition to the provision on co-operatives and community benefit societies, there is now an amendment to include charitable incorporated organisations. Although such charities are yet to come into being since being introduced by the Charities Act 2006, work is well under way and we have taken the opportunity to allow future orders made under the Bill to transfer functions to them. I would like to assure the House that, no matter to whom functions are transferred, it is the Minister’s responsibility to ensure that proper accountability mechanisms are in place, especially where the body is in receipt of public funds.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

We very much welcome these new clauses, which were amendments that we proposed at the time and the Minister very fairly said that he would take them away and look at them. I wish to raise one issue about charities. Is he able to explain why he is envisaging a particular form of charitable association which is not yet in existence? He has made some brief comments, but they left us puzzled in Committee.

[Mr Hurd]

Charities do fall within the scope of the Bill as far as we are concerned. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the 2006 Act allowed for the introduction of a new type of organisation—a charitable incorporated organisation. We just felt it sensible at this stage, for the avoidance of any doubt, to include such organisations in the Bill.

I know that the House wants to move on, but let me first address amendments 6, 7, 13 to 15 and 21 to 24. These minor and technical drafting amendments clarify and improve certain aspects of the Bill, and I shall briefly explain the changes they make. The amendments to clauses 11 and 20 are simply drafting changes that move measures that are relevant to the procedure for making orders, which are currently in clause 32, to clauses 11 and 20 as that is where the other measures on procedure are found.

Amendments to clauses 14 and 15 clarify that where Welsh Ministers have powers to modify the constitutional arrangements of bodies, in so far as changes may be made to the extent to which a body is accountable to Ministers, this refers to accountability to Welsh Ministers. The changes to clauses 21 and 23 remove any potential confusion regarding the restrictions in those measures. If a Minister cannot create a power to make subordinate legislation, it follows that he cannot “authorise the creation of” a criminal offence or any of the other powers under clause 21(1). Therefore the removal of the words

“or authorise the creation of”

does not change the effect of the restrictions on ministerial powers.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Will the Minister explain exactly what consultation he has had with Welsh Government Ministers on the proposals he has outlined this afternoon that will affect Wales?

[Mr Hurd]

I understand that those consultations have been extensive and I do not think there has been any real criticism regarding a lack of consultation with Welsh Ministers. However, I know that there continues to be a spirited debate about S4C and I sincerely hope and believe that we will have adequate time to return to that issue.

The amendment to clause 22 removes what was a restriction on the power to authorise the delegation of functions to an eligible person, as the power to so authorise was removed in the other place. The reference in clause 22(2)(b) is therefore no longer necessary. Finally, the change to clause 27 is simply a drafting change to make reference to each House of Parliament approving a draft statutory instrument rather than a statutory instrument.

[Nia Griffith]

First, it must be said that the Opposition have been dismayed at the way in which the Government have introduced a Bill to abolish so many valuable bodies with so many diverse functions. They have all been lumped together in this one Bill, which has been designed to abolish them, and this has afforded very little time for debate. Although we may accept some Government new clauses and amendments to make the outcome of the Bill fit within the devolution settlement and to iron out some anomalies—we understand that those changes are necessary and logical—that does not mean that we are giving unreserved support to the Bill. Far from it. In other words, we would far rather not be starting from here.

We have been confronted with a large number of new clauses and amendments at this very late stage of the Bill. A more appropriate way of dealing with these measures would have been in Committee, having allowed proper time for consultation and debate. Instead, these Government amendments were published only yesterday morning. As the Welsh Assembly is in recess this week, there has been no opportunity for the Opposition to consult Welsh Ministers. Indeed, even if it were not in recess, there would have been an absurdly short period of time for us to consult those Ministers or anyone else who has an interest in these amendments. Let us contrast that approach with the extensive discussions we had in the Committees on the Bills that became the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 and the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 about exactly how functions would apply to Wales.

Let me address the four issues to which the Minister has referred. First, on shared services, we need to remember that this is the Minister who only last October tried to explain to charities that they need not worry about TUPE because it would not apply. We can all appreciate the need for savings and the benefits that sharing staff can bring but I am concerned that the Minister is trying to bamboozle us with this measure. I am worried about his understanding of TUPE and the importance of protecting staff if they have to transfer from one place to another, if their functions are transferred, if their job description is changed or if they find themselves doing something that they were not originally appointed to do. I feel that the Government need to take on board the protection that such people should be afforded.

On the Environment Agency and issues such as flooding, of course we appreciate the need for the most appropriate and efficient way to operate. There is already close co-operation on the ground. If we can remove legal barriers to solving any problem in that respect, that is clearly the correct way forward.

Co-operatives have been mentioned, and of course the Opposition have always championed them.

Finally, the technical amendments are clearly consequential, and we therefore accept them in the context of our opposition to the general thrust of the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

New clause 1 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

New Clause 2

Delegation of Welsh environmental functions

‘(1) A person to whom this section applies may make arrangements with another such person for—

(a) a Welsh environmental function exercised by one to be exercised by the other;

(b) co-operation in relation to the exercise of Welsh environmental functions.

(2) This section applies to—

(a) the Environment Agency,

(b) the Forestry Commissioners, and

(c) a person not falling within paragraph (a) or (b) who exercises a Welsh environmental function.

(3) The Welsh Ministers’ consent is required for arrangements under subsection (1).

(4) The Welsh Ministers may by order make provision about how the function of making arrangements under subsection (1) is to be discharged (including provision about the extent to which a fee may be charged in respect of anything done under the arrangements).

(5) An order under subsection (4) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of the National Assembly for Wales.

(6) The Secretary of State’s consent is required for arrangements under subsection (1) involving, or an order under subsection (4) affecting—

(a) the Environment Agency,

(b) the Forestry Commissioners, or

(c) a person not falling within paragraph (a) or (b) who is a cross-border operator.’.—(Mr Hurd.)

Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.

New Clause 3

Shared services

‘(1) A person to whom this section applies may make arrangements with any other person to provide administrative, professional or technical services to that person for purposes relating to the exercise of public functions in or as regards England or Wales.

(2) This section applies to—

(a) the Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew;

(b) the Environment Agency;

(c) the Joint Nature Conservation Committee;

(d) an internal drainage board;

(e) the Marine Management Organisation;

(f) Natural England;

(g) a person not falling within paragraphs (a) to (f) who exercises a Welsh environmental function.

(3) The Secretary of State’s consent is required for arrangements under subsection (1) involving a person who exercises a non-devolved function (whether or not the person also exercises a Welsh devolved function).

(4) The Secretary of State may by order make provision about how the function of making arrangements in subsection (1) is to be discharged in the case of arrangements made by a person to whom this section applies who exercises a non-devolved function.

(5) An order under subsection (4) requires the consent of the Welsh Ministers if the person referred to in subsection (4) also exercises a Welsh devolved function.

(6) An order under subsection (4) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.

(7) The Welsh Ministers’ consent is required for arrangements under subsection (1) involving a person who exercises a Welsh devolved function (whether or not the person also exercises a non-devolved function).

(8) The Welsh Ministers may by order make provision about how the function of making arrangements in subsection (1) is to be discharged in the case of arrangements made by a person to whom this section applies who exercises a Welsh devolved function.

(9) An order under subsection (8) requires the consent of the Secretary of State if the person referred to in subsection (8) also exercises a non-devolved function.

(10) An order under subsection (8) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of the National Assembly for Wales.

(11) The provision referred to in subsections (4) and (8) includes provision about the extent to which a fee may be charged in respect of anything done under the arrangements.

(12) The power to make arrangements under subsection (1) is without prejudice to any other power of a body to which this section applies to provide services to other persons.’.—(Mr Hurd.)

Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.

New Clause 4

Shared services: Forestry Commissioners

‘(1) The Forestry Commissioners may make arrangements with a person who exercises a Welsh environmental function (with or without other functions) to provide administrative, professional or technical services to that person for purposes relating to the exercise of public functions in or as regards Wales.

(2) The Welsh Ministers may by order make provision about how the function of making arrangements under this section is to be discharged (including provision about the extent to which a fee may be charged in respect of anything done under the arrangements).

(3) An order under subsection (2) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of the National Assembly for Wales.

(4) The Secretary of State’s consent is required for—

(a) arrangements under this section, or

(b) an order under subsection (2).

(5) The power to make arrangements under this section is without prejudice to any other power of the Forestry Commissioners to provide services to other persons.’.—(Mr Hurd.)

Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.

New Clause 7

Agricultural wages

‘(1) In section 3 of the Agricultural Wages Act 1948 (power of Agricultural Wages Board to fix wages, holidays and other terms and conditions) the powers and duties of the Agricultural Wages Board are transferred to the Low Pay Commission.

(2) The Low Pay Commission shall establish an advisory board of employer and employee representatives from agricultural and related industries to make recommendations to the commission in fulfilment of its duties under the Agricultural Wages Act 1948.’.—(Andrew George.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 8—Office of Rural Affairs—

‘(1) The duties of the Commission for Rural Communities contained in section 19 of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 (Representation, advice and monitoring) are to be transferred to a body to be known as the Office of Rural Affairs, which will report to the Secretary of State.’.

New clause 9—Independent Rural Advocate—

‘(1) The Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 is amended as follows.

(2) In section 17 (Commission for Rural Communities) for “Commission for Rural Communities” there is substituted “Rural Advocate”.

(3) Subsection 17(2) is omitted.

(4) In section 18 (Commission’s general purpose) and section 19 (Representation, advice and monitoring) for all references to “Commission for Rural Communities” there is substituted “Rural Advocate”.’.

Amendment 32, in schedule 1, page 21, line 11, leave out

‘Agricultural Wages Board for England and Wales’.

Amendment 39, in schedule 1, page 21, line 18, leave out ‘Commission for Rural Communities,’.

[Andrew George]

It is a pleasure to follow the previous debate, which was rather more truncated than I was expecting. I wish to emphasise the importance of retaining, under new clause 7, the protections provided by the Agricultural Wages Board, as well as addressing the importance of maintaining, under new clauses 8 and 9, an overarching mechanism—indeed, an independent body—that can advocate on behalf of rural areas. The Agricultural Wages Board was established under the Agricultural Wages Act 1948, but the heritage of that body goes back to 1924. It is an independent body with a statutory obligation to set minimum wages for agricultural workers in England and Wales and powers to determine other terms and conditions, including holidays and sick pay.

16:45

[David Wright (Telford) (Lab)]

Would it not be simpler to remove the Agricultural Wages Board from the list? Rather than coming up with a new scheme or initiative to transfer powers to the Low Pay Commission under new clause 7, we could leave the Agricultural Wages Board out of the Bill and it could continue to do the excellent work that it has done for many years.

[Andrew George]

I notice that amendment 32 tabled by the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues proposes to delete the reference to the Agricultural Wages Board from schedule 1. The reason that I proposed a compromise position in new clause 7 is that I agree with the principle underlying the Bill. It is important for Governments continually to review the justification for the existence of non-departmental public bodies and for us to reflect on the amount of public money expended by a wide variety of quangos.

Where we can amalgamate responsibilities or find ways in which protective regulations, such as those for agricultural workers, can be incorporated in another statutory body rather than abolishing the body altogether, as the Government propose, it is important that we explore that option. That is what I seek to do in new clause 7. The intention and the benefit of my proposal is that the regulations are kept and enforced, but the overhead cost of maintaining an organisation is reduced as a result of that amalgamation.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman explain to the House whether he is speaking on his own behalf or whether that is formal Liberal Democrat policy? Will he tell the House how he expects members of his party to vote tonight?

[Andrew George]

I was going to remind the House that the proposal to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board was in the Conservative party manifesto, not in the Liberal Democrat manifesto, and the proposal to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board was not in the coalition agreement. The issue should be subject to discussions between the two parties, as well as parliamentary debate and scrutiny.

It has always been my view that one of the great benefits of a coalition is that it puts Parliament on the front foot, whether the Opposition like it or not, and it strengthens Parliament. It means that issues such as this, which cannot be resolved between the two parties through whatever usual channels are now established within the coalition, are subject to quite proper parliamentary scrutiny, and Back-Bench Members of the two parties in the coalition are able to hold those on the coalition Front Bench to account.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Is it not the case that the hon. Gentleman and the Liberal Democrats have not been consulted about the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board, and that his new clause is an attempt to save face with some of his constituents who will be affected by that? He can give the impression that he has fought for them, when later tonight the Government will abolish the Agricultural Wages Board anyway.

[Andrew George]

It is up to the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues on the very Back Bench of the Labour party to consider the demeanour they wish to adopt in this debate. Given that we share concerns about a relatively small and vulnerable group of about 150,000 isolated rural workers, many of whom are working on the lowest wages possible in that sector, I should have thought that a better demeanour would be to try and build bridges and find ways forward where we can adopt common ground in order to protect those workers, rather than making what I am sorry to say are rather cheap party political points.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

As a compromise, does new clause 7 weaken in any way the protections for agricultural workers? If so, is that not completely contrary not only to the Liberal Democrats’ historical position on the Agricultural Wages Board, but to an early-day motion tabled in 1990 when the last attempt was made to abolish the board? Not only the hon. Gentleman but every Liberal Democrat Member was a signatory to that motion, which stressed that we did not want any weakening of the board whatsoever.

[Andrew George]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his research, but it must be incorrect because I was not in the House in 1990, so it must have been another date. On the question about the potential weakening of the protections available to agricultural workers, of course, if I thought that the new clause in any way significantly weakened the board’s role in protecting agricultural workers and ensuring that they had a decent baseline and a progression, or in any way jeopardised the terms and conditions that have been secured for them over many years, I would accept what the hon. Gentleman says.

I have had discussions with the Low Pay Commission on the issue. All that it will say is that it is up to Parliament to decide what regulations the commission should adopt, but they need to be enforced. Under the present regulations, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs clearly has the ultimate responsibility for enforcing those.

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman says that he has had discussions with the Low Pay Commission on his proposal. In the interests of transparency, what discussions has he had with the Government on this issue, and will he press the new clause to a vote, or is he simply using up House of Commons time?

[Andrew George]

I see that the demeanour adopted by those on the Back Benches is being adopted by those on the Front Bench, which is regrettable. It is for others to judge, but my concern on the issue has been sustained over a long time. I requested to see the Low Pay Commission and I have discussed the matter with it. Yes, I have had informal chats with Ministers on this issue, because like any other parliamentarian, I wish to clarify what lies behind the Government’s proposals, so naturally I have had discussions, but not formal discussions, and the hon. Gentleman is at liberty to explore the matter in the same way.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

The hon. Gentleman rightly corrected me: it was in 2000, but I was completely accurate in what I was saying. So may I ask him one more time? If the Minister is unable to reassure him that, in whatever compromise new clause is brought forward, not simply will basic pay be protected, but so will holidays and sick pay, overtime and bereavement leave, rent protection and security of tenure in farm cottages, as they are under the Agricultural Wages Board provisions, will he support the Opposition’s amendment, not his new clause?

[Andrew George]

I agree. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his correction. I was here then and it is for the hon. Gentleman and his party to reflect on why we thought at that stage that the board might have been under threat. I entirely agree with him about the full raft of protections that should be available to agricultural workers. If I thought those protections were being significantly undermined, I would certainly not pursue the new clause in this manner. I emphasise that I do not feel precious about a particular quango; it is the protections I am most concerned about. I hope to hold out an olive branch to Ministers and say to them, “I agree with the principle underlying the Bill, which is to try to rationalise, amalgamate and abolish where that is necessary. Here is an example where we want the protections, but the small quangos that have proliferated can be amalgamated.” I am meeting them halfway and saying, “Let’s keep these protections.”

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

I represent one of the most urban constituencies, but I was brought up in some of the most rural ones. My hon. Friend’s new clause seems rightly to probe whether there is a sensible way to look after the low-paid in the agricultural industry without the duplication of quangos. That seems an entirely proper thing to do, and I hope that colleagues on the other side of the House have the same objective.

[Andrew George]

I did not answer the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas), the Opposition spokesman, who asked whether the new clause is intended to be probing or whether I intend to press it to a vote. This is clearly a matter of judgment. My intention is to advance the proposal as a solution that is available to the Government. The Bill is, after all, enabling legislation; it does not actually abolish the Agricultural Wages Board. At some point in the future there will be a framework within which the Government can bring forward a proposal, and we hope that they will genuinely consult upon it and that we will have an opportunity to debate the matter before taking it forward. My intention is to probe the matter. If I receive a deeply unsatisfactory response indicating that the Government have no intention of even considering the retention of any of the protections, or that they intend to drive on as quickly as possible with the abolition of not only the board but the regulations themselves, I will certainly consider pushing the new clause to a vote. I hope that the Minister is listening on that.

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

The last time the Liberals were in power they established the protection for agricultural workers. It will be a deep and wicked irony if, now that they are back in power, even if sharing it, they played any part in the abolition of that minimum protection. The hon. Gentleman says that his new clause is intended to be probing, but presumably he has probed his own Government. If there is any doubt whatever, I make a plea that he either presses the new clause or supports the Opposition’s amendment so that agricultural workers have that minimum protection.

[Andrew George]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, which follows the theme of others in doubting the sincerity of my purpose, which is obviously a matter for him to judge—[Interruption.] Okay, perhaps he does not doubt the sincerity of my intention, but others sitting around him certainly have. I have a genuine intention to retain the protections, but I am not precious about the board. That is the bottom line for me, as set out in the new clause. That is what I am seeking to achieve, because I believe that agricultural workers will be vulnerable if they lose their protections, that they are very isolated and that they have no muscle in the negotiating framework to enhance and improve appropriately the salary scales and terms and conditions to which I believe they are entitled.

17:00

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman knows that the protections are important, and for the 12,000 agricultural workers in my part of the United Kingdom in Wales, they are exceptionally important. Putting that aside for a moment, will he for once, as I will today, pray in aid the employers? The deputy director of agricultural policy of the Farmers Union of Wales said that the Agricultural Wages Board

“is considered an important means of avoiding potential conflict and lengthy negotiations with individual staff”.

There is a synergy between employers and employees in ensuring protection and crucially—the amendment omits this—retaining the mechanism for employers to negotiate effectively.

[Andrew George]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point. There is a significant argument between his Front-Bench spokesmen and the Minister about whether withdrawal of the protections will increase the amount of negotiation that individual farmers will be obliged to engage in with their employees, instead of allowing them simply to fall back on the helpful framework of agreements that were negotiated over some time, and the orders that are enforced from 1 October every year, which the Agricultural Wages Board provides for the agricultural industry. Some people in the agricultural industry, but perhaps not employers, will accept publicly, and some will accept privately, that those negotiations and the framework that they provide for farmers and other agricultural employers are helpful and reduce the administrative burden when negotiating with their staff. The right hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point.

I return to a broad-brush point on agricultural workers. Last year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer made statements, which I thoroughly endorse, about how to restore the economy. He emphasised that we are all in this together, that those with the broadest shoulders should bear the greatest burden, and that the vulnerable should be protected.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew George]

In a moment.

Agricultural workers may have broad shoulders physically, but not in negotiations with their employers, and certainly not when those negotiations involve their salaries. They are among the most vulnerable people in the work force. If the Government adopt for agricultural workers the principle that the Chancellor explained in his statements last year on his approach to restoring the economy and public finances, it is important to look carefully at measures necessary to protect those vulnerable workers.

[Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making some good proposals, but why should agricultural workers and businesses be treated differently from any other workers and businesses in this country?

The right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) mentioned the Farmers Union of Wales, but the National Farmers Union is clear in its support for the Government’s proposals.

[Andrew George]

I fully acknowledge that the NFU not only strongly supports the Government’s proposals but perhaps drove those proposals in the first place. Although I share a good and strong platform with the NFU on many issues, we do not agree on this point.

The implication of what my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley) said is this: if these protections are not available in any other industry, why should they be available to agricultural workers? My answer is that we should not simply adopt a lowest common denominator approach, and that just because these protections do not apply to other industries, that does not mean that, in the interests of equality, agricultural workers should have them removed. Agricultural workers have proper protections, which need to be retained, and it might be appropriate to look at extending those protections—I am not saying that agricultural workers are exceptionally exploited—to other industries where there are isolated workers in a similarly weak position who are possibly exploited.

[John Mann]

The hon. Gentleman cited the Chancellor’s saying that we are all in it together. Do the Liberals not get it? This morning, the Governor of the Bank of England repeated what he said before—that we have had the biggest reduction in standards of living in living memory. Are not the Chancellor and his Government cutting the pay of working people as their way of reducing the deficit, and is not this part of the same cuts?

[Andrew George]

The hon. Gentleman has made a fair point; I think he wanted to make a flourish with it. If he does not mind, though, I will keep the debate on the narrow point about the Agricultural Wages Board.

[John Mann]

I asked if the Liberals get it.

[Andrew George]

Whether I get it is a matter for the hon. Gentleman to judge and for me to emphasise that of course I do.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a series of good points about the retention of the AWB. However, his hon. Friends have raised the views of farmers. Is he aware of the survey carried out in and around the New Forest by Stuart Harding, who saw 44 farmers at random, 37 of whom were opposed to the abolition of the AWB?

[Andrew George]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I must admit that I am not fully aware of such surveys. As I said in response to an earlier intervention, the view is not universally held across all agricultural employers, some of whom have privately explained to me that they find that the framework that the AWB provides creates inefficiency in how they negotiate and establish agreements, sometimes admittedly verbal, with their work force.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that many farmers welcome the stability that is given them in their relationships, as they can avoid doing individual farm-by-farm, person-by-person negotiations. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said, that is the view of the Farmers Union of Wales. The hon. Gentleman may be interested to know that it is also the view of the Welsh Government. The Minister will be able to confirm later that the Welsh Government have been in correspondence with DEFRA seeking to avoid today’s scenario of the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board because they want to retain its functions within Wales.

[Andrew George]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that important point. We are part of a United Kingdom and, in spite of some hon. Members, a European Union in which the work force can migrate. The protections that an Agricultural Wages Board provides, which may be lost from England and Wales—and, I emphasise, from Cornwall—will not be lost in Scotland and Northern Ireland as a result of the Bill. Those who support the Bill’s measures on behalf of the agricultural sector argue that agricultural workers are highly prized. If the Agricultural Wages Board is withdrawn, there is a risk, certainly in the north of England, that agricultural workers will migrate north of the border, where their pay and conditions might be rather better. That will happen over time. The Minister looks at me in a rather quizzical and critical manner. Although it is true that the pay grades and terms and conditions of agricultural workers will not immediately be withdrawn as a result of the abolition of the board, for new entrants to agriculture the only protection similar to the regulations that will be jettisoned will be the application of the national minimum wage.

[Mr Frank Field]

Like the hon. Gentleman, I have been looking at the Minister’s face, and a quizzical look did appear on it when he talked about the importance of the minimum rates to agricultural workers. May I invite him to spike the Minister’s argument if he is going to give us figures showing the number of farm workers who are paid above the minimum rate? Is it not true that in those circumstances, farm employers still use increases in the minimum rate to increase the rates that they pay their workers, even though those rates are above the minimum?

[Andrew George]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for making that point. The initial defence that Ministers gave for their proposal was that it is okay because there is a national minimum wage. The last Conservative Government did not consider such a proposal because there was no national minimum wage, but now that there is, they say that there is no fear because it provides a safety net for agricultural workers.

There are six grades of pay, from grade 1, which is only 2p above the national minimum wage, up to grade 6 which is—I do not have the figure in front of me, but I am sure the Minister will tell me it—about £8.80 an hour. Grade 6 is paid to farm managers and equivalent positions. I do not think that that is a lot to pay a farm manager. It is important to acknowledge that as little as 20% of the agricultural work force are paid at the grade 1 level. Therefore, 80% are paid above the grade 1 level. That helps to emphasise the point that it is vital to retain those grades.

It is not only the grades that are vital, but the conditions on holidays, sick pay, retention to be available on duty, standing pay, payment for the retention of a dog, and tied accommodation. About 30% of agricultural workers have tied accommodation. The regulations that apply to that are important because once somebody is in tied accommodation, they have a rather different relationship with their employer.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

The hon. Gentleman is actually making some good points in defence of Labour’s amendment 32, not his new clause per se, because it will be not only new employees who are affected but contracted employees and casual workers renegotiating their contracts. I understand that 32,000 of those workers are in England and Wales. Does he agree with the point that I made earlier that if the view of both the Farmers Union of Wales and the Welsh Government is that the Agricultural Wages Board should be retained in Wales, it is inappropriate under the current devolution settlement to outlaw, abandon and abolish it? The Bill provides the people of Wales with no facility whatever to exercise their democratic legitimacy and retain it, let alone the people of Cornwall; we have not even moved on to devolution for Cornwall yet.

17:15

[Andrew George]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for acknowledging that the very distinctive region of Cornwall deserves such devolution.

The hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly decent point, although I have to say that provided that the Government follow their word about the Bill being the enabling framework for abolitions to be made by order, he and his colleagues in Wales will be able to advance the idea of variable geography with regard to retaining protection for agricultural workers when orders are made. However, that is perhaps a debate for another day.

[Gavin Shuker]

The hon. Gentleman is being extremely generous with interventions—I appreciate it.

The hon. Gentleman seems to have a lot of faith that the enabling framework in the Bill leaves the Government with an open mind about this matter. He listed a number of matters involved other than the minimum wage, such as other terms of employment and pay and conditions. Unless I am mistaken, I have not heard him mention sick pay so far, but we know from the Commission for Rural Communities, a body that is itself to be abolished under the Bill, that that will take £9 million out of the rural economy.

[Andrew George]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his comments, and perhaps I need to move on to the CRC, because I am aware that I have been very generous in giving way—perhaps too generous, judging by the body language of those on the Government Front Bench. I did mention sick pay, although I am not sure I can confirm the figure that the hon. Gentleman gave, and I noticed the Minister shaking his head at that point. However, the negotiated sick pay agreements for certain agricultural workers are clearly very important. They are certainly more generous than others, and I would not have thought that those workers would want to give them up lightly.

I wish to emphasise a couple of points on new clauses 8 and 9. The first is about the Rural Advocate’s role. The disbursement of grants and the other roles of the CRC could potentially be brought in-house or delivered in other ways. However, it is vital to retain an independent rural voice, and I still believe that the Government need to revisit that point. There are two very good reasons for that. One is that although those of us who represent rural constituencies are of course the rural voice in Parliament, and advocates on behalf of our constituents, we need a non-partisan inquisitor and overseer. We need someone to assess the general trends of what is going on in our rural communities and rural life. The nature of how we engage in our debates in the House is that we tend to react to the political issues of the day rather than necessarily approaching calmly, objectively and rationally a significant issue that might otherwise not be addressed at all.

It is also important to recognise that the Rural Advocate should in future speak up on behalf of the most vulnerable in rural areas, as he has in the past. People on below average wages are the minority in many rural communities, but in some, including in my constituency, they are the majority. Indeed, my constituency has the lowest average wage in the country.

The advocate should also speak up for those who fundamentally depend on the range of public services that are the most vulnerable, including rural bus services, small rural schools, and village shops and post offices, which are closing in many communities in many constituencies.

The Government simply propose to press ahead with the abolition of the Commission for Rural Communities. Hon. Members have addressed the manner in which the Government have approached that, but it is notable that the Rural Advocate has already been abolished. I must chide them on starting to deliver the purpose of the Bill, because the Bill is supposed to be enabling legislation. The Commission for Rural Communities must be retained.

I hope the Minister addresses the need to bridge the fault lines between Departments. Very often, rural matters need to addressed between Departments. Rural transport is a matter for the Department for Transport, and village schools are a matter for the Department for Education, but they should be addressed between Departments. The problem of the Government not taking sufficient account of the impact on rural communities of legislation and regulations needs to be addressed, either by retaining an independent rural voice, or by having a Cabinet sub-committee that is obliged to report to Parliament and produce reports regularly. Will the Minister consider that?

[Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have a great deal of respect for the hon. Gentleman’s expertise, and as a former rural affairs Minister, I thoroughly believe that the threat to the Agricultural Wages Board and the way in which the Government have dealt with rural issues are a disgrace. However, may I point out that he has now been going on about that for more than 40 minutes, and that it would be nice to fit one or two other major issues, such as the Youth Justice Board, into the limited time available?

[Andrew George]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that comment. I have been too generous in taking interventions, including his, which has taken a great deal of time.

The Government are aware that people are very unhappy at the loss of the independent rural voice. I hope that my argument gets a warm reception, and that I do not need to press the House to a Division on either of the two new clauses because the Government indicate that they will give ground.

[Mr Thomas]

I rise to speak to amendment 32, which is in my name and that of my right hon. and hon. Friends, and to urge the Government to keep the Agricultural Wages Board. Let me say in passing that it is a sad indictment of the modern Conservative party that it can fill its Benches for a debate on Europe, and yet a debate of such considerable significance to the future of the countryside is better attended by Labour Members.

The hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) has done the House a service by raising the issues in the way that he did. His new clause 7, on the Agricultural Wages Board, is a positive and constructive one, as are his other proposals, but it is not as clear-cut or positive as the proposal in amendment 32 in my name and that of my right hon. and hon. Friends. However, if he decides that he does not receive a good enough response from the Minister, which I fear will be the outcome, I shall urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to support his new clause. Nevertheless, we hope that when we press our amendment, he will join us, given its greater benefit.

The AWB helps to ensure fair wages, so it will come as no surprise that the Conservative party wants it abolished. It is more surprising, however, that Liberal Democrat Ministers are signing up to the proposal. Like many others, rural workers will find it difficult to believe that this proposal is proof of the Deputy Prime Minister’s claim that he is a brake on the Conservative party. The AWB helps to ensure that people working in the countryside, be they apprentices, farm supervisors or small farmers, get a fair deal. Frankly, it is difficult to see how, without the AWB, farm workers will not inevitably be worse off.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Does my hon. Friend think it rather ironic that although the Conservative party claims to be the protector of rural communities, only one Conservative Back Bencher and one Conservative Parliamentary Private Secretary are attending this debate? Is it not clear that that party protects certain parts of the countryside, but not others?

[Mr Thomas]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, emphasising the one that I made about how it is surprising that so few Conservative Members are present.

Even Margaret Thatcher decided, in the end, that the AWB was too important to axe. Perhaps it would help the House if I gave two examples of the concerns about abolition that have been put to me. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) said, had witnesses been invited to give their views on the Bill before the Committee stage, other Members might have had the opportunity to have direct conversations such as those I have had with the following two people. Richard Neville, from near Haywards Heath in Sussex, is on grade 4 of the AWB’s pay scale, reflecting his additional skills and experience—he has a craftsman certificate and a national certificate in agriculture. If the AWB were abolished, however, there would be no guaranteed protection of the extra wages reflecting his skills.

Richard Neville is particularly concerned about what would happen to overtime pay, which is currently paid at time and a half. He has to work one weekend in six and, obviously, considerably longer hours in summer over the harvest period. If he and those like him move jobs, what guarantee can the Minister offer that his new employer would offer him the same level of overtime pay? I would be happy to take an intervention from him, if he wants to get to his feet.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Thomas]

He does not—perhaps a glaring example of what the reality will look like.

My second example is Steve Leniec, from near Wantage in Oxfordshire, who is paid a craftsman’s rates and whose concerns are about the downward pressure on farm workers’ wages, which abolition of the AWB will drive. The House knows that unemployment is high at the moment, and his perfectly reasonable and understandable fear is that wages will slowly drop when the AWB is abolished.

[David Wright]

My hon. Friend is talking about wages being gradually eroded, but the wages of the 40,000-plus casual workers, who change jobs more rapidly, will fall very quickly indeed. A large proportion of people working in the countryside will quickly take a pay hit if this body is abolished.

[Mr Thomas]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is precisely the concern being expressed by many people.

[Stephen Mosley]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree with the NFU, which has stated:

“Claims that farm workers will suffer lower wages if the Board is abolished are simplistic and ill-founded”?

[Mr Thomas]

On this occasion, I do not agree with the National Farmers Union. As I have said, we consulted widely in preparing our position on this part of the Bill, and we have reached a very different conclusion on the basis of our conversations with farm workers, with small farmers and with other farm workers’ representative bodies, of which more later.

17:30

[Mr Frank Field]

Might not the National Farmers Union give a different answer if the Government were to address the question of how we can grow more food to feed our population? We have a huge trade deficit, and the answer must surely be to invest more. If we raise our investment in people, we will raise productivity. The push should be not to lower wages but to raise them and to raise productivity.

[Mr Thomas]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Indeed, I hope that he will catch your eye later, Madam Deputy Speaker, to enable him to make that point in more detail.

I shall return, if I may, to the concerns expressed by Mr Leniec about the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board. He is also worried about the loss of sick pay that he could suffer. He has never needed it to date, but knows of others who have done so. He also shares Mr Neville’s concern about the loss of protection of the right to overtime if he should move to a different employer.

The Agricultural Wages Board continues to provide an unheralded but important service in helping to protect vulnerable people and their families, who are vital to the rural economy, from seeing their terms and conditions progressively worsen. It helps to regulate basic pay and protection for fruit pickers, farm labourers and other farm workers. It deals with wages, holiday pay, sick pay and overtime, as well as bereavement leave, holiday entitlement and rates for night work. It provides a crucial floor beneath which wages in the agricultural economy cannot fall.

Nearly 150,000 agricultural workers in England and Wales depend on the Agricultural Wages Board. Those workers play a part in maintaining the vibrancy of our rural communities. They are the unsung essential staff who support farmers in helping to keep agricultural businesses thriving. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) has just suggested, they form a vital part of our food production industry, helping to ensure that we and our constituents can all enjoy healthy—and, occasionally, unhealthy—meals.

It is striking that many farmers continue to support the Agricultural Wages Board. Its presence means that they do not have to become employment specialists, and that they can instead concentrate on running their businesses. The deputy director of the Farmers Union of Wales has noted that

“the AWB is considered an important means of avoiding potential conflict and lengthy negotiations with individual staff”.

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

To my knowledge, agriculture is the only industrial sector in which there have been no large industrial disputes over the past couple of decades. Is not that testimony to the success of the AWB?

[Mr Thomas]

The hon. Gentleman is undoubtedly right on this occasion. It is also worth noting that many small farmers also rely on providing their skills to other farmers, at Agricultural Wages Board rates, to ensure the viability of their businesses.

The Government made the important claim in Committee that the board’s abolition would not result in workers becoming worse off, and that minimum wage legislation and the European working time directive would protect their terms and conditions. I put it to the Minister, however, that once the Agricultural Wages board has gone, the 42,000 casual workers in the sector will see a drop in their wages as soon as they finish their next job. That point was also made by my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (David Wright). The other 110,000 workers could see their wages and conditions corroded over time.

Is it not spurious for Ministers to claim that farm workers will be protected by the minimum wage? As the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) said, only 20% of farm workers are on the Agricultural Wages Board’s grade 1, which is virtually equivalent to the current minimum wage. The rest earn considerably more than the minimum wage and will not enjoy the same protection as the board offers them now. Is it not true, too, that once the Agricultural Wages Board is abolished the right to overtime pay at current rates will disappear when a worker moves job? Is it not true, too, that once the board is abolished the right to sick pay will be at a substantially lower rate than at present for agricultural workers when they move jobs? Then there are children who do summer jobs or part-time work on the land; they usually live in rural villages themselves and often have aspirations to work on the land for a career once they are old enough to do so. They currently receive £3.05 an hour. They are not covered by the national minimum wage, so—if, indeed, the board is abolished—they will have no wage protection when they do holiday or weekend work.

Poverty in the countryside rarely receives the coverage or attention it should. Indeed, the extra costs of living and working in the countryside do not get the attention they should, so the work of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, in highlighting the extra 10% to 20% living costs that those in rural areas typically need to spend on everyday requirements in comparison with those living in urban areas, is surely significant. It should further challenge us to do more to combat low pay and poverty in the countryside and it surely poses the question of how the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board can possibly help in that important task. The board is also an important counterweight to the pressures from the food industry, particularly those from the supermarket chains, for ever lower costs of production to increase profitability.

I read through the comments that the Minister made in Committee. He cited how the Agricultural Wages Board's existence discourages the payment of annual salaries and the confusion with non-agricultural work that can occur. Those may or may not be genuine concerns. If they are—I take the Minister at his word—one would have thought that a reform agenda could explore those issues. Instead, the Government want to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater, not thinking through the consequences for rural wages of the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board. With rural workers already facing a huge squeeze on their finances from higher energy prices, the increase in VAT and an economy that is being badly mismanaged by the Conservatives, the Government now want to risk rural workers’ wages.

We know from a leaked impact assessment on the abolition of the board that the impact of the loss of entitlement to agricultural sick pay compared with the lower-in-value statutory sick pay that will remain will be a

“transfer, a benefit to farmers and a cost to workers.”

The impact assessment estimates that the reduction in earnings for farm workers as a result of that measure alone will be some £9 million—£9 million out of the rural high street in lost earnings by workers. All those villages shops—vulnerable now because of the Government’s mishandling of the economy—are hardly going to be helped by yet another squeeze on the finances of those they want as their consumers.

If there is any doubt that the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board will damage the pay of rural workers, let us look at what happened in other parts of our economy when their wages councils were abolished. In evidence published as far back as September 1995, three in 10 jobs were paying less than they would have done if wages councils in the relevant sectors had not been abolished. The fall in pay in shops was particularly severe. A follow-up study one year later showed that half of all vacancies were paying below what they would have done if the wage councils had still existed. The situation had got worse. Such evidence explains why the Labour Government not only brought in the minimum wage, but reformed collective bargaining arrangements. It is also why we will tonight oppose the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board and why I will seek your leave, Madam Deputy Speaker, to divide the House.

Lastly, I draw attention to amendment 39, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) and other hon. Friends and which deals with the Commission for Rural Communities. The abolition of the CRC will leave rural communities without an independent voice, as the Government scrapped the Rural Advocate post last year. It raises the question of whether the Government are really committed to rural proofing Government policies. Indeed, the abolition of the CRC, along with—crucially—the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board, following on from the Government’s attempts to sell off the nation’s forests, is surely proof that the countryside is being let down by the coalition Government parties.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Thank you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker. I did not expect to be called so soon—I expected a Government Member to be called next—but, in the absence of any speakers on the Government Benches, I shall proceed with my speech.

This morning there was a very good lobby of agricultural workers, during which members of Unite, other union workers and MPs gathered outside Parliament to protest against the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board. Amendments 32 and 39, to which my name is attached, are intended to secure a fair deal for 152,000 farm workers in England and Wales, apprentices and farm managers alike. The amendments are intended to protect their basic pay, holidays, sick pay, overtime, bereavement leave, rent, and security of tenure in farm cottages. They are also intended to protect the compact between Government and farm workers that has existed for decades, since the Attlee Government of 1948, and which—here I echo the sentiments of the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George)—has recognised the enduring need to provide reasonable recompense for arduous and dangerous agricultural work, to promote food security, and to contribute to the tackling of rural poverty.

Members should be in no doubt about the fact that if the Government axe the Agricultural Wages Board, there will be severe repercussions. According to the Government’s own figures, £9 million will be removed from the rural economy every year, at a time when the Government are presiding over what is effectively a zero-growth economy. The Minister did his best on the radio today, saying that he did not expect any of those bad things to happen as a result of the board’s abolition. I did not expect Wales to go out of the semi-final of the rugby world cup, and the Government did not expect to see 80-odd of their Back Benchers in open rebellion last night, only 18 months into a new Administration, but, as the old saying goes, farmyard slurry happens.

More than 40,000 casual workers will experience a drop in their wages when their current jobs finish, and the wages of a further 110,000 will be eroded over time. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) has told us what happens when wages councils disappear, and has described the pattern of the effect on wages and salaries over a sustained period. What assessment has the Minister made of the cost to the taxpayer of the additional claim on that taxpayer through payments of child tax credit and other support for farm workers and their families when their wages and entitlements wither on the vine?

The House has a very long memory, and some Members have been here for many years longer than I have, but I do not think that any Member who is present today was present for the original debates on this subject in 1947 and 1948. Nevertheless, there is a strange echo down the years of the debates that took place both here and in the other place. Archer Baldwin, Conservative spokesman for agriculture, argued in defence of a policy of minimalist—not minimum—wage protection, remarking of the previous pitiful agricultural wages:

“The reason for those low wages was the low prices paid to the farmer, and we want to relate prices to wages.”—[Official Report, 22 January 1947; Vol. 432, c. 251.]

He wanted to relate farm gate prices to wages, rather than ensuring the farmer was given a proper price for his produce and was paid a proper living wage.

I remind Liberal Democrat Members who—again—are wondering which way to turn now that their Conservative bedfellows have once more stolen the duvet that, as I remarked earlier, there was a time when they were wholly against the proposal with which we are dealing today. It was the last time there was a review of the Agricultural Wages Board—not a threat to abolish it, just a review. The Government of the day did not proceed with any proposals to abolish, change, or transfer any functions from the board, because they were faced with a powerful combined front of Labour, Liberal Democrat and assorted other Members who opposed any proposal to change it.

I suggest to the hon. Member for St Ives, who has tried his hardest to make a good fist of putting forward an alternative compromise, that there is a danger that notwithstanding what was a very principled stance on that occasion, the Liberal Democrats will tonight go over to the dark side, or at least put one foot in both sides of the bed. Regardless of which side of the bed they are on—strong Liberal or weak Tory—that is what is proposed, in particular by new clause 7 tabled by the hon. Member for St Ives. I respect the hon. Gentleman. He is trying to do the right thing: he is trying not to upset his party’s coalition partners too much, and he is looking for a neat Lib Dem compromise, but it is a compromise. His proposals are a weak and unsatisfying brew compared with our full-strength amendment, which would truly protect the AWB.

17:45

I referred earlier to an early-day motion in 2000. In response to a proposed review of the AWB—not a proposal to abolish it—former Lib Dem Members who prided themselves on their strong rural and agricultural credentials stood alongside Labour MPs in mounting an heroically robust defence of the AWB as it stands. Former Lib Dem Members for South East Cornwall, Cheltenham, Brecon and Radnorshire, Montgomeryshire, Truro, St Austell and North Cornwall, and also the current hon. Members for St Ives, for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), for North Devon (Nick Harvey) and for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell), were happy, when in opposition, to sign up to an EDM that was glowing in its praise of the AWB and stalwart in its defence. Among other benefits, they noted

“that the Agricultural Wages Board…sets a series of rates of pay to reflect the varying qualifications and experience of farm workers, thus providing a visible career structure for recruits going into agricultural work and is used as a benchmark for other rural employment”.

They also said that they believed

“that any weakening of the Agricultural Wages Board or its abolition would further impoverish the rural working class”.

What has changed? The EDM added that the abolition of the AWB would lead to

“exacerbating social deprivation and the undesirable indicators associated with social exclusion; and therefore calls on the Government at the conclusion of the current review, to retain the Agricultural Wages Board as it is currently constituted.”

I say to the hon. Member for St Ives that he and his colleagues were utterly right then, and they are utterly wrong tonight. I say to him, “Pull the duvet back and show who is in charge. Your rural working class are watching.”

[Mr Anderson]

Does my hon. Friend also agree that the hon. Gentleman was correct when he was quoted on 11 November last year in the Farmers Guardian as saying:

“If I thought that by following this policy farm workers would be better paid or have better conditions then I’d support it. But, I think we all know that the opposite is the most likely consequence”?

He was right then, and he is wrong tonight.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and I also agree with the hon. Gentleman, as his peroration was, in fact, an argument in favour of our amendment, not his new clause. I therefore say to him that he should by all means press his new clause to a Division, as if he does so the Government Front-Bench team will have to consider whether it supports him. However, if he is not minded to do so, I urge him to support our amendment, as it will do exactly what he has previously argued is right for poor rural farm workers.

[Andrew George]

The purpose of my new clause is to achieve the Government objective of saving money by doing away with unnecessary quangos and other NDPBs, while also retaining the protections for agricultural workers. It therefore achieves exactly the same outcome as the hon. Gentleman is claiming to want, while also saving public money.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

The hon. Gentleman’s comments highlight the difference between our positions, as I do not think his new clause does anything of the sort. Instead, it weakens and threatens not only pay, but all the other terms and conditions of service that should be protected. His proposal is not an absolute guarantee; rather it is, in effect, a “maybe.” He and his colleagues have to consider tonight whether they are happy with the much more opaque and vague assurances that may come from the Government Front-Bench team.

As I said, the rural working class is watching, and so are people in Wales. The Farmers Union of Wales does not want the functions of the AWB to disappear, noting among its strengths the fact that, operating with few staff,

“the AWB is…an important means of avoiding potential conflict and lengthy negotiations with individual staff.”

As I mentioned, the Minister will doubtless want to confirm today that the Welsh Assembly Government have also indicated their desire to retain the functions of the AWB in Wales and are awaiting a response from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. So may I suggest to him that today is not the day to draw a shroud over the AWB, not least when to do so would be a clear rejection of the legitimate democratic voice of the Welsh people?

Finally, I draw the attention of the Minister and of Conservative Back Benchers—both of them—to the American poet, philosopher and polymath Henry David Thoreau, who asserted:

“Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor.”

Farm workers are going to be a whole lot more respectable, a whole lot more interesting and a darn sight poorer if the Government carry out this threat to abolish the AWB.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to amendments 32 and 39, and I do so as a rural trade unionist and a rural Labour MP. The AWB is not a quango; it involves the Secretary of State, independents, workers in the industry and employers meeting to negotiate pay, and terms and conditions. Its destruction undoes the rightful and valuable recognition of skilled labour in the food manufacturing sector. Its destruction only creates a disincentive to young workers to enter the industry by reducing skilled labour to the level of the national minimum wage. That is a general wage for general work and it should not be used as a general means for conducting pay negotiations across a whole industry.

The scrapping of the AWB will have significant consequences for the rent relationships of workers at their place of work. Furthermore, it will undermine overtime pay arrangements, as the national minimum wage carries no overtime rates. Without the AWB, agricultural workers will have no mechanism to pursue collective bargaining to improve their pay and terms and conditions, and thus pursue their aspirations and improve their lot, not only for themselves, but for their families and their communities—they can only just about afford to live in those. If the AWB is scrapped, they will no longer be able to pursue those things.

The destruction of the AWB is only one part of this Government’s attack on the countryside. If it were not for the national minimum wage, the AWB’s removal would definitely take industrial relations in the fields of our nation back to an appalling condition not seen since the time of the Tolpuddle martyrs. For many on the Government Benches, “The Hired Man” is not merely a fictional account based on our social history of more than 100 years ago, but an economic vision for the future, exploiting the worker in the field. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats cannot claim to be the parties of rural communities when the only part of rural society they want to talk to is the affluent one. The AWB provides a proper and efficient means for workers and employers to resolve human resources and industrial matters quickly. Its destruction only disfranchises workers—they will not have the right to negotiate a day’s pay—and complicates matters of negotiation. The move is divisive and will undoubtedly divide rural communities between employer and employee.

The destruction of the AWB has a cynical kernel at its heart. It implies that because of record levels of unemployment employers can drive down terms, conditions and pay on the assumption that people will simply be grateful for a job. In that sense, it is intended precisely to let the rural rich exploit the very rural working class who provide the food we eat and feed our families with.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I am getting a little concerned for the health of the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) because when he speaks as he did tonight and as he did in the health debate, he seems to be in a certain amount of pain—perhaps the fence he has been sitting on in all these debates is causing pain to his nether regions. Clearly he is trying tonight to give the impression to his rural constituents that he is supporting them, while giving succour to the abolition of the AWB. He has to make a clear decision about whether or not he supports this move. His new clauses are seriously flawed, as was shown by some of his arguments. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) that the hon. Gentleman made a better argument for the AWB’s retention than he did for his new clauses.

I have a problem with the new clauses. The hon. Gentleman said that he had had discussions with the Low Pay Commission, but subsection (1) of new clause 7 would require some form of legislation to amend the LPC’s remit. This is not simply a matter of transferring functions to the LPC, because we would be changing its role and nature greatly. Subsection (2) simply bemuses me. It states:

“The Low Pay Commission shall establish an advisory board of employer and employee representatives from agricultural and related industries to make recommendations to the commission in fulfilment of its duties under the Agricultural Wages Act 1948.”

That sounds very much to me like a description of the AWB. Why do we need to move things to the LPC, given that subsection (2) basically retains the function? If there is a need for the AWB to protect rural workers, we should leave it as it is.

The hon. Gentleman said that he wanted to take this approach to save money. I believe that the AWB costs £272,000 a year, which is less than half what the new special advisers appointed by the Deputy Prime Minister cost—we will keep an eye on the Tory Ministers throughout the coalition Government. So we are paying a small price to protect rural workers and rural communities. If the hon. Gentleman really wants to support rural workers in his constituency and the rest of the country, he should support our amendments 32 and 39. They make clear the need for, and importance of, the AWB, not only for workers, but for rural economies.

[David Wright]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend has talked about agricultural workers, because this is not solely an urban/rural issue. Many people who live in towns such as Telford, which I represent, go out of the town to work in rural areas. So this is not just about sustaining the rural economy; it is also about urban areas.

[Mr Jones]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point; places such as Telford are surrounded by large rural areas. It is ironic that Conservative Members keep telling us that they are the champions, supporters and voice of the countryside, given that a second Conservative Member has only just arrived for this very important debate. That tells me loud and clear that they will protect certain parts of rural communities but not others—the most vulnerable. May I say, as a former trade union official, that it would be the first time in history if something like the abolition of the AWB led to an increase in the wages of rural workers? It is therefore vital that the AWB is retained.

If the hon. Member for St Ives wants to prove to his constituents that he really cares about their needs, all he needs to do is vote for amendments 32 and 39 and encourage the rest of his party to do so. I assure him that at the next general election the Labour party in his constituency and in other Liberal Democrat rural constituencies will remind constituents of exactly what the Liberal Democrats did. As with a lot of things that this coalition is doing to attack working people in this country, this could not be done without the support of the Liberal Democrats.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

I will speak briefly, as I am conscious of the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael). I do not represent a rural constituency, but a city-centre constituency which, as the House of Commons Library tells me, has approximately zero agricultural workers living in it. It seems to me that this is about fairness. As many speakers have pointed out, the Agricultural Wages Board covers not only workers’ wages but grading arrangements, skills and qualifications, overtime, training costs, apprenticeships, allowances and grants, holidays, sick pay, leave and housing. It is inconceivable that, if the board were abolished, there would not be downward pressure on the terms, wages and conditions of agricultural workers.

17:59

I want to address one more issue about the industry more broadly. My right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), when he was in his place, talked about the need for security of supply and how the industry needs to expand. I am very worried that if the Agricultural Wages Board is abolished, it will lead to destabilisation in the industry. It can be no coincidence that there has not been a major industrial dispute in this sector of the economy since 1923. I am told that the industry needs 60,000 entrants. According to some research, because of the machinery and the nature of the work, the industry has the highest death and injury rate per capita. For reasons of security of food supply, we need people to move into the industry and I am deeply concerned that, if the Government get their way this evening, the changes will act as a major disincentive to people entering it.

I said I would be brief, so I shall finish on this point. We have not had an industrial dispute in this sector since 1923, but if we did have one as a result of the Government getting their way tonight it would be a very sad day indeed.

[Nia Griffith]

The Agricultural Wages Board sets standard rates of pay for 12,000 agricultural workers in Wales and similar workers in England, with six grades ranging from £6.10 an hour to £9.14 an hour to reflect the different types of work involved. As farming is so dependent on maximising effort when the season and weather are right, the board also gives guidance on unsocial hours, night working and dog allowances to mention just a few matters, as well as setting the rate of pay at £3.05 an hour for under-16s, who are not covered by the national minimum wage.

Many farms in Wales are family businesses with just two or three employees, or perhaps only one. Discussions about pay and conditions can be very tricky and, quite honestly, embarrassing, so standard guidance from the Agricultural Wages Board helps farmers and the 12,000 farm workers in Wales. That is the view of the Farmers Union of Wales, which has made that absolutely clear. Many of the inquiries that it receives can be answered by the board and the reason for that is not that it is just an information line but that it sets the wage levels.

In some instances, in family farm situations where there are just one or two employees, conflict can arise over wages even if there is good will on both sides, and reference to the board can avoid a lot of confusion and conflict. In other instances, there are huge temptations for employers to allow wages to be eroded by inflation, and without the Agricultural Wages Board it would be all too easy for employers to drive down wages. In the case of the many seasonal workers, that could happen very quickly indeed after the board’s abolition. In many rural areas, there are few other job opportunities and the driving down of agricultural wages would significantly increase rural poverty. Indeed, we have heard that some £9 million will be taken out of the rural economy. Furthermore, it will lead to an exodus from the countryside, and we know that there is already a skills shortage. If we are to feed the nation in future we should be encouraging decent wage levels and encouraging young people to take up agricultural jobs.

Without the Agricultural Wages Board to set those additional grades above the national minimum wage to reflect the skills and physical effort involved in farm work, there will be a race to the bottom. This is part of the Government’s determined agenda to drive down wages, increase poverty and take away any opportunity for ordinary people to have any redress against exploitation. Let us be clear: this is not about cutting red tape. It is about driving down wages and taking money out of the rural economy. That is why I shall support Opposition amendments 32 and 39.

[John Mann]

As I represent one of the largest Labour rural constituencies, I have to ask the House what is wrong with this Government—with these Liberals and Tories—who are taking every opportunity to decimate rural communities in my constituency and across the country? We know the inevitable consequences of removing and abolishing the Agricultural Wages Board: reductions in wages. That means there will be less money to spend on postage stamps, but of course they have an answer to that because the number of post offices closing and the threat to the universal postal system are part of their policy.

There will be less money in the pockets of rural workers to spend in pubs but they cannot find any pubs in rural communities because of the inaction of this Government. There will also be less money to spend in rural shops. But the biggest crime of this Government to date is the fact that across the country we have seen the decimation of independent retailers, especially in rural areas. That is within 18 months. Therefore, this is part of a particular policy and approach. We know the Government’s approach to the countryside: concrete it all over and put every village together by building houses that people do not want and sticking more wind farms in. That is their policy for the rural community. Indeed, that is their only policy other than this one—give us loads of concrete but take away the spending power of people living in the rural community.

There is a reason for that approach, which one might think would be unpopular. Indeed, it is tremendously unpopular in my area as I am sure it is elsewhere in the country—it is a vote loser. The Liberals have lost all their votes already but it is a vote loser for the Tories so why are they doing it? They are doing it because this is the only economic plan they have. This is part of that plan and needs to be seen as part of it. They cannot create growth, so their economic plan is to cut real wages and real standards of living. As the Governor of the Bank of England said to the Treasury Committee today, there has been the biggest cut in living memory in standards of living in this country since this Government have been in, with working people across the country having less money in their pockets. The biggest cut since before the 1930s—that is what they have brought us.

What did Government Front Benchers say when they were going on about Europe yesterday? They said, “We want to meddle in Europe; we want to repatriate some powers”, meaning the paid holidays and agency workers directives. Those very things sit alongside the Agricultural Wages Board. This is part of the same process and ideology, because this is ideology-driven. It is economic nonsense. In my constituency, it is economic nonsense to reduce the real pay of people who do not have a great amount of discretionary spend anyway. I am talking about the poorest people in my community, and I have an ex-mining community. Poverty and pockets of poverty are greater in rural communities than in any mining community in my area. The real spending power of those people will be reduced and that will have a catastrophic effect on the rural community overall. That is what these people in government are doing through a deliberate economic policy. Shame on them for doing that and shame on this lot of Liberals for backing it. I recommend to the House supporting the Opposition’s sensible amendment.

[Mr Paice]

We have had a number of speeches on these new clauses and amendments which I shall try to address. I have to say that for the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) to say that the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board is a major issue in the countryside demonstrates a serious lack of understanding about the issues that face the countryside. For the Opposition to talk about rural poverty after 13 years in office in which rural poverty got worse and worse year by year, with nearly everything they did being an attack on rural communities, smacks of hypocrisy.

I am one of those, and I suspect there are others in the House, who has at some stage had their wages set by the Agricultural Wages Board. I am not quite going back to 1948, but getting close to then. However, I recognise that the world has changed. Back in 1948, there were tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, more farm workers. Most of them were horsemen, because horses were the main force of traction in those days. The world has moved on. Farm workers are not the forelock-tugging yokels that many Opposition Members seem to think.

[John Mann]

That is an insult.

[Mr Paice]

It is not an insult. If it is an insult, it is an insult to Opposition Members who have been using that sort of analogy to show the relationship between modern-day farmers and their work force.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I do not think that I was doing that, but is the Minister really telling the House that, if the Agricultural Wages Board is abolished, farmers—I understand that he was a farmer before he was a Minister—will drive up wages, rather than driving them down?

[Mr Paice]

The market is what will affect wages. That is the reality of how wages are set in every other—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Harrow West and the hon. Gentleman told us everything that happened after the abolition of the other wages councils and boards. I would take much more seriously all the remarks that we have heard from Opposition Members if they had recreated a single wages council or board in their 13 years in office. They did not do that, and that is why—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman says, “The minimum wage.” Yes, we support the minimum wage, and we have got it now.

[Mr Jones]

The Minister argues that wages should be left to the market. Is he therefore suggesting that there is no need for the Low Pay Commission and the minimum wage? That is the ultimate conclusion of his logic.

[Mr Paice]

The hon. Gentleman knows full well that that is not what I said. This group of amendments deals with not only the Agricultural Wages Board, but the Commission for Rural Communities.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Paice]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman because I respect his integrity and his contribution on these issues in the past, although I did not agree with everything that he said.

As the hon. Members for St Ives (Andrew George) and for North Durham (Mr Jones) said, new clause 7 would transfer the Agricultural Wages Board’s powers to the Low Pay Commission and establish an advisory board of employees and employers to advise the commission. Clearly, amendment 32 would strike the whole issue from the Bill. Both provisions would continue the separate minimum wage regime for agricultural workers, although the mechanism would be different.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I want to shed some light, rather than heat. Of course, one of the Agricultural Wages Board’s functions relates to sick pay. How much is the statutory sick pay for grade 1 and grade 2 workers? How much would it be if the board were not there?

[Mr Paice]

All workers will have exactly the same entitlements as they currently have. Other hon. Members have made the point—I was going to make it later, but I emphasise it now, because there are a lot of myths about—that the Bill will not affect anyone in their current employment. They will be protected by their current terms and contract of employment, whether in relation to rates or conditions of pay.

[Mr Thomas]

Will the Minister clarify something that he said? If an existing worker moves to a different job after the Agricultural Wages Board has been disestablished, what protection will there be for his overtime rates of pay?

[Mr Paice]

Clearly, the worker will negotiate with his putative new employer. [Interruption.] I will be more objective: the real world says that that worker is unlikely to move to someone who will pay him less than the job that he is leaving. That is the reality.

[Gavin Shuker]

rose—

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Paice]

I will give way, but I will make a little progress first.

I need to emphasise that this is not some secretive plot, as some people would suggest—[Interruption]—or even an open one. Let us not be pedantic. It is not some plot to drive down wages or conditions for agricultural workers; quite the reverse. For many years, there has been widespread employment protection for workers in other sectors of the economy through the national minimum wage regime and working time regulations. Agriculture remains the only sector with a separate employment regime. The terms and conditions and the way that it operates are outdated and gold-plate the provisions of the national minimum wage legislation and working time regulations. There is, therefore, a heavy regulatory burden on employers, and we believe that it is hampering the industry from creating jobs and damaging long-term prosperity and sustainability.

The regime that we seek to abolish dates back to the bygone era that I referred to. It does not relate to today’s widespread legal protections. It no longer reflects modern employment practices. As has been mentioned, it discourages the payment of annual salaries, which is difficult for workers because they have no control over their own financial planning. By contrast, the national minimum wage legislation provides for the payment of annual salaries. I emphasise that all our evidence shows that the vast majority of agricultural workers are paid above the level dictated by their Agricultural Wages Board grades.

18:15

[Mr Thomas]

The Minister says that there is a whole series of new, modern employment protections. I ask him again to draw the House’s attention to which one of them will protect workers’ overtime pay in the situation that I described in my previous intervention.

[Mr Paice]

Anyone in a post at the moment is protected by their contract of employment. Anyone who changes jobs—and whose contract therefore is no longer valid—will have to negotiate, just like in any other sector of the economy, and the hon. Gentleman was part of the Government who did not change that system.

[Mr Thomas]

Pay will go down.

[Mr Paice]

It will not necessarily go down; it will react to the state of affairs.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

The Minister is being generous in giving way, but may I probe him again on my previous question, because he did not address those who change contracts? Can he confirm that most people are entitled to statutory sick pay of £81.60? Under AWB grade 1, the figure is £153.30. Under grade 2, it is £274.86. If we abolish the AWB and people go on to new contracts on those terms—I can pull out other examples—they will have substantially diminished terms and conditions. That is the reality that the Minister is painting for us.

[Mr Paice]

The hon. Gentleman does not seem to grasp that, if someone decides to change their job in the future, they will obviously want to take into account what terms and conditions the alternative is offering them. I will not dispute his figures, because they are the ones laid down at the moment, but anyone changing jobs will want to consider the options available to them.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The Minister has just referred to agricultural wages being gold-plated. What does he consider to be gold-plated about the wages paid to agricultural workers?

[Mr Paice]

I was referring to the wages order, not the wages themselves. The Agricultural Wages Board structure is gold-plated. As other hon. Members have mentioned, the reality is that a lot of agricultural wages order measures go way beyond what is laid down in statute for any other walk of life or sector of employment.

[Mr Anderson]

rose—

[Gavin Shuker]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Paice]

No; I will make some progress. I, too, heard the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael).

[Andrew George]

I very much respect the Minister’s judgment. He argues that the Agricultural Wages Board represents a bygone age, but does he accept that the Conservatives supported the establishment of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, which provides necessary additional regulation to protect agricultural workers. If he is predicting, as a result of the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board, that wages and terms and conditions will not go down, can he tell the House this evening that he will confidently predict that they will either at least remain the same or, indeed, be more enhanced than they might otherwise be? [Interruption.]

[Mr Paice]

For once, I agree with whoever is shouting from a sedentary position. Of course no Minister can guarantee such things and it would be crazy for anybody to do that, but it is our firm belief that the overall employment situation in agriculture and in the fresh food sector will be enhanced by the abolition of the wages board.

The amendment proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives to transfer the powers and duties of the Agricultural Wages Board to the Low Pay Commission would mean the continuation of a dual regime, with consequent duplication of effort for employers. A transfer of the wages board functions to the Low Pay Commission would mean that there was still a separate employment regime for agricultural workers. There would be no removal of the regulatory burden on businesses and we would not achieve the simplification of legislation that we believe is necessary.

Moreover, if the Low Pay Commission were to be given powers to set an agricultural minimum wage rate, it would be difficult to argue why the commission should not extend those powers to set rates in other sectors—in other words, to return to the position before 1993. As it is, the Low Pay Commission does not have any statutory powers to set a minimum wage in any sector. It is an advisory body which makes recommendations to Government. The establishment of another advisory body to advise the Low Pay Commission, which the new clause would create, would introduce more bureaucracy, which is exactly what we are trying to avoid.

If the Agricultural Wages Board and agricultural minimum wage regime were abolished, the Low Pay Commission would be asked to consider evidence in the agricultural sector, as it does in other sectors. That evidence would be taken into account when the commission made its recommendations to Government on the rates for the national minimum wage. The national minimum wage rate would thus reflect the situation for agricultural workers. I have emphasised the point about retention of existing contractual rights.

The current evidence shows that for permanent workers aged over 21, well over half were paid well above the hourly minimum wage for the relevant grades in both 2009 and 2010. As in all other industries, agricultural workers with the right qualifications and aptitudes would continue to be able to command a premium. Lower skilled workers who were paid at or around the grade 1 agricultural minimum wage rate would be protected by the national minimum wage requirements. As has been mentioned, the lowest agricultural wage rate is just 2p per hour above the national minimum wage.

The Government would encourage industry representatives to work together to provide benchmarks for agricultural wage rates. As Members know, a non-statutory approach to wage setting works in many other industries, such as the construction sector, and although there are differences between the sectors, there is no reason why a similar approach should not work in agriculture.

I have discussed the matter with the National Farmers Union and urged it to introduce advisory levels of pay annually, in conjunction with the revisions to the minimum wage and annual levels of premium. The current premiums paid for grades above grade 1 are certain percentages above the basic grade. There is no reason why any employer who wants to employ somebody who they classify as a craftsman, a foreman or whatever grade they wish, cannot continue to use the minimum wage as the base for adding whatever premium they consider appropriate. The annual uprating of the minimum wage would be the opportunity for annual changes to agricultural wages.

In Committee and again tonight, there was considerable debate about the position of the Agricultural Wages Board in Wales. I accept that the Welsh Government take a different view. We are continuing to engage with them on the arrangements that should apply to agricultural workers in Wales.

Finally, the future of the board will be subject to public consultation, as required by the provisions of the Bill. We hope to consult before the end of the year. That will ensure that the consultation is widely advertised to meet the requirements of the Bill. Equally important and relevant to points that have been made tonight, an impact assessment and equality impact assessment will be published as part of the consultation.

That brings me to the issue of £9 million being taken out of the economy, which the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) said—well, it was broadcast this morning, but I suspect that, like me, she did not actually say it this morning—was per year. The figure of £9 million was one of a number of possible scenarios, but I will not take it back. It did originate from DEFRA, but it was not an official impact assessment. I do not dispute its origin, but the figure was £9 million over 10 years—less than £1 million a year.

[Mr Anderson]

Is the Minister telling the House that the measure will cost workers £9 million, when the AWB cost only £270,000, to quote the figures read out at the other end of the Chamber?

[Mr Paice]

The hon. Gentleman is mixing his figures. Nobody is disputing £270,000-odd as the annual cost of running the board. That is not the reason for abolishing it. The purpose of abolition, as we have tried to say, is to release the industry and free it up to increase employment opportunities.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

I have seen a DEFRA impact assessment, which says that the cumulative impact of holiday pay and reductions in sick pay is £90 million over 10 years, which is where the £9 million a year net present value comes from. I am happy to send the Minister that document if he has not seen it yet.

[Mr Paice]

I am happy to debate that matter with the hon. Lady outside. [Interruption.] I do not have the document to hand and I am not in a position to dispute the point. I certainly do not wish to be responsible for misleading the House.

On the second part of this group of amendments about the loss of an independent voice for rural communities, the Government have clearly stated that they are firmly of the view that democratically accountable Ministers should take responsibility for policy functions. A single centre of rural expertise, the rural communities policy unit operating within DEFRA, has already been able to engage more effectively since it was started earlier this year. It is already established.

In response to two points made by my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives, I should say that the commission has not been legally disbanded. That is part of the proposal in the Bill. The rural advocate’s post to which he referred is not a statutory post. It did not require any legislative change.

The work programme of the rural communities policy unit will shortly be published on the DEFRA website and the unit will be using a range of methods to provide public updates about progress and impact. I emphasise that we believe it is DEFRA Ministers who are primarily responsible for ensuring that rural issues are championed within the whole of Government. There are many rural commentators and independent organisations who already advocate strongly, work to us and see us regularly, and all of us are Ministers with strong rural backgrounds. It is our job to be accountable to Parliament for the way that we fulfil our role as rural champions. We will publish various documents and policy proposals over the coming weeks and months to demonstrate clearly that we understand the real needs of rural communities.

I am pleased to say that the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee has indicated that it will wish to scrutinise the work of the rural communities policy unit. The Government welcome that as further evidence of the importance that many in this House and in the other place attach to the interests of rural communities.

[Mary Creagh]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. I want to apologise for misleading the House earlier. The total loss to agricultural workers is in fact £93 million over 10 years.

18:30

[Mr Paice]

The House will have heard the hon. Lady’s apology.

If new clauses 8 and 9 were agreed to, we would create two new statutory bodies, an office of rural affairs and a rural advocate, both of which would be responsible for exercising the advocacy, advice and watchdog functions currently undertaken by the CRC. Instead of moving towards a single source of rural expertise, we would be funding two new organisations to gather evidence of rural impacts and to seek to bring about changes in policy, which would be a muddled arrangement, and, if anything, replicate and extend the duplication of functions that we seek to address.

We have had a long debate. I am conscious that other Members want to move on to other issues. There are other things that I could say about rural communities, but suffice it to say that we have a Government and a Department that passionately care about rural communities, and in that light I ask my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives to withdraw the new clause.

[Andrew George]

I am conscious that we have still to debate the Youth Justice Board and S4C, so I will not detain the House unnecessarily. However, I should like to respond to the Minister’s comments on the new clauses and his comments on the Commission for Rural Communities. New clauses 8 and 9 were mutually exclusive, so they would not both have to be agreed to. I appreciate that they may not be sufficiently technically adequate to achieve my objective, but the Minister must accept the need for some independent, out-of-Government advocate, and I hope that some overarching brief to maintain the rural perspective is a debate that we can still have, as the Minister acknowledges that the issue requires affirmative resolution following this enabling legislation.

I will not respond to all the Minister’s remarks on new clause 7, which dominated the debate, but he predicted that it would not drive down wages and conditions, and I respect his judgment. That is obviously a brave prediction, but when I asked whether he could predict that it would at least protect and result in the exceptional enhancement of agricultural workers’ wages and conditions, he could not provide that reassurance. I am pleased that in the past Conservatives supported the very necessary legislation to establish the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. The Minister said that this reflected a bygone age, but the bygone age is one before gangs and gangworkers were brought in and exploited in the manner in which they have been. That issue has been addressed, but agricultural workers are still very much present. After the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board, should that proceed, it is predicted that we still need to attract another 60,000 agricultural workers over the next 10 years, which will be a challenge indeed.

I accept that new clause 7 is technically deficient, but I still believe that the Government should reflect on the proposal to bring responsibility for the enforcement of the regulations under another body such as the Low Pay Commission. Given that we are not making the decision today to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board, we have had a good debate and there are other matters for consideration, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.



New Clause 11

Youth Justice Board powers and responsibilities in relation to Wales

‘A joint committee shall be established to oversee the exercise of powers and responsibilities relating to youth justice jointly between the Youth Justice Board and Ministers of the National Assembly for Wales.’.—(Alun Michael.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Alun Michael]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 12—Youth Justice in Wales—

‘A joint committee shall be established to oversee the exercise of powers and responsibilities relating to youth justice jointly between the Secretary of State, or any body to which the duties of the Youth Justice Board have been transferred under an order made under section 1, and Ministers of the National Assembly for Wales.’.

Amendment 33, page 22, line 17, schedule 1, leave out

‘Youth Justice Board for England and Wales.’.

[Alun Michael]

I am very pleased to be able to defend the Youth Justice Board, which was established by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, for which I had responsibility as deputy Home Secretary. The Act is widely respected as a practical and effective piece of legislation, which also established the youth offending teams, the local crime and disorder reduction partnerships and antisocial behaviour orders, changes that have all been effective in cutting crime and reducing reoffending.

The success of the youth offending teams is due in large part to the insight, independence, creativity, leadership and clear focus on cutting youth crime that the Youth Justice Board has provided, and which a Government Department cannot provide. The facts of that success are clear. Around 90,000 young people under 18 were brought into the youth justice system for the first time in 2000, and there were about 50,000 first-time entrants in 2010, a reduction of 45%. Reoffending by young people was reduced by 27% between 2000 and 2009, the latest year for which figures are available. The number of young people under 18 held in custody is down by more than 25%. In August 2000, 2,968 young people under 18 were in custody, and in August 2011, 2,106 were in custody. The Audit Commission has confirmed that the system works well.

In 2010, the incoming Justice Ministers, including the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), pledged to use the justice reinvestment report of the Justice Committee as their textbook for their time in office, but to do away with the Youth Justice Board signals that they have abandoned that promise. A wide range of organisations is appalled by the proposal to do away with the Youth Justice Board, but I will mention just two.

The Association of Chief Police Officers said:

“The recent disorder in London and indeed other areas of the country have shown that crime committed by young people should be carefully and seriously considered. The performance of the youth justice system under the leadership of the YJB has been considerable.”

It went on to warn that we would lose some of the successful joint initiatives that have been developed between the police and the Youth Justice Board. Finally, it makes the damning comment:

“There has been no evidence put forward to date that demonstrates the proposed transfer of the YJB’s functions to the Ministry of Justice will deliver better results.”

The fact is that it will not.

The Magistrates Association, speaking of the Youth Justice Board, said that

“the Magistrates Association from first-hand experience would say that it has a vital and continuing role to play in the justice system. Its very raison d’etre for magistrates is that it provides continuity of policy, strategy and implementation in a way that a general approach through the wider Ministry of Justice cannot deliver.”

It warns that

“the coherence that is now one of the successes of the system will be compromised and seriously damaged.”

By implication, the Government know that the Youth Justice Board has been a success, because they are not abolishing its role, but nationalising it. I did not know that Ministers were quite so left-wing or old-fashioned in their approach. I can only assume that No. 10 is demanding a tick in the box for abolishing a quango and does not care about the damage that will be done.

Over time, if the Youth Justice Board is taken into the Department for Justice, the Department will lose the expertise that has been drawn together within the board. If those who work in the board wanted to be civil servants, they would have applied to join the civil service. I hope that that attrition will be slow, but it will be inevitable. Government Departments are not good at running things, and the strength of the board is its focus on cutting youth crime, the independence and respect that it has earned and its capacity for working in partnership with others, which is why new clauses 11 and 12 are important. That point about partnership is demonstrated by the two organisations that I quoted and many others.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

The right hon. Gentleman has a very good record both in the work that he did as a Minister and in the work that he did on the Justice Committee on this matter, but I think he would acknowledge that it would be wrong to ascribe to the board, for all its good work, the achievements that are really those of youth offending teams at local level, where partnership really matters.

[Alun Michael]

The point I made, and the point that is made by the Magistrates Association and by chief police officers, is that success at the local level depended on the coherence, independence and energy of the Youth Justice Board in supporting their work. All of them value the Youth Justice Board and all of them say that a Department cannot do it. From my experience in government I am convinced that a Department, working internally, cannot effectively replace the work of the Youth Justice Board.

New clauses 11 and 12 would protect the partnership approach between the Youth Justice Board and the Welsh Assembly. I pay particular tribute to the Minister responsible in the Welsh Assembly Government, Carl Sargeant, for his engagement in this issue and to the First Minister, Carwyn Jones, for his commitment to the cause of cutting crime, particularly youth crime. Criminal justice is not a devolved matter, but the devolution of children’s services, education and health policy means that a significant part of the delivery of local youth justice services is subject to Welsh Government oversight, and the Youth Justice Board has specific objectives in Wales to take account of this.

The Youth Justice Board has worked closely with the Welsh Government and other delivery partners in Wales to improve the youth justice system, and that partnership working must not be underestimated. It works. The inclusion of a board member for Wales on the Youth Justice Board has been critical in navigating the different arrangements that exist in Wales for youth justice. The board member has lead responsibility for Wales and enabled the Youth Justice Board to work effectively in Wales and develop key stakeholder relationships.

I pay particular tribute to my good friend Professor Howard Williamson—we worked together when I was a youth worker—for the massive contribution he made to enabling that partnership to work. I could illustrate that in detail at some length and wish I had time to do so, because there is a tremendous amount of important material that I would like to expand on, particularly how ensuring that placements in England have worked for young people who are returned to Welsh communities. Essentially, it is the partnership that has worked, and it is the partnership that would be put at risk unless Ministers accept, preferably, that the Youth Justice Board should be allowed to continue and, in particular, that there is a need for partnership arrangements to continue.

New clause 11 would put the current committee arrangements between the Youth Justice Board and the Welsh Assembly Government on a statutory basis, which implies the board’s continuation. The alternative, as set out in new clause 12, would be to create a partnership, through a joint committee, between the Ministry of Justice, or any other organisation to which the Government transferred the powers, and the Welsh Assembly Government.

When the Home Affairs Committee recently took evidence in Wales, we heard from an individual who was working in the Assembly as a result of a joint appointment by the Assembly and the Youth Justice Board. It is that joint working that has built up the confidence that is needed. The Youth Justice Board has developed a model that works, and it should be the model for other Government agencies and Departments, many of which still do not understand how to get the best out of the complementary roles they share with the Welsh Assembly.

I urge Ministers to accept the new clause and not include the Youth Justice Board within the ambit of the Bill. I urge them, in any event, to accept that the partnership arrangements between the Government, or their agency, and Wales should be put on a statutory basis and to understand and support the importance of partnership, because it has been effective in reducing youth crime and we need it to continue.

[Sir Alan Beith]

The Justice Committee has taken a close interest in this matter, as it did when the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) was a member; he contributed extensively to our work on it. We have been considering it lately but are yet to take a formal view on whether the Youth Justice Board needs to survive. However, we have explored thoroughly what needs to happen if it is abolished. The Youth Justice Board has done a lot of good work, not least in leading a reduction in the use of custody for young people. That led to the closure of a youth offenders institution in my constituency, but the places have of course been taken as a result of the prison system’s other requirements.

I want to make three points about what is essential in this field, whether the Youth Justice Board survives or not. First, the crucial element is that youth offending teams work at local level. The Youth Justice Board has given the initial leadership to develop youth offending teams, following initiatives taken by the right hon. Gentleman when he was a Minister. The ability of all relevant agencies at local level, including the police, social services, local authorities and housing authorities, to work together is crucial.

18:44

Secondly, we must retain a degree of difference from how the National Offender Management Service has operated. The Committee has been pretty critical of NOMS—its life must surely be limited as a result of how the Ministry of Justice is organising things, but that is a matter for another day. What is quite clear is that the youth justice functions must not be subsumed into NOMS, which has not succeeded in carrying out any of the key objectives it was set on bringing together decisions about custody, and its alternatives, and the management of offenders when they leave custody. The Committee received assurances from the Minister that there will be an entirely separate division of roles and that no youth justice functions will be subsumed into NOMS.

Thirdly, the Youth Justice Board, as an autonomous, arm’s length body, is in a position to share its views and advice publicly, and that is a crucial feature that we must not lose. It is of course accountable to Ministers as its chair, as she pointed out herself, is appointed by Ministers. If the board was not pursuing the Minister’s objectives, its membership might not necessarily last very long, but its ability to advise independently is important. We pressed the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt) on that matter, and he showed an unusual and commendable willingness to recognise the value of making the advice that would be given by the advisory board that will be created publicly available and bringing it before Parliament, and the Committee could, for example, question the advisory board on its work. What we must not have are assertions that that advice is for Ministers and, therefore, must be kept in confidence. That would not be an acceptable situation. I do not think that that is what the Minister envisages, but he must realise that that is what will happen if we do not build in such protections from the start. The civil service machine closes in around advice to Ministers, and we cannot have that.

There are perfectly good arguments for saying that we should continue to have an arm’s length Youth Justice Board. It is possible to carry out the functions of the Youth Justice Board effectively under different arrangements, but there are certain essentials, three of which I have sought to identify: the local role of youth offending teams; the importance of not allowing the role to be sucked into NOMS; and the importance of knowing what kind of independent advice Ministers are given. Those are the things the Justice Committee cares about, and I want to be satisfied that the Minister cares about them too.

[Simon Hughes]

I want to say a few words, following what my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) has said and on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), who might join us later but is unable to be here at the moment. He has engaged with the Minister, as I have, and I thank the Minister for his engagement with colleagues on this matter, which is much appreciated.

I have always thought that the decision to create the Youth Justice Board was a good one, a view vindicated by its reputation and record. It has done a good job. The right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) made the point, which I agree with, that it has clearly helped bring down offending and reoffending rates among young people and produced more successful ways of dealing with youth offending, both strategically at a national level and at the level of youth offending teams, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed referred. I have a few questions for the Minister. My honest position is that I am nervous about the proposal, because I do not want to lose a good thing, but I know that the Minister sees that it has many good elements and I hope that he can reassure us.

We know from a parliamentary answer that there have been 70 responses to the consultation, but we have not heard what the balance is between those who support the Government and those who oppose them. We do know that many of the key voices—the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth quoted some of them—to whom we should listen think that the Youth Justice Board is a good thing and ought to stay. If chief police officers and the Magistrates Association want the arrangement to stay, we should be very careful before proceeding down a road that changes it. Will the Minister share with us slightly more explicitly the answers to the consultation?

I would be grateful if the Minister responded to my right hon. Friend and put it on the record. It is imperative that the ability to plan, manage, organise, give advice on policy and take policy decisions on youth justice is retained separately—obviously linked with other parts of the criminal justice system, but separately. The way to deal with youngsters coming into the criminal justice system is entirely different from dealing with adults or old lags who reoffend.

Importantly, I would like the Minister to put on the record the fact that there will be absolute freedom for the successor body, if there is one as an advisory council, to speak when it wants to speak, to be able to say what it wants to say, and therefore to contribute to the public debate, as well as to the private debate. Will the Minister make it clear that if functions are to be transferred—I understand the Government’s argument about reducing the number of quangos—a Minister, for the moment presumably the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), would be accountable to Parliament specifically for youth justice issues, and would see that as a separate component within the realm of the prison service and justice issues as a whole.

Some of us remain to be persuaded that this is the right way to go, because of the good record of the Youth Justice Board, and some of us are troubled that we might lose those good things if it were to go, but we are open to persuasion if clear assurances are given and the questions asked by my right hon. Friend, the right hon. Gentleman and me are answered adequately.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

The Youth Justice Board has played a central role in reducing the number of criminal offences committed by young people since its creation, but the Government’s proposal to transfer its functions to the Ministry of Justice threatens to roll back the progress of the past decade. As we have heard, the YJB has pioneered the creation of a distinct youth justice system, separate from the adult estate, recognising that the factors that lead young people to commit crime are complex, and can be addressed only through specifically targeted crime prevention and rehabilitation strategies.

As we have heard, during the last Parliament the Youth Justice Broad oversaw a 43% reduction in the number of first-time youth offenders by working with youth offending teams to focus on the causes of crime. We have also heard, but it is worth repeating, that there has been a 34% reduction in offences committed by young people and a 15% reduction in the number of young people in custody, down from 2,830 per annum to 2,418 per annum by May 2010.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I am sorry that time will not allow me to make a speech about this matter. I had the privilege of holding the youth justice portfolio for the Opposition for the past year before handing it over to my hon. Friend. That allowed me to see, while going round the country, the best practice in youth offending institutions, foundation training companies and youth offending teams. Without exception, they all praised the Youth Justice Board as the organisation that gives coherence, example and structure to what is happening. They cannot understand why the Government are abolishing a body that is proving to be such a success.

[Robert Flello]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes his point extremely well. If we had had a proper amount of time for this debate, I am sure that he would have made his contribution.

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend mentioned the reduction in the number of young people in custody. I am sure that he is aware that that reduction has led to savings of some £38 million a year. Is he not amazed that a Government who are seeking to save money in public expenditure are prepared to take such a risk?

[Robert Flello]

I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend. The whole case for cost savings does not stack up in the slightest.

The Secretary of State has argued that bringing the Youth Justice Board into the Ministry of Justice will improve ministerial accountability, and thereby secure better outcomes for young people. That is nonsense, and was dreamed up to try to justify the ill-considered, back-of-a-fag-packet dumping of a mishmash of organisations associated with the Ministry of Justice into what amounts to a public relations Bill.

Let us consider ministerial accountability. Board members of the YJB are already appointed by the Secretary of State, and may be removed by the Secretary of State. The board provides a body of experts, who are accountable to Ministers, so where the lack of accountability comes in, heaven only knows. It also provides uniformity, bringing together local authorities, the prison service and the police.

The Youth Justice Board has a host of dedicated, experienced and specialist board members, but with the best will in the world, they will just be replaced by civil servants with limited knowledge of and less expertise in youth justice. Internalising the YJB in the Ministry of Justice will not replace the expertise. Indeed, the Ministry of Justice and the National Offender Management Service tend to follow the Youth Justice Board, not the other way around. Moreover, the YJB is widely respected for its expertise and independence, which have allowed it to build up important relationships with senior people across the youth justice sector. That will be lost if the Justice Secretary goes ahead with transferring the Youth Justice Board’s functions to the Ministry of Justice. Responsibility for placing children in the secure estate will be moved to the Ministry of Justice, but what will happen to youth justice research, performance monitoring, consultation with YOTs and the dissemination of good practice backed by solid evidence? At best, they will be reduced; at worst, they will be completely negated.

If nothing that I or anybody else have said so far convinces the Minster, surely the riots during the summer highlighted why an independent body for youth justice is required. When young people, many of them in their early teens, were attending courts around the clock, it was the Youth Justice Board that worked with them in their journey through the criminal justice system. The Government’s policy was, rightly, to make sure that those guilty of offences were brought to justice, but the same Department cannot be expected to support those young people while pursuing the Government’s justice policy. If the Minister was not aware of the contribution made by the Youth Justice Board, that is further evidence of how seamlessly the YJB works with the Ministry, because it was one of the organisations briefing him.

The Government argue that abolishing the Youth Justice Board will improve accountability and efficiency, but elsewhere the Government are squandering money on, for example, elected police commissioners and creating the biggest ever quango for the NHS. Ever since the Minister had a whip-round in his Department to rustle up some bodies to satisfy his Cabinet Office colleagues, the Justice Secretary has continued to make the case that the Youth Justice Board must be abolished to save costs.

The Government estimate savings of £6 million by 2014-15 but, as we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), they have not undertaken a cost-benefit analysis of the YJB or the social impact of its abolition. They have not calculated the cost arising from the possibility of an increase in reoffending among young people. Perhaps the Minister will comment on the fact that in the past year the Ministry of Justice spent almost £8 million on furnishings. That is incredible. It is worth noting that the Youth Justice Board has cut its administration costs by 26% since 2008-09. It clearly understands how to be properly cost effective.

Cutting the Youth Justice Board will not save much money. Instead of saving the big sums that the Government have dreamt up, it is more likely that the real savings, if any, will amount to no more than a few hundred thousand pounds over a number of years. Instead of saving money, it threatens to undermine a youth justice system that is working, increasing costs over the longer term through higher criminality and the attendant costs to individuals and the state.

The Justice Secretary’s proposal to abolish the Youth Justice Board is opposed by a range of charities and organisations, including the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, the Prison Reform Trust and the Children’s Society. The Association of Chief Police Officers and the Magistrates Association have written to the Minister urging him to retain the Youth Justice Board as an arm’s length body.

During the riots, the police gold command and the National Offender Management Service commended the Youth Justice Board on its fantastic performance.

The organisation Catch 22 said:

“any reorganisation of the functions of the Youth Justice Board will result in a decreased focus on young people in the criminal justice system”.

In its report of February 2010, the Public Accounts Committee noted:

“In recent years, the Youth Justice Board has been effective in leading reform within the youth justice system and diverting resources to the offenders most at risk of committing future crimes. Since 2000, the number of young people entering the youth justice system, the number held in custody and the amount of reoffending committed by young people, have all fallen. Youth custody, which is expensive relative to other ways of dealing with young offenders, has fallen during a period when the number of adults in custody has continued to rise. This is a particularly noteworthy achievement.”

That says it all.

19:00

If the Secretary of State and the Minister do not think again and remove the Youth Justice Board from the Bill, they will be turning back the clock in handing the responsibility for youth justice back to a Government Department even though, as we saw just over a decade ago, that was a wholly unsuitable way to oversee youth justice. I urge the Justice Secretary not to waste the progress made over the past decade in reducing the number of young offenders. I urge him to reconsider, in association with his Cabinet colleagues, and to remove the Youth Justice Board from the Bill by agreeing to amendment 33.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

It is a pleasure to reply to this debate, not least to the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael), given his role in establishing the Youth Justice Board in the first place, and to the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), who is Chairman of the Justice Committee.

The right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth made what he thought was a gibe in saying that I was not abolishing the Youth Justice Board but nationalising it and that he was surprised by how left-wing I was. He thereby gave the game away on the central weakness of the arguments made against the Government’s intentions.

To some degree, there is a significant element of truth in the right hon. Gentleman’s words, because this issue was first addressed in the context of looking at all arm’s length bodies given that ministerial accountability had been significantly diluted by the proliferation of such bodies. In that sense, it is appropriate that this area is brought back within the ambit of direct ministerial accountability. The longer I have held these responsibilities as the Minister responsible for youth justice, the more confident I have become that that is the proper thing to do. We are not changing the delivery of youth justice on the ground and all the achievements of the Youth Justice Board but protecting them. In my prepared remarks, I will elaborate on exactly how we are going to do that. I hope that I will be able to bring comfort to the right hon. Gentleman and to the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), who sought the same assurance.

The right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth concluded his remarks by talking about the importance of partnership. The youth offending teams are indeed an exemplar of partnership working at the local level, and that will remain unaffected by the changes that the Government intend. The Chairman of the Select Committee commented on the importance of the ability of local agencies to work together, and none of that will be changed by the Government’s taking the Youth Justice Board within the ambit of the Ministry of Justice. I can give him the assurance that he sought about NOMS, which will sit within the central Youth Justice Division as a separate body on youth justice. I will attend to the detail of that shortly. I was properly subjected to questioning about the role of advice that will come to Ministers. I will have more to say about that in the substantive part of my remarks, and I hope that that will give comfort to my right hon. Friends on the Liberal Benches.

The new clause would remove the Youth Justice Board from the list of organisations that may be abolished by order made under clause 1. The two amendments in relation to Wales would set up a joint committee to oversee the exercise of the powers and responsibilities of the Youth Justice Board. That joint committee would be a committee of the Youth Justice Board, if it is not abolished, and Welsh Ministers. If the Youth Justice Board is abolished, the joint committee will be a committee of the Welsh Ministers and the body to which the Youth Justice Board’s powers have been transferred. Under our proposals, this would effectively mean a joint committee of Welsh Ministers and the Ministry of Justice.

The amendment to remove the Youth Justice Board from the Bill is the same as the amendment originally moved by noble Lords. Subsequently, the Government successfully reintroduced the Youth Justice Board to schedule 1 during the Committee stage in this House, having further addressed the most substantive issues raised in the other place and by other interested parties. The Government remain convinced that the national governance of youth justice, but not its front-line delivery, should be done differently. This reform is consistent with our principles of localism, our drive to reduce the number and cost of public bodies, and our commitment to clarifying lines of accountability.

The Youth Justice Board forms one part of the youth justice system, the aim of which is to prevent offending and reoffending by children and young people under the age of 18. I want to emphasise again that the delivery of youth justice by youth offending teams on the front line will not be affected and that a distinct, secure estate for young people will remain in place. I am happy to pay tribute to the achievements of the Youth Justice Board, which was established at arm’s length from Government to provide strategic leadership and coherence to the then youth justice system. This was, in part, a response to the 1996 Audit Commission report, “Misspent youth”, which found that there was no integrated youth justice system and that what did exist at the time was inefficient and expensive. The Youth Justice Board’s arm’s length status gave it freedom to establish the current system.

A decade on, we are in a completely different place, nationally and locally. A coherent and effective youth justice system has now been established, and it is the Government’s view that direct accountability should now be returned to Ministers. I am also clear that Ministers should determine the standards required in youth custody. Each year, £300 million of taxpayers’ money is spent on the provision of secure accommodation for under-18s. It cannot be right that unelected individuals in a non-departmental public body are responsible for such a sum.

That is why the Justice Secretary, in his written ministerial statement of 23 June, set out his intention to carry out the core functions of the Youth Justice Board within a newly created Youth Justice Division. The division will continue the Government’s focus on meeting the needs of children and young people in the justice system, overseeing the delivery of youth justice services, identifying and disseminating effective practice, and commissioning a distinct secure estate and placing young people within it. The division will form a dedicated part of the Ministry of Justice separate from the National Offender Management Service. It will ensure that the commissioning of the youth justice secure estate and the placement of young people within the estate is driven by people whose responsibility is for and whose focus is on the needs of young people. Its structure will also ensure that youth justice work in the community remains closely linked to work with young offenders in custody. That is at the heart of our ambitions for a rehabilitation revolution.

The new Youth Justice Division will be a powerful impetus behind future improvement, with the policy leverage within Government to effect change. At a time when Departments have a wide range of priorities and scarce resources, it is Ministers, led by the Justice Secretary and me, as the Minister with responsibility for youth justice, who are best placed to lead the youth justice system.

[Simon Hughes]

I am encouraged by what the Minister has said so far. Will the head of the new division proposed by the Government have direct access and direct accountability to the Secretary of State and the appropriate Minister rather than always being subject to having everything cleared by the permanent secretary in the Department?

[Mr Blunt]

The Justice Secretary has announced that John Drew, the chief executive of the Youth Justice Board, has agreed to lead the transition to the new Youth Justice Division structure and to continue to lead it beyond that. That will ensure continuity in senior management. As regards his reporting responsibilities, he will report to the director general of justice policy within the Department, but, as now, I will continue to have bilateral meetings with officials of his seniority in any event. Of course, he will occupy a special place by virtue of leading the Youth Justice Division within the Department. There are further safeguards that I will come to, and I hope they will give my right hon. Friend some comfort.

We appreciate that the Youth Justice Board successfully brought together staff from a number of backgrounds, including those with direct experience of youth justice, social and health services, and police and probation officers. I and the Department will not abandon that expertise and experience, nor will we fail to replenish it. That is wholly consistent with the Government’s policy that the civil service remains open to recruits of high quality from outside its immediate ranks.

[Robert Flello]

I want to take the Minister back to the answer he gave the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes). Will he tell the House to whom the Youth Justice Board reports at the moment? Is it not the Minister?

[Mr Blunt]

I have instituted arrangements within the Department during this transitional period for the chief executive of the Youth Justice Board to come and see me regularly on a bilateral basis. That did not exist when I became the Minister with responsibility for youth justice, when accountability was through the chairman of the board. I think that we now have a much more satisfactory working practice—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) says that he does not really believe that. Well, I do believe it on the evidence of what has happened over the past 18 months. I will elaborate on that later in my remarks and tell him and the House why I have come to that conclusion.

The Justice Secretary recognises the need to strengthen the Ministry’s focus on youth justice by establishing a ministerial advisory group on youth justice. The group will provide timely advice to Ministers about delivery and the front line. That advice will inform the development of youth justice policy in the longer term. It will include advice on effective practice and what will work best to achieve the objectives that Ministers have set. The ministerial advisory group will be my key forum for providing external, expert oversight of operational youth justice practice to the Ministry of Justice. I will chair it as the Minister responsible for youth justice. It must consist of members who have expertise in the effective operation of the youth justice system; otherwise it will not be able to do the job that I need it to do and it will not have credibility with the informed youth justice lobby, which properly follows these matters with due care.

Finally, Dame Sue Street, a non-executive director at the Ministry of Justice, will take an active interest in youth justice within the Ministry. She has experience and knowledge of youth justice. Indeed, she undertook a review of the Youth Justice Board, but her remit did not include asking whether the Youth Justice Board should continue. Of course, as a non-executive member of the Ministry of Justice board, she will have a direct route to the permanent secretary and the Secretary of State. She is happy to take on those responsibilities as part of her role at the Department.

[Sir Alan Beith]

I want my hon. Friend to make it quite clear that he is not stepping back from his welcome indication that it will be possible for the advice that is given to Ministers by the advisory group to be probed by Parliament, and that its members will be able to come before the Justice Committee and tell us what their advice was.

[Mr Blunt]

I am happy to give my right hon. Friend that assurance. It would be quixotic to say now that it is advice to Ministers and that it will not be discoverable. The effectiveness of the group will depend first on the credibility of its members’ experience and expertise and, secondly, on whether its members are prepared to speak freely and openly on these issues. I anticipate that individuals, whether or not they are members of my advisory group, will be available to his Select Committee so that it, like me, is informed of their views.

[Paul Goggins]

I believe that the Minister is utterly sincere in his commitment to the rehabilitation revolution and to his responsibilities. However, what he describes sounds to me far more complicated than the coherent system that has developed over the past decade. If the number of children and young people going into custody began to increase, what would he say to the official in his Department that is different from what he would say to the chair of the Youth Justice Board?

19:15

[Mr Blunt]

As the right hon. Gentleman has identified, we are entering a period when that may well happen. I will come to that point in the course of my remarks.

This reform will not impact on the delivery of front-line youth justice by youth offending teams. We need to be clear that the front-line delivery of youth justice is completely separate from the national leadership and oversight provided by the Youth Justice Board. Under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, the delivery of youth justice in the community is led by local authority youth offending teams. They are accountable to the chief executive of the local authority and are well embedded in local structures. Young people will continue to be placed separately from adult offenders in a dedicated secure estate that is driven by their needs.

It has been argued that the recent riots prove that the Youth Justice Board is now needed more than ever. I am afraid that I cannot agree. In my recent appearance before the Justice Committee, I set out the limitations of the current governance arrangements in the operational scenario that we faced in dealing with the disturbances. The operational integration of measures to address under-18s was delayed by 24 hours or so in the Government’s initial collective response to the riots precisely because of the more remote relationship that I have with the Youth Justice Board compared with the National Offender Management Service. That would not have occurred if youth justice had been administered as we propose.

I am conscious that part of my role is to ensure that other Departments and local authorities play their part in the delivery of youth justice. That is most acute in terms of resources, because the Department for Education and the Home Office currently provide funding to the Youth Justice Board. I am concerned that as the responsible Minister, I am not engaged as early as I should be in ensuring that there is proper financing for youth offending teams on the ground. It should be my responsibility to ensure that budget settlements from other Departments and local authorities are cleared and that youth justice is getting a proper shout from inside the Government. That can be better done by a Minister than by an arm’s length body.

[Simon Hughes]

I am encouraged by the Minister’s commitment and by his clear belief that his model will work. May I ask him to give one more undertaking? Will he or his Department come back to the House in about a year if the change goes ahead to ensure that the advisory group, which I now understand he proposes to chair, is sufficiently independent, that Parliament and people outside can be sure that it will speak out when it needs to and that its voice can, if necessary, be different from the conclusions that Ministers reach having heard its advice?

[Mr Blunt]

I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s advice. It is a fair point and one that was laboured, quite properly, by the Justice Committee. The advisory group would not achieve the purpose that I have for it if it was not sufficiently independent. Rather than give my right hon. Friend the guarantee that I will come back here, I point out that my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed and his Select Committee are ideally placed to ensure, in the detailed scrutiny that they will properly give these matters, that the advisers have credibility in the youth justice field and that a range of views is presented to me.

The group will serve no purpose if it consists of people who entirely agree with what the Ministry of Justice is doing. They will not be there to act as a cheer group for the execution of policy. This is an important area in which we need to be continually challenged so that we get it right. I expect the advisory group to challenge us continually to help us to get it right.

We will never be perfect, because we are operating in a financially very constrained time owing to the simply dreadful economic inheritance that we received. [Interruption.] Well, Opposition Members may get bored with this, but as the Minister responsible for youth justice, prisons and probation, I would much rather have inherited merely a flat budget. Sadly I have not, and we have to deal with that. We have to be innovative and clever about how we respond to those circumstances to deliver the rehabilitation of offenders in this much more challenging environment.

As the responsible Minister, I want to make it clear to all hon. Members that youth justice is critical to the Ministry of Justice and a visible part of the Department’s business plan. We already have three key youth justice indicators, which are the number of young people coming into the youth justice system, the number of young people reoffending and the number of young people being sentenced to custody. The Ministry, and I as the youth justice Minister, will continue to be held to account by the public and Parliament for our performance against those measures.

I should add that from my own day-to-day experience and information drawn from youth offending teams, I fully understand just how difficult it will be simply to hold performance at current levels in this economic environment and the associated social environment in the short to medium term, before our wider social justice agenda begins to make itself felt in the long term. To some extent, keeping the Youth Justice Board would provide me with a helpful sandbag from the direct parliamentary fire of ministerial accountability for performance measures. Difficult though it may be to improve on the current performance that we inherit from the YJB, those measures will be used to inform our youth pathfinder and payment-by-results initiatives. That work is vital to the Ministry of Justice.

There is no question that the focus on youth justice will be lost or that it will become a junior partner to the work of the National Offender Management Service. In addition, we have put in place mechanisms to ensure a proper policy focus on youth justice. Senior officials have established the cross-departmental youth crime and justice board, which supports the strategic agenda. Regular inter-ministerial meetings ensure ministerial representation from the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Education, the Home Office and the Department of Health, to support cross-Government work on the matter.

I turn briefly to the amendments on Wales tabled by the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth. The criminal justice system, of which the youth justice system is an element, is not a transferred matter. It is the Secretary of State for Justice who is ultimately responsible for youth justice in England and Wales, and the Ministry of Justice that is responsible for the secure estate and courts. The Government have no plans to change that. It would be unfair to imply to Welsh Ministers that they have a liability for outcomes when they do not have statutory responsibility for the administration of youth justice.

The proposal to establish a joint committee between the YJB or the Ministry of Justice and Ministers in the National Assembly for Wales is also likely to create further confusion throughout the youth justice system about who is ultimately accountable. Unless the wider statutory environment were to change, making that piecemeal statutory change would not be helpful. It would further complicate what is already a complex picture.

The Government recognise the differences between England and Wales in areas such as education, health and social care, which are essential to improving the life chances of children who have offended, and we will always take into account the views of Welsh colleagues. The need to reduce reoffending and offending among children and young people is shared. Current arrangements offer the advantages of scale that come with an England and Wales resource, as well as the opportunity to learn from each other and share effective practice while retaining the ability to tailor the delivery of youth justice to Wales. That is why we will ensure that there remains significant join-up between England and Wales in our youth justice priorities.

[Mrs Siân C. James (Swansea East) (Lab)]

I am amazed that none of the Whips has said a word so far. Is this a deliberate attempt to talk out the S4C amendment?

[Mr Blunt]

Youth justice is an extremely important issue and these points have to be put properly on the record. I am slightly surprised at the hon. Lady’s intervention, because she makes it at precisely the moment at which I am trying to deal with issues that I believe are of some importance to her, as a Welsh Member, as well as to the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth, who is sitting right behind her.

The Youth Justice Board currently has a team based in Wales, which works closely with the Welsh Assembly, and we will continue to have a Welsh-based team under our proposals to bring the functions of the Youth Justice Board into the Ministry of Justice.

The Government have listened and responded to the concerns of all interested parties. A full public consultation has just concluded, and we will carefully consider the responses before laying draft orders before Parliament. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark asked about the balance of the responses to the consultation. There were, I think, 2,800 responses to the public bodies consultation, of which 68 were about the Youth Justice Board. It will not surprise him to learn that the balance of the responses was not supportive of the Government’s proposal—that is not a remotely surprising pattern when it is proposed to change something. However, before we lay the draft orders, there will be an opportunity to see the detail of them.

The youth justice system needs clear and visible leadership from me, as the responsible Minister, supported by a governance structure that retains a dedicated focus on youth justice. That is what we will provide as part of our proposals to abolish the YJB. I believe that is the best way to help us reduce offending and reoffending by young people, and I ask the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth to withdraw the new clause.

[Alun Michael]

The Minister has been seduced by office into bad decisions, but in the best interests of securing a vote on the retention of the Youth Justice Board, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 1

Power to abolish

Amendment made: 5, page 1, line 13, at end insert—

‘() a co-operative society,

() a community benefit society,

() a charitable incorporated organisation, or’.—(Mr Blunt.)

Schedule 1

Power to abolish: bodies and offices

Amendment proposed: 32, page 21, line 11, leave out

‘Agricultural Wages Board for England and Wales’.—(Mr Gareth Thomas.)

The House proceeded to a Division.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I ask the Serjeant at Arms to investigate the delay in the No Lobby.

19:27

Division 373

Ayes: 219

---

Labour: 210
Plaid Cymru: 3
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 2
Liberal Democrat: 1
Conservative: 1
Alliance: 1
Green Party: 1
Independent: 1

Noes: 296

---

Conservative: 248
Liberal Democrat: 43
Democratic Unionist Party: 4

16:48

Proceedings interrupted (Programme Order, this day)

The Deputy Speaker put forthwith the Question necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded at that time. (Standing Order No. 83E).

Amendment proposed: 33, page 22, line 17, leave out

‘Youth Justice Board for England and Wales.’.—(Robert Flello.)

Question put, That the amendment be made.

19:46

Division 374

Ayes: 219

---

Labour: 212
Plaid Cymru: 3
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 2
Alliance: 1
Green Party: 1
Independent: 1

Noes: 301

---

Conservative: 254
Liberal Democrat: 42
Democratic Unionist Party: 4

[Mr Hurd]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. It would be helpful to inform that House that, having considered the matter further, the Government will not move amendments 47 and 48.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I thank the Minister for that notification.

[Charlie Elphicke]

(Dover) (Con): Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. May I say, on behalf of the people of Dover, how very welcome that is? Not everything in this House is political and partisan; some matters touch and concern our constituencies and affect us as constituency MPs.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. I call Andrew Percy to move amendment 2.

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

I beg to move amendment 2, page 24, in schedule 5, leave out lines 9 and 10.

In the past few days, many Members will have received e-mails from their constituents about the important issue of the chief coroner’s office. I want to begin by thanking colleagues from across the House for their kind expressions of support for the amendment, and on the broader question of the necessity of change in the coronial system. I tabled the amendment with the full support of the Royal British Legion, Inquest and the British Medical Association, and I have recently found out that Liberty also supports it, which might divide opinion on this side of the House. All those organisations want to see a chief coroner appointed as soon as possible, and my amendment would achieve exactly what the British Legion and others are asking for. Put simply, leaving out lines 9 and 10 would ensure that the chief coroner—a post agreed on a cross-party basis—is left out of the Bill.

20:00

Before I elaborate on why I consider this such an important issue, let me explain what I think the issue we are debating today is not about. It is not about costs, certainly not about the untested costs that have been put about by the Ministry of Justice. It is not about bureaucracy and it is certainly not about seeking to delay urgent reform to the coroner system, the need for which is agreed on all sides. The crucial issue in leaving the chief coroner out of the Bill is the independent leadership needed in the coroner system to drive long overdue reform. It is also about respect for the families of those who have had to go through the system.

In less than a month’s time, our nation will pause and reflect on the bravery of our armed forces. Getting to grips with the failings in the coronial system is an opportunity for us all to reflect and pause together as parliamentary representatives to support the bereaved families of our service personnel.

[David Wright]

I wholeheartedly support the hon. Gentleman’s amendment and congratulate him on tabling it. Does he agree that this is part of an evolving military covenant issue whereby we ensure that we fulfil our duty as parliamentarians to the people who serve our country in the most difficult circumstances at the front line and those who support them?

[Andrew Percy]

I do, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support. We all want to honour the military covenant; there is no doubt about that across the House. We might sometimes disagree about how best to achieve that, but I think sorting out our coronial system is key to it, and appointing a chief coroner, as agreed on a cross-party basis previously, certainly honours the covenant.

Some polling has been undertaken on this issue, so I can inform the House what the public appear to think about this important matter. Recent polling conducted by ComRes tells us that eight out of 10 people believe the way we treat bereaved armed forces families says a lot about our values as a nation. A further 85% say that families deserve as much support as we can possibly give through the system, while three quarters agree that Britain owes a great debt to the families of those who sacrifice their lives in the service of the country. Furthermore, more than three quarters say we must support the families of deceased armed forces personnel in order to honour the memory of those who have given their lives. That is something that I am sure is shared on all sides.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I am not quite sure what that means. Does my hon. Friend mean to say that independent coroners do not currently support the families or does he think that the imposition of a chief coroner will make it better for them? I am quite taken by the idea that we already have independent coroners who talk on behalf of the families and say some things we do not like. I am concerned that a chief coroner might put orders down that people have to obey. I like the independence of coroners.

[Andrew Percy]

I thank my hon. and gallant Friend for that intervention, as it demonstrates why the Government’s position does exactly the opposite to what he wants. By placing this in the hands of Ministers, which is what the Government propose, rather than in the hands of a chief coroner, we risk losing independence completely. As to going through the coronial system, sadly, some people have gone through it and have been treated appallingly. I shall provide some examples later. My hon. Friend’s intervention rather supports my arguments.

[Paul Goggins]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his amendment. He rightly emphasises its significance for military personnel and their families, but does he agree that it goes much wider than that? As to the need for a coronial system that is fully independent of the Government and their Departments, I refer him to the report of Dame Janet Smith on the Shipman victims. She came precisely to the same conclusion as him—that we need a coronial system that is fully independent.

[Andrew Percy]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman, who has pre-empted part of my speech, which the House will be pleased to know I no longer need to elaborate, so I can somewhat reduce my speaking time. That point was made previously and he is quite right to highlight it.

I want to talk about three key issues: independent leadership, training in oversight and the issue of appeals. Before I do, however, I want to deal with costs. As I said, the Ministry of Justice costings of £11 million for start-up and £6.6 million recurrent for the chief coroner are, in the view of many, inflated. Before I give two examples to prove my point, it is worth considering what the public told ComRes about what they think of costs for an issue like this one. I am second to none in arguing that we need to drive down the costs of government, but there is always a balance to be struck.

According to the ComRes poll, more than two thirds of the public believe that appointing a chief coroner is a matter of principle, not a question of costs. We would all agree that ensuring the most appropriate support to families going through the system must always come ahead of costs. There are two examples from the costings put about by the Ministry of Justice previously in 2008. One is that the IT system will cost £3.8 million, while the second is that £564,000 will be used on a public launch and other publications for this position. I know that the Royal British Legion would be particularly keen to have this discussion. In its alternative to the Government’s proposals, it stated:

“The Royal British Legion and INQUEST would share the Government’s concerns about costings if they were as high as the Ministry of Justice figures suggest”.

The answer is to challenge those costings in a way that the coalition Government have sadly not been able to do since they came to power and to look seriously at the alternative costings put forward by the Royal British Legion and Inquest. It is a bit difficult because I have not had access to all the necessary budget lines. Those organisations have proposed a slower roll-out so the costs can be challenged and spread across the Parliament.

[Robert Flello]

The hon. Gentleman is putting his case well. On that point about costings, does he know that the Royal British Legion, Inquest, CRY and a whole host of other organisations, along with Members, have repeatedly tried—whether through parliamentary questions, freedom of information or whatever—to get the information from the Ministry of Justice, yet at every opportunity, it clams up and refuses to give the detailed figures?

[Andrew Percy]

I do not want to get into too much of a political spat, particularly when I am speaking from the Government Benches, but those organisations have repeatedly made the point that they have been unable to gain access to all the information. Perhaps they did not do so before the general election either. Perhaps it is a systemic problem, but having access to that information is important, particularly if so much emphasis is going to be placed on costs, as appears to be the case.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

rose—

[Sir Alan Beith]

rose—

[Andrew Percy]

I will give way to my hon. Friends, but then I am going to make some progress.

[Jim Shannon]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman would agree that the families are most important. The families need to have confidence in the system, and they indicated that their confidence would lie with the chief coroner rather than the independent coroner. Does he feel that that is what we should really be doing and that the families know best?

[Andrew Percy]

It is always easy to concentrate on the emotive issues in debates like this, and it can be very powerful, but I also believe there are less emotive reasons for pursing this policy. I would not suggest for a moment than anybody does not want to support families; it is a question of how we drive the reform forward. It is a bit like the discussion last night, when the Conservative party was united but had different tactics.

[Sir Alan Beith]

Does my hon. Friend recognise that it would be possible to have a chief coroner who could provide professional leadership by the designation of an existing coroner without going into the very large costs involved in the original proposal and without involving the chief coroner in running an appeals system, which might more appropriately remain a matter for reference under law to the courts?

[Andrew Percy]

My right hon. Friend makes a point that I was coming to. We have not identified where the savings could be in this system. Many would contend that the costs of adjourned and delayed hearings and of expensive judicial reviews could be taken out of the system by the chief coroner. My concern is that far too much emphasis has been placed on costs.

I said that I was going to talk about three particular issues. The first is independent leadership, which I think we all agree lies at the heart of the chief coroner’s appointment and is the reason for his status as linchpin of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. Parliament accepted back then that if real reform was to be achieved, there must be an independent judicial leader with responsibility for spearheading that reform. Independence is key.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I was a member of the Committee that considered the Coroners and Justice Bill, and I remember that it was supported by not only the Government of the day, but the Front Bench of the hon. Gentleman’s party and the Liberal Democrats. One of the key points made by the Liberal Democrat Front-Bench spokesman was that the person concerned would be independent of Government.

[Andrew Percy]

The hon. Gentleman has pre-empted another stage of my speech. Although I was not here at the time, perhaps mercifully, I know that the matter was dealt with on a cross-party basis.

The right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) referred to Lady Justice Smith’s report, and I want to refer to five issues that were raised in it. It found that the current system had offered inconsistent levels of service—which I think addresses the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart)—and that families and friends were insufficiently involved in coroners’ investigations. It found an absence of quality controls and independent safeguards—once again, we see the word “independent”—a lack of consistency, leadership or training, and, in some instances, an absence of medical knowledge. The report also stated that the

“coronial jurisdiction should be re-formed on modern judicial lines, as a national jurisdiction, small in size but comparable to other jurisdictions in having a Chief Coroner'”.

Although it could be claimed that that report said all that needs to be said about independent leadership, the desperate need to address the issue was perhaps put as well as it could have been by the Lord Chancellor in a written ministerial statement on 14 June:

“As the functions to be transferred are limited, and the Office of Chief Coroner not filled, neither the judge nor any other individual will be responsible for the leadership, culture or behaviour of coroners.”—[Official Report, 14 June 2011; Vol. 728, c. 62WS.]

That cannot be right. The Lord Chancellor’s statement implicitly acknowledged the need for judicial, and thus independent, leadership to address the culture of coroners, while simultaneously refusing to address it.

[Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)]

If the three Front Benches were indeed in agreement in Committee, what has happened since to turn the position on its head?

[Andrew Percy]

The hon. Gentleman is tempting me down a path on which I should probably not embark, but I repeat that, in my view, the emphasis has been on cost. I agree with the Bill that there should be a burning of the quangos. Having spent 10 years as a local councillor, I know how overburdened the country has become, and I would support any measure that would save money. There is a debate to be had about costs, and I think that that is the debate we should be having, rather than a debate about whether the position exists at all.

The statement made by the Lord Chancellor back in June failed to recognise that the chief coroner’s office was a single senior judicial post with statutory powers. The Government’s proposals will dismantle the office and transfer some, but not—by any stretch of the imagination—all those powers to other judicial and political figures, which risks creating another fragmented structure where lines of accountability are opaque and clear leadership absent.

The second issue that I want to raise is monitoring and training. That was one of the most important functions of the chief coroner under the Coroners and Justice Act, which gave him the job of both monitoring investigations of service deaths and ensuring that coroners who conducted such inquests were suitably trained.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Percy]

I give way to the hon. Lady, who has a great deal of experience in this area.

[Mrs Moon]

I too was a member of the Committee considering the Coroners and Justice Bill, and I support the hon. Gentleman’s amendment. Another issue that should be considered is the inconsistency in the recording of verdicts, especially narrative verdicts, which has been creeping in increasingly. In some coronial systems, coroners are recording up to 59% deaths as “other”, which means that we are unclear about how those people died. Nationally, the average is 14%. That has a particular impact in cases of suicide. We must look ahead, because we know that we shall have a huge mental health problem when our troops come back from the front.

20:15

[Andrew Percy]

One of the most important tasks of the chief coroner would have been supplying an annual report to Parliament, which would have enabled issues such as that to be debated here and, indeed, in another place.

Let me return to monitoring and training. The Lord Chancellor’s written ministerial statement made it clear that the provision for ensuring that coroners were suitably trained and the monitoring of investigations would not now be transferred or implemented. Crucially, although the Government claim that their proposals will allow training to happen, the statement removes the requirement for training, and instead puts it under section 37 of the Act, which simply states that training regulations on training “may” be issued.

It also concerns me that the monitoring of service inquests is currently completed by the defence inquest unit. In the context of transparency and accountability, I understand why many would see a conflict of interests. The DIU is part of the Ministry of Defence, which in the case of the deaths of service personnel is also the employer, and it will therefore be an interested party in relation to such investigations.

[Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

I was responsible for the establishment of the DIU in an attempt to improve the service that we gave to coroners and thence the service that they could give to service personnel. However, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: there is a fundamental conflict of interests, given that the Ministry of Defence is attempting to assist an independent coronial service to such a degree. That separation of powers, coupled with the need to improve service and timeliness for bereaved service families, goes to the heart of the need for a chief coroner.

[Andrew Percy]

The right hon. Gentleman has much more expertise in this area than I do. His powerful comments will have been heard, and I think that they prove exactly why we want the chief coroner in post to ensure that there is monitoring and that it is completely independent of Government.

I have already mentioned the chief coroner’s parliamentary oversight through the annual report, so I will not dwell on that. Instead, let me turn to the issue of appeals. I do not deny that a key aspect of the chief coroner’s functions—hearing appeals—is a bone of contention both in the House and outside. My personal instinct was to be somewhat sceptical, which is why I examined the appeals system in a bit more detail.

I certainly would not advocate the removal of the chief coroner from the Bill if I did not also believe that a chief coroner—as Parliament agreed when it passed the legislation—would reduce the need for so many bereaved people to engage in expensive litigation, as they must at present, through judicial review. I do not think that anyone wants a system in which people’s experience of the system is extended through protracted appeals. However, it cannot be right that at present the only avenue of appeal that is open to the families of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, and who want to challenge the decisions of coroners and their conduct at an inquest, is a complex and expensive judicial review system, or persuading the Attorney-General to exercise his power of fiat. Surely it would be much more cost-effective and efficient for a High Court judge as chief coroner to resolve some legal issue currently resolved in the administrative court. The alternative proposed by the Royal British Legion is to trial this. Therefore, it is accepted that there is a debate to be had about appeals. Adopting the joint RBL and Inquest proposal for an appeals trial is sensible.

Although my knowledge of the subject is limited, I have explained as best I can the most compelling arguments for leaving the chief coroner out of the Bill. I think this is the right way to proceed, and the ComRes poll to which I referred earlier illustrates that I am in good company. One of its findings is that 60% of the public believe a chief coroner should be appointed immediately—although polls must always be taken in the context in which they are asked, and all of us who are involved in politics know how they work. The theme running through the ComRes poll is that people want more support for bereaved families and a system that is independent of Government, and they want that quickly. I think all Members support that.

I readily concede that those who have been through the system are far better advocates of this case than me. In the last few days, we will all have received an e-mail from Gareth Turkington, the brother of Lieutenant Neal Turkington, who served in the Royal Gurkhas and who, sadly, died in Afghanistan. Gareth’s e-mailed letter to MPs contained some powerful phrases about the current system. He says:

“It was one of the most harrowing experiences of our lives…We as a family sought a full, independent, impartial inquest—precisely the function of the coroner—to establish how the event had happened and the circumstances of how Neal was killed. What we witnessed instead was a lack of rigorous investigation and a denial of any form of accountability or responsibility for duty of care towards Neal’s safety.”

Such situations do not only arise in respect of service deaths, as other people have similar experiences of the system. Sue Ainsworth, a lead midwife at the University Hospital of North Tees, also gave evidence on this issue. Her 21-year-old son died from sudden cardiac arrest. Her testimony is powerful. She states that the inquest took eight months and she found the system in many respects to be lacking in any empathy for the situation she had faced. She concludes:

“The coroner’s conduct was unacceptable. When I refused to be quiet at the Inquest and persisted in asking questions, it was then hurriedly concluded with the pathologist and the coroner abruptly leaving the room.”

If that is a manifestation of respect in the system, I would not like to know what disrespect is.

Sadly, such experiences are not isolated incidents. Many coroners fulfil their role perfectly well, but others do not. Although people can point to good and bad practice in the current system, the fact that there is bad practice suggests to me, taking a common sense point of view, that there has to be somebody at the top, such as a chief coroner—or perhaps someone holding a less expensive position—who is independent of Ministers and who can drive this reform, and who ensures there is accountability back to Parliament. That is why, at present, I intend to press this amendment to a Division.

[Michael Dugher (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

I would like to begin by paying tribute to the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) on his excellent contribution and on tabling his amendment, which we will support. He articulated succinctly and powerfully why the Government are wrong on this issue and must think again. He made it clear that this is not about party politics; rather, it is a matter of national concern. We share that view.

The last time this Bill was debated in the Chamber, the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General said he was confident that the Government’s proposals to transfer certain statutory functions from the role of chief coroner would “gain widespread support”. He could not have been more wrong. I am not aware of a single organisation that has accepted the wisdom of the Government’s approach; instead, all remain highly critical. In fact, the Government have managed to manoeuvre themselves into a situation where they are pitched against the Royal British Legion, INQUEST, Cruse Bereavement Care, Victim Support, Action against Medical Accidents, Cardiac Risk in the Young, the Child Bereavement Charity, Disaster Action, Support after Murder and Manslaughter, Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide, The Compassionate Friends, RoadPeace and Brake, the road safety charity. It is a remarkable achievement for any Government to find themselves opposed on such an issue by so many organisations that do so much good work for so many people in this country.

[Robert Flello]

It is also important to add to the list the Marchioness Action Group, the stillbirth and neonatal death charity and other charities and organisations who say with one voice that the Government have got this wrong and that they should change their mind.

[Michael Dugher]

My hon. Friend adds to the list, and a written answer from the Ministry of Justice to my hon. Friend states that it is calculated that at least 95% of responses to the Department’s consultation on the Bill support the RBL call not to abolish the position of chief coroner.

It is widely acknowledged that there are currently great variations in both the manner and quality of coronial inquests. It is clear that reform is long overdue. The creation of the post of chief coroner was at the heart of the new reforms introduced under the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, and that was the result of three years of review and consultation and proposed on the basis of cross-party support.

[Mrs Moon]

There is also inconsistency in the willingness of coroners to collaborate with academic research, which can be vital, such as in demonstrating health changes, in particular in relation to suicide, which is an area on which I focus. Some coroners are more than happy to open their records, so we can get an accurate picture of what some of the narrative verdicts actually mean. Others will not allow access to their records, and research is therefore skewed so we do not get an accurate picture of deaths in this country.

[Michael Dugher]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Before the recent legislation, review after review of the coroner system recommended that a chief coroner was the only way to bring about the required changes. In 2003, the Luce review, a fundamental review into death certification and investigation, found that the coroner system was outdated, inconsistent and unsympathetic to families. One of its headline recommendations was for the establishment of a chief coroner position to handle appeals and oversee standards. That review was followed by Dame Janet Smith’s third report of the Shipman inquiry, which again proposed that leadership for coroners should come from an independent chief coroner.

[Bob Stewart]

I am slightly worried. I like the idea of having independent coroners, and I do not like the idea of instruction coming down to them; I like the idea of these coroners possibly saying something that we might not find acceptable. That is why I am slightly worried about the idea of a chief coroner imposing, or suggesting, rules downwards. I would like to make sure that that does not happen.

[Michael Dugher]

The hon. Gentleman knows that I have the utmost respect for him and especially for the distinguished service he gave to this country. I have to say to him that independence is at the heart of the proposal for the chief coroner. Introducing national leadership under the chief coroner’s post was rightly seen as a vital step towards tackling the problems of unacceptable delays, a lack of accountability and inconsistent standards across the country. The move would meet the interests of bereaved families and the wider public in terms of quality, effectiveness of investigations and ensuring that knowledge is applied to prevent avoidable death and injury in the future.

[Mr Ainsworth]

The hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) has a point, but it is not the poor coroners, of whom there are many, who say uncomfortable things and whose findings make Departments such as the Ministry of Defence very uncomfortable. It is the good coroners who do that. I am talking about people such as Mr Masters, the Trowbridge coroner, who does that very effectively. There is no consistency at the moment, as there is good and bad practice; there are two extremes of the spectrum. That is why we need a chief coroner to spread best practice throughout the system for the benefit of not only bereaved families, but government.

20:30

[Michael Dugher]

My right hon. Friend, who was an extremely good Secretary of State for Defence and did so much work to drive through improvements in this area, is of course right, which is why the reforms were universally welcomed by charities and professionals. It was on the basis of a political consensus on both sides of the House that it was determined that a chief coroner was needed. At the time, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), who is now a Minister in the Home Office, said:

“We all welcome the establishment of the chief coroner”.—[Official Report, 26 January 2009; Vol. 487, c. 111.]

The Government now want to go against those recommendations at a time when, if anything, inquests are becoming more complex. The Lord Chancellor has acknowledged the limited nature of the Government’s proposals, making it clear that no

“individual will be responsible for the leadership, culture or behaviour of coroners.”—[Official Report, 14 June 2011; Vol. 529, c. 66WS.]

That is precisely why we need a chief coroner in the first place.

The Government cite the costs of setting up and running the office of the chief coroner as the main reason for scrapping the role but, as has been said, the credibility of their own figures has been questioned on numerous occasions by third parties since the initial impact assessment was made some three years ago. The Government have not properly factored in the costs of failing to implement the reform, such as the £500,000 spent every year on judicial reviews or the costs associated with transferring some of the functions from the office of the chief coroner to the Lord Chief Justice. Most significantly, given that the current system is failing to learn from previous fatalities, the costs of repeated and expensive investigations and inquests into similar deaths are not included in the cost assessment.

I am aware that other hon. Members wish to speak, so I shall conclude. On Saturday, I had the great privilege of launching the poppy appeal in Barnsley with the Hoyland and District branch of the Royal British Legion, of which I am a proud member. I did the launch with members of the public, local councillors, volunteers and a number of veterans who have served this country in the armed forces with such distinction, and I pay tribute to their service and sacrifice. The director general of the Royal British Legion, Mr Chris Simpkins, has said that axing the chief coroner would be

“a betrayal of bereaved Service families”.

He is absolutely right, and I am sure that the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) would want to listen to the words of the Royal British Legion. In case he missed the point, I repeat that Mr Simpkins said that this would be

“a betrayal of bereaved Service families”.

Honouring that commitment to create the office of chief coroner is the first test of the Government’s commitment to the military covenant—that bond between our nation and our armed forces. Failing in their duty to meet that test would make a mockery of the Government’s assurances of greater support for the military and their families. As hon. Members have mentioned, this is also about speaking up for those other organisations that represent families who have suffered bereavement in different circumstances.

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

I tend to agree with the general argument that the hon. Gentleman is making but I am not certain that I agree with some of the hyperbole about sticking up for our armed forces families, which every single Member of the House does whichever side of this argument they may be on. I am not sure that is a sound argument. Does he agree with his right hon. Friend the former Secretary of State for Defence? His point is that people like Mr Masters in Wiltshire and, indeed, the Oxfordshire coroner are great experts in military inquests and that that has been fine while the bodies have been coming back through Lyneham and/or Brize Norton but that if we are to spread out the inquests across England and the rest of Britain as we hope to do, we need to make sure that that degree of expertise is enjoyed by all the coroners across the area. That is why we need better training and a chief coroner.

[Michael Dugher]

The hon. Gentleman is right and he makes a powerful case for our argument. It is the inconsistency of standards that we are concerned about. There are good coroners but, if we are honest, looking back at recent cases there are many examples of where the system has not worked, and that simply is not acceptable. That is why the Opposition will stand firm behind the armed forces and their families, behind the Royal British Legion and behind other bereaved families who have been let down time and again in the past by the coroner system.

Before this debate, I received a message from the Royal British Legion that said:

“Here’s hoping MPs of all parties will do the right thing by bereaved families, especially bereaved Armed Forces families, at this poignant time”—[Interruption.]

Those are the words of the Royal British Legion. We will do the right thing and the Government should too.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) for initiating this important debate and I thank the hon. Member for Barnsley East (Michael Dugher) for his contribution. I thank also stakeholders, particularly the noble Baroness Finlay, the Royal British Legion, INQUEST and Cardiac Risk in the Young for their passion for and commitment to reform. I have met them all on numerous occasions and our discussions have helped to shape the Government’s thinking on our proposals for reform of the coroner system. I have to say that our discussions have not been just of the yes/no variety described by the hon. Gentleman.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Does the Minister agree with the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), who has just said that what the Royal British Legion said was a disgrace?

[Mr Djanogly]

We are all aware of the importance of the issue and the outcome of this debate has the potential to affect thousands of people who come into contact with the coroner system, often in exceptionally difficult circumstances. Honouring the memory of those who give their lives for their country is very close to the heart of this Government, as it is to all hon. Members I am sure, but I point out to my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole that our reforms go further, as they concern all coroners, not just military inquests.

Hon. Members will be well aware of the Government’s position on this. Urgent reform is needed to drive up standards across the piece and to learn lessons from the inquest process. This must be achieved through consistent training for coroners, by tackling the cause of delays in the inquest process, by setting a framework of standards that the bereaved have the right to expect from the coroner system and by removing barriers to hearing inquests at the most convenient location for bereaved families.

[Robert Flello]

After the disgraceful comments of the Minister’s colleague, who said, “These people are a disgrace,” this Minister said that he had had many discussions with the Royal British Legion, INQUEST and the like. Will he comment on the observations of those organisations that following those meetings they discovered that what had been said to one group about one organisation differed from what that organisation had actually said? There has much sleight of hand.

[Mr Djanogly]

I would disagree with that. I had meetings with them together as well as separately. It is true that they opposed our proposals on one hand, but they were also in discussions with us in order to make our proposals work better. I was very grateful for their input and I can tell hon. Members that what has come about has been based partly on the changes they suggested.

The Coroners and Justice Act 2009 enables us to do all the things I have outlined. I accept that the Act, as originally drafted, envisaged that some functions would be carried out by a chief coroner, but that is not the only way of implementing the reforms. Indeed, the transfer of functions to the Lord Chief Justice and the Lord Chancellor will ensure that they are taken forward quickly, effectively and without the cost associated with establishing the office of chief coroner. I assure hon. Members that the independence of the judiciary is every bit as secure in the hands of the Lord Chief Justice as it would have been in the hands of the chief coroner. Debates in this House and the other place, as well as my own stakeholder engagement, have clearly shown that there are widely held misconceptions about the extent of the chief coroner’s powers. In practice, the chief coroner’s powers to direct coroners would have been limited and any leadership would have been provided entirely through influence and persuasion.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Is the Minister not aware from his meetings with the various groups that have been mentioned that the current Government’s engagement with them on the issue has given them absolutely no confidence in the idea that some of these responsibilities would rest with the Lord Chancellor and some of his Ministers in future?

[Mr Djanogly]

I have not come away with that impression when I have met those organisations.

Let me set out plainly that the chief coroner would not have had any enforcement powers to ensure authorities comply with actions to prevent future deaths that coroners may have reported to them. The chief coroner would not have had the power to investigate complaints about the conduct of coroners or, indeed, to direct a coroner on how to conduct an investigation. Complaints, quite rightly, will continue to lie with the Office for Judicial Complaints. The chief coroner would not, as some have suggested, have been responsible for managing or appraising individual coroners. On administrative issues, the chief coroner would not have been answerable to Parliament, as the Minister will be under our proposed ministerial board.

The hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) said that, without a chief coroner, inconsistencies in the reporting of suicide verdicts and the increasing use of narrative verdicts would continue. The chief coroner would have had no remit to direct coroners in how they use narrative verdicts. Coroners are independent judicial office holders. Only coroners can decide on the appropriate form of verdict.

[Mrs Moon]

I served on the Committee that considered the Coroners and Justice Bill, and one of the things that I discussed throughout was the role of the chief coroner. One of my concerns was the totally fragmented nature of the system. I was given an absolute assurance in Committee that the chief coroner would have the capacity to oversee and call in verdicts and to ensure not only consistency but investigation, where there were suicide clusters in particular.

[Mr Djanogly]

The hon. Lady is very involved with coroners. We have had several meetings on coroners. She is dedicated to coronial reform—I respect her for that—but I am afraid that what she thought was the position arising from the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 is not right. Such inconsistencies and misconceptions are rife, which is why I feel that it is so important to address them now.

[Mr Ainsworth]

rose—

[Mark Durkan]

rose—

[Mr Djanogly]

Let me move on, otherwise I shall not get through.

Under the proposals announced to Parliament on 14 June, we can deliver a significant package of reform to the coroner system. Transferring the majority of the chief coroner’s functions to either the Lord Chief Justice or Lord Chancellor will allow us to implement the vast majority of the reforms envisaged under part 1 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. Those powers include allowing the Lord Chancellor to make regulations about the way in which the coroner system is expected to operate in relation to bereaved relatives; allowing the Lord Chancellor to make regulations about the practice and procedure in coroner investigations, such as the disclosure of information to bereaved relatives and minimum standards for post mortem examinations; allowing the Lord Chief Justice to make rules to regulate practice and procedure at inquests; allowing the Lord Chief Justice to make rules in relation to the training of coroners, including specialist training, for instance, relating to military inquests; allowing the Lord Chancellor to amend coroner areas; and allowing the transfer of military cases to and from Scotland.

I found it somewhat sad to hear some hon. Members suggest that we are letting down service families. If we were leaving the office in the 2009 Act alone and not implementing the changes, I would agree with them. However, we are providing real and significant changes to the system that will directly improve the experience and treatment of service personnel families who come into contact with the coroner system.

[Paul Goggins]

The Government are making a huge mistake. The sooner the Minister realises that the better. He has been very evasive about the costings and has refused absolutely to interrogate the figures that he seems to have been given by his officials. Will he now explain what estimate he has made of the additional costs that will be incurred by transferring statutory functions from the chief coroner to the Lord Chief Justice?

[Mr Djanogly]

I will come on to the costings and explain why the costings provided by the last Government were correct—we checked them—but let me finish what I was saying.

The powers will allow the Department of Health to proceed with its proposals to introduce a new system for examining the causes of death, thereby fulfilling one of the key recommendations of Dame Janet Smith’s report on the Shipman inquiry.

Concerns were expressed in Committee that I might not give this work the priority that it deserves. That could not be further from the truth. In particular, we have plans to establish a new ministerial board to drive these reforms, to provide oversight of the non-judicial aspects of the coroner system, and to provide a direct line of accountability on these matters to Parliament. We will also establish a bereaved organisations committee that will support the board and provide those who represent bereaved families with a direct line to Ministers.

[Sir Alan Beith]

One of the concerns of the Justice Committee has been about the uncertain and widely differing arrangements for providing financial support for coroners and the widely differing arrangements for providing coroners officers, who are sometimes provided by the police and sometimes by the local authority, with no uniform standard of training. Will the system that the Minister is describing deal with this problem?

[Mr Djanogly]

Yes, the board will be there to address policy issues such as those that my right hon. Friend mentioned. It is important to keep in mind that the position of chief coroner would have had power over none of those.

The ministerial board will meet quarterly, with the dates fixed and publicised well in advance so that meetings cannot be cancelled without good reason. The board will also have a strong independent feel to it, with coroners and other members sitting on it, together with representatives from the bereaved organisations committee.

The new committee will be independently chaired and I have given commitments that the chair cannot be appointed or removed without the approval of committee members. I would expect the chair to become a powerful advocate for the bereaved and be a champion of coroner reform. If the Government are not delivering on this package of reforms, I would expect the chair to hold us to account.

The bereaved organisations committee will have a particular remit to monitor the new charter for coroner services. The charter, which we intend to publish in early 2012 following the recent consultation exercise, will set out for the first time the standards of service that those coming into contact with the system can and should expect. This will play a vital role in driving up standards of service and helping people to understand their rights and responsibilities in relation to the coroner system.

[Simon Hughes]

I am listening carefully because I, like others, need some persuasion. Why would it not be possible, compatible with all the other arrangements that the Minister is setting out, for one coroner to be designated as the chief coroner, to have the same sort of responsibility for the coronial service as a presiding judge has in a circuit or over one of the divisions of the High Court, and to be the route of communication up and down at no or no significant additional cost?

[Mr Djanogly]

We would expect that to be the situation because we would expect the Lord Chief Justice, who would be responsible for the judicial aspects, to appoint someone, but that would be within current costings. I should also say, because this was raised by the hon. Gentleman’s right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) in an earlier remark, that that cannot, under existing legislation, be an existing coroner. It can be only a High Court judge or a circuit judge. That would be at a cost of some £400,000 a year.

[Simon Hughes]

rose—

[Mr Djanogly]

If the right hon. Gentleman does not mind, I do not have much time and I must proceed.

I want to reassure hon. Members that the Government have listened to concerns expressed here and in the other place and by a large number of organisations. We have responded to these concerns and we have compromised, so we no longer intend to abolish the office of the chief coroner. Moving the office from schedule 1 to schedule 5 means that we will retain the chief coroner in statute. We have listened to the views of stakeholders on the constitution and remit of the new ministerial board and bereaved organisations committee and we have amended our proposals accordingly. We are considering a requirement for the new board to produce an annual report to Parliament, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole wished, strengthening further the accountability for and transparency of our reform proposals.

The Government’s decision not to proceed with full implementation was not taken lightly. My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole, I thought, made somewhat light of the costs of the chief coroner. The simple fact is that we cannot afford the establishment costs of £10.9 million and running costs of £6.6 million per year, especially when functions can be carried out from within existing resources.

[Andrew Percy]

Can the Minister tell me how much his Department spent on consultants in the past year?

[Mr Djanogly]

I can get back to my hon. Friend on that. I will write to him. I do not have the figures to hand.

I note the concerns that hon. Members have raised about the establishment and running costs, which are of course drawn from the original impact assessment prepared by the previous Administration which accompanied the Coroners and Justice Act. However, even if Opposition Members now dispute their own figures, we cannot escape the fact that new funding is required at a time when the Ministry of Justice is facing budget cuts of some 23%. As the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) knows very well, we placed a breakdown of our figures in the House of Commons Library months ago. The alternative package of reforms can, I firmly believe, deliver the policy intentions of part 1 of the 2009 Act, but without the expense of establishing and maintaining the office of the chief coroner.

I can confirm to my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole that I have considered the new Royal British Legion and INQUEST proposals for an elongated implementation timetable in order to spread the cost of the office of chief coroner, but their proposals would mean a delay to the urgently needed reforms of several years, and there is no guarantee that even then funding will be available to establish the office. At best there would be a delay to reform, and at worst there would be no reform at all.

I began by speaking of the urgent need for reform, and I would urge my hon. Friend to consider the ramifications of his amendment. If the office of chief coroner were to be removed from schedule 5, the office would be left in statute, but with no prospect of its powers being implemented. In turn, without the ability to transfer chief coroner functions elsewhere, we would be prevented from implementing all but a small handful of provisions in part 1 of the 2009 Act. That would leave us with the worst possible outcome: little or no meaningful reform. That would be unacceptable; not least to the families of the bereaved who deserve and expect urgent reform of the system.

I therefore urge my hon. Friend to withdraw his amendment so that we can proceed with the urgent and much needed reform of the coroner system.

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

I want to place on record, adding to what has been said already, my admiration for the speech of the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy). I speak as one of the Members of Parliament for Blackpool, a town which has had a strong focus on service issues and which was involved in the launch of veterans week. I also declare an interest as chair of the all-party veterans group.

The argument for retaining the office of chief coroner cannot be divorced from the trauma and tragedy of the unexplained deaths and unanswered questions around Deepcut barracks over a seven-year period. Deepcut is not the only place from which the grief and trauma of the families who galvanised the urgency for the office came. I was first involved in this issue through the work of my colleague, the former Member of Parliament for Blackpool North and Fleetwood, Joan Humble, who took up the case of Lance Corporal Derek McGregor, who died at the Catterick barracks in July 2003. His father was one of Joan’s constituents. She chaired the all-party group on Army deaths, which focused on peacetime non-combat deaths. She has not forgotten the issue, and nor have the bereaved families of service personnel. This Saturday there will be a conference in Blackpool for bereaved service families organised by the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association. Those bereaved families hoped and believed that the office of the chief coroner would have a team to look systematically at the other reports from coroners on Army deaths and to make recommendations to the Ministry of Defence. It is in that context that the whole issue of narrative verdicts on how a son or daughter has died is important, not simply in giving some comfort to the bereaved relatives, but crucially in the process of assessing and for transparency.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Marsden]

No, I will not give way because of the lack of time.

That is one of the issues that is at the heart of tonight’s debate. We have an opportunity to do something to respond to those views. The Minister’s response has been appalling. The Minister spent half of his speech on issues that were more or less off the subject, which is not surprising as he seems to have inhabited a parallel universe during most of his conversations with the groups who have put their case forward. At this of all times they urge the Government to do the right thing. I do not say this lightly, but in 14 years as a Member of the House I have seldom if ever read a more damning brief on the Government’s performance than that which many Members will have received from the Royal British Legion. It said:

“Any suggestion that a Chief Coroner just for military inquests could achieve the essential reforms needed would be misguided and would entirely miss the point. It is not what we are calling for….The Government’s costings are inflated”

as many Members have said. It continues:

“Ministers have tried to imply that we are to blame for reforms supposedly being ‘delayed'. We totally reject this misleading charge. It is the Government that is delaying reform. It was the Government who cancelled the Chief Coroner's appointment after the post had been filled…Why should they”—

families—

“have to go to expensive judicial review when they could appeal to a Chief Coroner to resolve issues more speedily and cost-effectively?”

There seems to be no indication from the Government Front Bench that the building up of a body of evidence from the excellent coroners who have been referred to is a crucial part of the process. Instead, we have heard from a Minister on the defensive describing a whole collection of twisted and complex arrangements that will do nothing whatsoever.

[Robert Flello]

On that point, will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Marsden]

I am sorry, but I will not.

The great military and diplomatic historian Garrett Mattingly said that to do justice to the dead as well as to the living is what matters. That is one of the issues at the heart of tonight's debate. I urge Members on both sides of the House to take those points on board, consider what the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole has said and support his amendment.

[Sir Alan Beith]

The Justice Committee has on two occasions—in its present and previous form—published reports dedicated not to the creation of an office or a title, but to fundamental reform of a system in which there are too many differences across the country. There are too many differences in the ability and efficiency of coroners, in how they are resourced and how their offices are provided for, and too little support and sympathy is shown for bereaved relatives, whether military or those who belong to any of the other categories that have been mentioned today. The important question is not the title, but whether the reforms are actually carried out.

The Minister left me a little confused on whether some High Court judge will ultimately have the words “chief coroner” added to his title. My primary objective is to see reform of the system, rather than someone acquire the title, merit though I see in there being someone who could exercise some professional leadership, just as the head of ACPO exercises professional leadership among police officers and the heads of other organisations.

[Robert Flello]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Alan Beith]

I will not, as I want to be brief in order to allow another Member to speak in the time that remains.

The Justice Committee never wanted to see an office of the chief coroner that would be vast, expensive or become involved in the provision of an alternative appeals system, which in my view would never be a proper role for a chief coroner. A chief coroner could help to ensure that cases were handled by the right coroner and that the necessary advice had been given, but appeals against what happened in an inquest need to be to a superior court that has the capacity to examine the legal questions that will then arise.

The coroners system does not exist in Scotland. If military casualties were flown directly to Scotland, they would not be the subject of inquests, unless of course that were to be stipulated in the Bill, because the Scottish system depends on the procurator fiscal deciding that there is something to be investigated, which a wholly different approach. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, we have always assumed that having the coroner as an objective adjudicator of the cause of death in cases where that was in doubt, or where the state was involved, was a necessary part of our system. Making that system work effectively should be our primary objective.

I welcome the attention that the Royal British Legion has given the matter and remain of the view that it would be useful to have professional leadership from someone designated as chief coroner, but what I want more than anything is for the Government to go ahead with introducing proper, judicially based support for the coroners system so that we can ensure that coroners are properly resourced and are of even quality across the country.

[Mr Ainsworth]

The most telling intervention on the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), who moved the amendment, was from the hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea), who asked how we got to where we are. After three years of consultation, cross-party agreement and a full examination of what was needed, how did we get to a position in which that has been scrapped and thrown away by the Government as part of a bundle of measures intended to save costs—costs that they will not even share? How did we get to a position in which the Government continually say that there was constructive dialogue with organisations which basically claim that there has been skulduggery and no effective dialogue with them at all?

When the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) said he wanted clarification, the Minister made it clear from a sedentary position that no High Court judge would have the words “chief coroner” added to his title. There will be no independent leadership for the coronial system under what is proposed. It is the Government themselves who are causing that delay, not the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole or those of us who want to see the creation of the office of the chief coroner. It is the Government who are causing the delay and the only way to move them is to support the amendment so ably moved by—

21:00

Proceedings interrupted (Programme Order, this day)

The Deputy Speaker put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair (Standing Order No. 83E), That the amendment be made.

21:00

Division 375

Ayes: 235

---

Labour: 214
Scottish National Party: 5
Democratic Unionist Party: 4
Plaid Cymru: 3
Conservative: 3
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 2
Liberal Democrat: 2
Alliance: 1
Green Party: 1
Independent: 1

Noes: 287

---

Conservative: 255
Liberal Democrat: 31

The Deputy Speaker then put forthwith the Questions necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded at that time (Standing Order No. 83E).

Clause 11

Procedure

Amendment made: 6, page 7, line 10, at end insert—

‘(11) In this section, references to the “30-day”, “40-day” and “60-day” periods in relation to any draft order are to the periods of 30, 40 and 60 days beginning with the day on which the draft order was laid before Parliament.

(12) For the purposes of subsection (11) no account is to be taken of any time during which Parliament is dissolved or prorogued or during which either House is adjourned for more than four days.’.—(Mr Hurd.)

Clause 13

Powers relating to environmental bodies

Amendment made: 12, page 8, line 1, leave out

‘Welsh devolved function relating to the environment’

and insert ‘Welsh environmental function’.—(Mr Hurd.)

Clause 14

Powers relating to other bodies

Amendment made: 13, page 8, line 44, at end insert—

‘( ) In subsection (5)(a), the reference to modifying constitutional arrangements has effect as if the references in section 3(2)(h) and (3)(e) to Ministers were to the Welsh Ministers.’.—(Mr Hurd.)

Clause 15

Powers of Welsh Ministers: consequential provision etc

Amendments made: 14, page 9, line 24, after ‘modifying’ insert ‘constitutional or’.

Amendment 15, page 9, line 25, leave out ‘section 4(3)(a)’ and insert ‘sections 3(2)(h) and (3)(e) and 4(3)(a)’.—(Mr Hurd.)

Clause 16

Delegation etc

Amendment made: 16, page 9, line 34, leave out clause 16.—(Mr Hurd.)

Clause 18

Consent of UK Ministers

Amendment made: 17, page 10, line 36, leave out

‘functions, other than Welsh devolved functions,’

and insert ‘non-devolved functions’.—(Mr Hurd.)

Clause 19

Consultation by Welsh Ministers

Amendment made: 18, page 11, line 2, leave out ‘sections 13 to 16’ and insert ‘section13 or 14’.—(Mr Hurd.)

Clause 20

Procedure for orders by Welsh Ministers etc

Amendments made: 19, page 11, line 20, leave out ‘sections 13 to 16’ and insert ‘section13 or 14’.

Amendment 20, page 11, line 26, leave out

‘, in the case of an order under section 13 or 14,’.

Amendment 7, page 12, line 17, at end insert—

‘(10A) In this section, references to the “30-day”, “40-day” and “60-day” periods in relation to any draft order are to the periods of 30, 40 and 60 days beginning with the day on which the draft order was laid before the National Assembly for Wales.

(10B) For the purposes of subsection (10A) no account is to be taken of any time during which the National Assembly for Wales is dissolved or is in recess for more than four days.’.—(Mr Hurd.)

Clause 21

Restriction on creation of functions

Amendment made: 21, page 12, line 23, leave out

‘or authorise the creation of’.—(Mr Hurd.)

Clause 22

Restriction on transfer and delegation of functions

Amendment made: 22, page 12, line 38, leave out from ‘functions’ to end of line 40.—(Mr Hurd.)

Clause 23

Restriction on creation of criminal offences

Amendment made: 23, page 13, line 9, leave out

‘or authorise the creation of’.—(Mr Hurd.)

Clause 27

Regional development agencies

Amendment made: 24, page 16, line 31, leave out ‘it’ and insert

‘a draft of the instrument’.—(Mr Hurd.)

Clause 31

Orders: supplementary

Amendment made: 25, page 18, line 27, after ‘Act’ insert

‘, other than an order under sections [Delegation of functions by Environment Agency] to [Shared services: Forestry Commissioners],’.—(Mr Hurd.)

Clause 32

Interpretation

Amendments made: 8, page 18, line 37, at end insert—

‘“community benefit society” means—

(a) a society registered as a community benefit society under the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies and Credit Unions Act 1965,

(b) a pre-2010 Act society (as defined by section 4A(1) of that Act) which meets the condition in section 1(3) of that Act, or

(c) a society registered or deemed to be registered under the Industrial and Provident Societies Act (Northern Ireland) 1969 which meets the condition in section 1(2)(b) of that Act;’.

Amendment 9, page 18, line 39, at end insert—

‘“co-operative society means—

(a) a society registered as a co-operative society under the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies and Credit Unions Act 1965,

(b) a pre-2010 Act society (as defined by section 4A(1) of that Act) which meets the condition in section 1(2) of that Act, or

(c) a society registered or deemed to be registered under the Industrial and Provident Societies Act (Northern Ireland) 1969 which meets the condition in section 1(2)(a) of that Act;’.

Amendment 26, page 19, line 17, at end insert—

‘“non-devolved function” means a function that is not a Welsh devolved function;’.

Amendment 27, page 19, line 36, leave out ‘section 16’ and insert

‘section [Delegation of Welsh environmental functions]’.

Amendment 10, page 19, line 36, at end insert—

‘(1A) Until the coming into force of section 1 of the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies and Credit Unions Act 2010—

(a) the definition of “community benefit society” in subsection (1) above has effect as if for paragraphs (a) and (b) there were substituted—

“(a) a society registered or deemed to be registered under the Industrial and Provident Societies Act 1965 which meets the condition in section 1(2)(b) of that Act, or”;

(b) the definition of “co-operative society” in subsection (1) above has effect as if for paragraphs (a) and (b) there were substituted—

“(a) a society registered or deemed to be registered under the Industrial and Provident Societies Act 1965 which meets the condition in section 1(2)(a) of that Act, or”.

(1B) Subsection (1A) ceases to have effect on the coming into force of section 1 of the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies and Credit Unions Act 2010.’.

Amendment 28, page 19, line 36, at end insert—

‘“Welsh environmental function” means a Welsh devolved function relating to the environment.’.

Amendment 11, page 19, line 37, leave out subsections (2) to (4).—(Mr Hurd.)

Title

Amendment made: 29, line 3, after ‘bodies;’ insert

‘to make provision about delegation and shared services in relation to persons exercising environmental functions;’.—(Mr Hurd.)

Third Reading

21:14

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

It is now slightly more than a year since the introduction of the Bill, and it has undergone considerable scrutiny and review both within Parliament and outside. I believe that the Government have responded positively and openly to that scrutiny. Both in this House and in the other place, we have worked with parliamentarians across the party boundaries to make a number of important amendments. My noble Friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach rightly paid tribute to noble Lords for their efforts in improving the Bill, and those tributes can be extended to this House. This has been a constructive process.

[Alun Michael]

Will the Minister acknowledge that there is real concern about the abolition of the Youth Justice Board, which we discussed earlier this evening in a time-limited debate? The concern is that by being taken inside the Ministry of Justice, it will lose the independence and spark that have led to its supporting youth offending teams in cutting youth reoffending. Will he undertake to keep an eye on that and, if it turns out that a system within the Ministry of Justice does not deliver as the YJB has, to look again at the arrangements?

[Mr Maude]

I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says, and I know that he has been hugely involved in the matter and has a passionate commitment to the cause of youth justice being delivered appropriately. I obviously take on board what he says, and my right hon. and hon. Friends have said both in Committee and in the House that we will keep the matter under review. Under the procedures in the Bill, before an order gives effect to the arrangements for bringing the YJB inside the Ministry of Justice, as is envisaged, there will have to be a proper consultation process and parliamentary scrutiny. That applies right across the piece to any changes that are implemented under the Bill. There will have to be full consultation and a proper parliamentary process.

It is important to put on the statute book, as I hope will happen under the Bill, a procedure for changing the arrangements for public bodies. In the past it has been far too easy for public bodies to be casually, almost incontinently created, and it has never been easy for them to be reformed when needs have changed. Anyone who has been in government knows the pressure that there is on primary legislation, and the need to make changes to the governance, funding arrangements and scope of public bodies cannot easily rise to the top of the pile. The procedure that we are putting in place for public bodies to be reformed, abolished or merged or to have their governance or funding arrangements changed is therefore really important, and I am grateful for the constructive approach that has been applied to the Bill.

Commitment to reforming the quango state is common across the political divide. All three parties entered the last election with a commitment to reforming the public body landscape, so we brought forward the Bill in the hope and expectation that there would be a consensual approach to it. Although there have been disagreements about some aspects of it—it was never likely that there would be absolute unanimity about every body for which changes were proposed—the approach has broadly been constructive. There has been agreement that the approach taken in the Bill is desirable.

Thus it was that last June, I told the House that we were committed to cutting the number of public bodies in order to increase accountability and cut costs. We always made it clear that the primary objective of the Bill was the former. Cutting costs would certainly happen, and I will say a word about the savings later, but the primary objective was to ensure that there was democratic accountability, unless the three tests that we set out for a body or function continuing in a way that was not democratically accountable were met.

The review that we carried out first established whether the functions of a body needed to be carried out at all. If so, we sought to establish whether the body should exist at arm’s length from government by asking three questions: first, does it perform a strictly technical function; secondly, do its activities require clear political impartiality; and thirdly, does it need to act independently to establish or measure facts in a clear and independent way?

We discovered that there were 904 non-departmental public bodies, non-ministerial departments and public corporations. We proposed that in excess of 200 would cease to be public bodies; that 120 would be merged into 56 bodies; and that 170 would be substantially reformed. In addition, we listed 15 as “under consideration” with further announcements expected in due course.

The Bill establishes a mechanism that gives Ministers a series of powers, which it outlines, to make changes through secondary legislation. As I have said, if we had always to wait for an opportunity to make primary legislation, we would continue inevitably to add to the landscape of unaccountable, and often very costly and not always very efficient, public bodies.

[Andrew George]

The Minister said that he did not expect absolute agreement in every case that is identified in the Bill, which was iterated both in Committee and particularly on Report. Will he reassure the House that he will give special consideration to the cases, including the Agricultural Wages Board, that were highlighted on Report, and to the need for rural proofing within the Government?

[Mr Maude]

I hear what my hon. Friend says, and he will have heard what my right hon. Friend the Minister of State for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said on the matter. The benefit of the process of parliamentary scrutiny is that particular concerns are evinced so that we can respond. However, I stress that any changes carried into effect under the provisions of the Bill will require the introduction of an order and consultation. We accepted amendments in the other place that allow an enhanced affirmative procedure, so that there is proper consultation. Either House can require that enhanced procedure to be put into effect, so there can be full scrutiny and further discussion. Nothing in the Bill allows precipitate action, but none the less, the Bill allows decisive action, so that we do not have to wait for the roulette wheel to come round to enable primary legislation to be amended.

[Simon Hughes]

The Minister’s last point was important and well made. If the Bill receives Third Reading, will it be helpful and possible for the Minister’s office to send out a notice to all the bodies listed in it, so that there can be no misrepresentation of their position or the Government’s position?

[Mr Maude]

That is an extremely helpful suggestion, and I will undertake that we do that. This is not the end of the process, but a work in progress.

We conducted a comprehensive review of all 904 bodies and have made some radical proposals for change, and some significant changes to the landscape have already been put into effect where statutory provisions were not required. However, we have said there should be a triennial review of all the bodies that the review concluded should continue to exist as independent bodies. Therefore, every three years, we will look at whether that body and those functions are still needed, and whether those functions still need to be carried out in a way that is not democratically accountable.

The original Bill contained a catch-all provision, schedule 7, which, frankly, was not well received in the other place—“universally reviled” might be the more straightforward, candid way of putting it. We responded properly, I think, to the vigorously expressed views and undertook to remove the schedule, which we have done, although the procedures in the Bill will still exist, and if a triennial review concludes that there should be reforms—perhaps abolition or merger—to governance or funding, whatever they may be, those procedures could still be used, but beforehand, a short piece of primary legislation would be needed to insert that body into one of the active remaining schedules.

As I said, there has been proper scrutiny, changes have been proposed and some have been accepted by the Government. There are additional safeguards on the processes and procedures in Parliament for approving orders made under the Bill. Furthermore, the Bill now includes clause 27, which contains provision for the abolition of the regional development agencies and makes way for successor arrangements in the form of local enterprise partnerships. The Bill also now includes clause 28, which contains provisions that will change the funding arrangements for S4C and which will place a new duty on the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport to ensure that S4C receives sufficient funding to fulfil its public service functions, replacing the outdated and unsustainable funding formula that currently exists under the Broadcasting Act 1990. Those concerned about the independence of S4C should take greater comfort from its funding being channelled through the BBC than through the Government. The BBC is, after all, robustly independent of the Government, while the Government, by definition, are not independent of the Government. I think that the change will enhance S4C’s independence.

During the passage of the Bill, we have sought to balance two distinct objectives: proper safeguards on the use of ministerial powers while still giving Ministers the ability to give effect to the commitments that we—and all parties, actually—made at the last election about reforming the landscape. That included a statutory duty to consult; the option for Parliament to opt for an enhanced affirmative procedure; a requirement on Ministers to lay an explanatory document alongside a draft order setting out its purpose and a summary of the representations received during consultation; a sunset clause limiting to no more than five years the length of time a body can appear in the schedules of the Bill; a requirement that orders do not undermine a function that is rightly independent of Ministers, including—importantly—judicial functions; and a requirement that a charity must consent if it is to take on responsibility for delivering a public function. We thought that the latter was implicit, but some were concerned that it needed to be made explicit, which we gladly acceded to.

We made other important concessions. I have referred to the removal of the now notorious schedule 7 and of provisions relating to the reform of the Forestry Commission and the public forest estate. The Bill has therefore been greatly improved. There have been some disagreements, but that is inevitable: we could not conduct a review of 904 bodies and possibly expect every part of both Houses of Parliament to arrive at exactly the same view.

The Government are committed to ensuring that public functions are delivered within a fair, efficient and effective system that delivers good value for taxpayers. The Bill will facilitate this reform, removing duplication, cutting out waste from the system, introducing new ways of delivering important functions and fundamentally improving accountability, which I stress is the Bill’s primary purpose. However, there will be savings: we have estimated that the administrative costs alone to public bodies will have reduced by £900 million a year by the end of the comprehensive spending review period—2014-15—and that there will be cumulative administrative savings of at least £2.6 billion over the same period. I hope and believe that that should enjoy widespread support across the House.

The House will be aware that this is not the first attempt by a Government to reduce the number of public bodies. Reviews were conducted under the previous Administration but despite the abolition of a number of public bodies over this period, the number overall continued to grow. I am sure the House will agree that our approach constitutes a more ambitious programme to realise significant and lasting improvements to the public bodies landscape.

We are also conscious that the success of these reforms has to be consolidated by a concerted effort to control the future size and shape of the public bodies landscape. That is why our programme of triennial reviews, to which I referred, will keep the continuing public bodies under regular review and ensure that they do not continue way beyond their useful life—as, frankly, a number of them have done in the past. I hope that the House will come together tonight in support of the important belief that ministerial accountability for public functions and the use of public money should be at the heart of the way we deliver services to the public.

This reform programme will deliver real and long overdue improvements to the accountability of the quango landscape. It will ensure that public bodies exist only where there is a legitimate need for a function to be exercised at arm’s length from Government, and it will deliver significant savings during the spending review period.

In conclusion, let me end by thanking the Committee charged with examining the Bill, along with the Chairs and the Clerk. I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Minister for Civil Society and the Deputy Leader of the House for the good humour and clarity with which they conducted these debates during this time.

21:31

[Jon Trickett]

It is good to see you back in the Chair, Mr Speaker. I add my own thanks to the Clerks and Committee Chairs for the orderly way in which the business was conducted to those of the Minister for the Cabinet Office. I thought that the Back-Bench contributions sparkled. Let me briefly mention my hon. Friends the Members for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth), for North Durham (Mr Jones) who worked hard as the shadow Minister, for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones), for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) and for Telford (David Wright). Proceedings also sparkled in cross-party unity. It was interesting sometimes to find allies in each of the other parties represented in Committee. I mention the hon. Members for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) and for Arfon (Hywel Williams). It was also good to work closely with the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), who is no longer in his place.

It is true that the Bill was somewhat improved following our debates, at least in two matters where the Government accepted defeat—and with some grace, I have to say—on the question of the port of Dover. It was good to see the Minister move the amendment on co-operatives as eligible bodies and particular forms of charitable organisations. All that is very welcome. We worked in good order with good humour. I said many times—and I repeat it now as it is a good thing to say—that the two Ministers were both extremely reasonable, although they were occasionally reasonable men doing unreasonable things.

No Labour Member would object in principle to the idea that we should keep the quango state, as it is called in the United Kingdom, under constant review. In March 2010, the Labour Government set out almost £500 million-worth of savings that could be achieved by reducing the number of arm’s length bodies. We expected to reduce their number by 123 by 2012-13. Labour had inherited just over 1,100 quangos when we came to power in 1997; in fact, we axed about 400 of them during our term in office.

I want to put it on the record before making some more general points that we will support properly costed savings in administration, bureaucracy and other forms of overheads. Clearly, if bodies have come to the end of their useful lives, they should be put humanely wherever quangos go when they are no longer needed. We gave the Bill a fair hearing on Second Reading, and did not divide the House. In Committee, too, we tried to be more than reasonable and fair. To an extent, there is a shared agenda and there is certainly a consensus that the quango state should at least be kept under review. However, following Committee and today’s debates on Report, I am sorry to say that I find it impossible to recommend that the Bill be given a Third Reading.

All the bodies that we are discussing were established through primary legislation, a process with which we are very familiar, involving reasoned and detailed debate here, in the other place and in Committee. Surely the most appropriate way in which to consider the abolition of most of these bodies is through the same reasoned and detailed debate. It may be possible to deal with some it of through secondary legislation—I do not want to make a universal law—but it seems to me that Ministers are being given far too many powers that will be exercised by means of orders placed before the House. Already, even before the House has finally decided to enact the Bill, the Government have, by administrative means, begun to disassemble the various quangos with which we are now so familiar. They have gutted the regional development agencies, which were there to create jobs, enterprise and growth, and which are needed above all in times of difficulty such as those that we are now experiencing. They have cut staff, changed their functions and reduced their funding without a by-your-leave from the House, although the House spent many weeks, indeed months, setting up the RDAs in the first place. The same applies to the Equality and Human Rights Commission. What I consider a disgraceful 66% reduction in staff has made it difficult for the commission to perform duties that were conferred on it by the House. It is not right for Ministers to take administrative measures to curtail the lives of bodies that were established by Parliament to carry out particular public functions before the Bill has been enacted.

Ministers will claim, as they have done repeatedly, that there will be detailed debate on each body at a later stage through the secondary legislation process. However, it is simply not right for such important issues to be debated only by means of statutory instruments. That is not, in general, the way in which to reverse primary legislation.

In the other place, the Bill was debated for what must have seemed an eternity, particularly to civil servants and Ministers. Literally hundreds of amendments were tabled, and, as we have heard, there was criticism of the infamous schedule 7. The Bill was condemned as a mass enabling act which circumvented the proper and due process of Parliament, and it emerged substantially changed. I am sorry to inform any of their lordships who read the record of tonight’s debate that they must again pay special attention to the Bill if it is passed tonight, because so much of it has been dealt with inappropriately. I urge them to look carefully at some of the amendments that have been driven through.

We should remember that when Conservative Members first envisaged the Bill, they said that it was designed to save money. It was extraordinary that the Prime Minister should say that it would save £30 billion, given that two days earlier the Secretary of State, in another newspaper article, had said that it would save £20 billion. Now we hear that, in fact, we will save £2.6 billion. However, we gather from parliamentary questions that I have tabled that the savings will amount to about £1.5 billion. The financial underpinnings of the Bill are a shambles, and that typifies the way in which it has been handled more generally. Therefore, my patience and good-will in respect of the Government’s course of action on quangos have tonight been stretched to breaking point.

The House was given less than five hours to consider the Bill on Report, even though there was a glut of Government amendments and a list of incredibly important organisations that ought to have been discussed, but which were not. There was an odd moment in the Lobby, when the Government Whips seemed to be dragging their feet, presumably in order to avoid a debate on the Welsh television channel. Therefore, as I predicted earlier, this evening we have not had an opportunity to deal with all the matters before the House. We did not get an opportunity to look at the regional development agencies, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the Equality and Human Rights Commission or the Human Tissue Authority. Above all, we did not get even a moment to discuss S4C, a vital service to the people of Wales. These are just some of the bodies covered by the Bill which, disgracefully, the House did not have a proper opportunity to debate.

[Jonathan Edwards]

My colleagues were delighted to see the Labour amendment on S4C. Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that if Labour are returned to power—or when broadcasting is devolved and Labour take control of the Welsh Government—it will honour its commitments?

[Jon Trickett]

What I will say about S4C is that we tabled our amendment and we made our position clear both in that and in the speeches made in Committee, which the hon. Gentleman can read, and thereby see the precise commitments we made.

Throughout the consideration of the Bill, there has been no appropriate means for consultation or for the making of representations by the many bodies whose futures are being damaged or by their clients who will be affected by these measures. Evidence sessions were not permitted, and bodies who had a case were ignored, as were people who benefit from the services they offer—the disabled who depend on the Equality and Human Rights Commission, for instance, or those who depend on the Royal British Legion.

The Ministers have been fair-minded, but the truth is that this whole process has been ramshackle. Giving Ministers the power to strike down organisations without there being proper parliamentary scrutiny is the worst kind of government; that simply does not meet the high standards this House should expect. The Bill should be condemned based on the decision on the chief coroner alone. For these reasons, the Opposition firmly oppose the Bill and will seek to press the House to a Division.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Seven Members are trying to catch my eye, and the arithmetic is not encouraging, although a self-denying ordinance exercised by the colleagues called to speak in the interests of other colleagues would doubtless be helpful.

21:43

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

I will be brief, but there are some important points that need to be made. First, I follow the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman in thanking the ministerial team who served on the Bill Committee. Being the mouthpiece for several other Government Departments was an onerous task, and they performed it very effectively.

The Bill has been on a long journey since its introduction in the other place. I hope there is still broad agreement on the original principles. When I was sitting in Committee, I continually reminded myself of the three yardsticks the Ministers had set: transparency, accountability and the economics of quangos. All the parties wish to reduce the number of quangos but, as many were created through primary legislation, it was necessary to adopt a streamlined approach that would allow Ministers to modify and abolish existing quangos. I think the Government now accept—grudgingly, at least—that the initial powers in the Bill as introduced in the other place were far too sweeping. That has changed, and we now have a much better Bill.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) and my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) said, this is still a work in progress. The Ministers in Committee reminded us constantly that this was enabling legislation. As one of my friends who was concerned with S4C alone reminded me today, that is still unfinished business. We have had some welcome news today, but there is still going to be a public consultation, there are still various regulatory hurdles that the Cabinet Office will have to overcome, there will still be an order under the Bill and an operating agreement—at least I hope we will get this—will still need to be reached with the BBC. So there are still issues to be dealt with.

I welcome the fact that this Bill provides for an enhanced devolution process and, in particular, grants Welsh Ministers the power to create their own environmental body to take on the functions of the Environment Agency Wales, the Countryside Council for Wales and the Forestry Commission Wales. I regret, however, that the principle was not extended to consumer advocacy. I know that the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) was hoping to pursue that on Report if his amendment had been accepted—it was the amendment that I moved in Committee.

[Alun Michael]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point. It is important that Ministers continue the discussions that have been taking place with the Ministers in the Welsh Assembly Government to ensure that the systems put in place for Wales are appropriate and properly resourced, and that this is not allowed to wither on the vine. I endorse the point that he is making about the importance of this matter.

[Mr Williams]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that comment. As he is aware, the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs is undertaking an inquiry on this matter and we will not allow it to wither on the vine. The requests of the Welsh Assembly Government must be responded to.

In not pursuing the amendment that some of us sought, we are missing an opportunity to ensure that Wales can have the best possible model to deal with consumer policy. The Bill will pass tonight, but in the coming weeks and months the Government will present the results of consultations on the consumer landscape and if they do decide that Wales should have the power on these matters, sadly they will have no suitable legislative vehicle to grant that.

I welcome the announcement on S4C, although I regret more that we did not have an opportunity to talk about S4C today. We had a prolonged debate in Committee on it but, like the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams), I would have welcomed the opportunity to push our amendment on providing financial stability for S4C. I welcome today’s announcement that the BBC will not have representatives on S4C’s management board, but S4C will still be reporting to the BBC under the terms of the operating agreement, once it is finalised, and will be reliant on the BBC for its funding. That decision did not need to be taken now in this Bill; it could have been taken in the forthcoming communications Bill, and concerns remain.

We heard the welcome announcement by the Government that there is now to be a duty on the Secretary of State to provide sufficient funds, although how closely involved the Secretary of State will be remains to be seen. I am firmly of the opinion that this must not just be a rubber stamp of whatever the BBC decides. Like the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards), I feel that until the day when devolution is passed down to the Cynulliad as part of that settlement, the Secretary of State must be central to and engaged in the process.

We do now have a longer-term funding settlement. Again, it is welcome that S4C has a better long-term idea of its funding, albeit not at the level that some of us hoped for. But what we tried to achieve in Committee and hoped to achieve on Report were genuine stable funding criteria that will provide guidance and direction on what S4C requires. That is particularly important to the creative industries in Wales. I have concerns that tying S4C into the operation agreement that it will have––to which it has perhaps reluctantly agreed––means that it is difficult to see protections for its independence, particularly its operational independence.

[Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)]

Is it not the case that this morning’s agreement between S4C and the BBC has guaranteed a six-year funding stream for S4C? In the current economic climate, would not the majority of small businesses be very grateful for a six-year funding guarantee?

[Mr Williams]

I ask my hon. Friend to examine the justification given some 15 years ago by the Conservative Minister at the time for a stable, formula-based funding settlement for S4C. It was convincing in 1996 and I suggest that that is the direction the Government should have taken.

Nobody at S4C has ever doubted the need to make cuts to reduce costs but the Government need to recognise that the action they are taking is not tinkering around the edges or making a few savings but fundamentally changing the dynamic that makes S4C valued by fluent Welsh speakers and Welsh learners. It is a guarantee for the independence that is valued. This decision should not be taken lightly, but I have to say, without the history lessons that we considered at great length in Committee, that the decision was rushed and taken without due consideration.

I sincerely hope that the arrangements work well and that the assurances that have convinced my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) and others are realised but I fear that the S4C we knew has been changed for ever. As someone who represents a Welsh-speaking constituency, I testify to the importance of this issue. I do not regret for one moment the hours we spent talking about these issues on Second Reading and in Committee. Had we been given the chance, we would have spent some time on them on Report as well.

21:50

[Jonathan Ashworth]

It is a pleasure to speak on Third Reading. I was privileged enough to sit on the Bill Committee and I want to endorse the comments made by the Deputy Leader of the House—the way in which the Committee proceeded was generally very good indeed. I do not want to appear discourteous but I think that he and the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd) have made a better fist of defending the Government position on some things than departmental Ministers have this evening. Perhaps they should have been at the Dispatch Box more tonight.

I am conscious that many Members want to speak so I shall just make a few brief remarks. The Bill has been spun in the newspapers as a great bonfire of the quangos—rather differently from the way in which the Paymaster General presented it. We have had briefings to The Sun, with an article featuring the headline, “Quango cull saves £30 billion”, stating:

“Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, writing in The Sun today reveals the giant new sum”.

However, the Minister comes and tells us that this is not about saving money, and that may be the case, but it seems that his press officers have been spinning to the newspapers that that is exactly the case.

Let us look at the history of Conservative party policy on this issue. Before the election the Prime Minister talked about needing to save £60 billion from quangos, and I recall the Conservatives’ entering the 2005 election with the James review and talking about abolishing quangos. I do not think that the Paymaster General was in the shadow Cabinet at that time, but one of his Ministers in the Cabinet Office was the shadow Chancellor. Many of the bodies that were proposed for abolition in the James review have, hey presto, ended up being proposed for abolition in this Bill, so when the Minister says that all this is not driven by savings, cost-cutting and trying to get rid of bureaucracy and paper clips, I am a little sceptical.

I am also a little sceptical about the savings that the Government claim they will make. My hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) has found out, through a series of parliamentary questions and freedom of information requests, that far from making administration savings of £2.5 billion, they are more likely to make savings of £1 billion or so. They have talked about making huge capital savings of about £11 billion from the Department for Communities and Local Government, for example, but I do not see where those savings are going to come from in the Bill. There are certainly some big ticket items—for example, the regional development agencies’ going is a major saving—but I do not know whether Ministers have taken into account the effects on economic growth. I know they will disagree with this, but Lord Heseltine thinks it is a mistake to get rid of RDAs. He has also said that now RDAs are being abolished, Departments are setting up departmental empires in the regions. Has the Paymaster General accounted for that in his figures?

When we look at the ways in which a number of bodies are being abolished, there are further questions. The case of the Audit Commission, for example, although not in the Bill is instructive none the less. The Secretary of State announced its abolition and people at the commission entered into redundancy negotiations, but in February this year they were told that the commission will continue to be open for business until 2014. How much did that cost?

There are also some examples in the Bill. The merger of the Central Arbitration Committee and the Certification Officer will probably produce a negligible saving. We can argue about whether it is right to merge them, but surely a cost will be associated with doing so, because of the need for new branding, a new name, new offices and so on. Has the Paymaster General taken that into account? Perhaps most ludicrously, the Football Licensing Authority was removed from the Bill and replaced by the Sports Ground Safety Authority—a body welcomed by Ministers—which will now be abolished, but not until 2012. Again, Ministers cannot tell us what will happen to its staff and what savings will be made.

I am running through this very quickly, and I shall come to an end. Generally, there is much scepticism about the savings that the Paymaster General expects to make. There are certainly some good things in the Bill—for instance, abolishing unnecessary quangos such as the Victims Advisory Panel, which has not met since 2009. I am pleased that Ministers have now accepted the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke). He spoke eloquently in Committee, and he got those amendments through because of Labour Members. Overall, I am afraid that this is a bad Bill. In places, it is ill thought out. It is potentially costly, and I will oppose it.

21:56

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to all hon. Members, including Ministers, who served on the Bill Committee. Members will think that we had a good time, and we did. We had a great time, with a lot of laughter. The tears, however, came from the Opposition, partly because of the different bodies that will be abolished.

I want to touch on three major bodies, the first of which is the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Of course, I would mention it; as a woman, I have felt the effects of an increase in equality because of such bodies. The Minister talked about the cost. It costs £1 for every person in Britain. That is a small price to pay for equality. Equal pay is still an issue. The case of Gibson v. Sheffield city council in 2011 involved women carers who were not paid the same as their male counterparts, who got a productivity bonus. There is still much to be done, including for those people who have a background of disabilities. Lesbian and gay issues are still not accepted by everyone.

The other two bodies that I want to touch on are the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and the Human Tissue Authority, which were born of a need to protect embryos and human tissue. The establishment of the HTA is the result of the retention and use of children’s organs without parental consent and the Bristol heart surgery scandal, which involved 170 babies. The establishment of the HFEA is the result of the report by Baroness Warnock—an eminent and iconic figure—on the special status of the embryo, and it was created under a Conservative Government.

This cannot be money-driven. The Minister is wrong, because those bodies cost £2 million and £1 million respectively. They generate their own income. They are trusted, independent organisations, with two brilliant women as chairs—Professor Lisa Jardine at the HFEA and Baroness Warwick at the HTA. It is no wonder that the Women’s Institute is upset with the Government, because they are getting rid of the EHRC and attacking those two brilliant women.

The future plans for those two organisations include placing them in a research body that has not yet even been founded, with other parts of them going to the Care Quality Commission. Hon. Members should read the report of the Health Committee, of which I have been a member, because it raises grave concerns. Those bodies give the public confidence. They are internationally renowned. They are asked for advice throughout the world. They should be left alone to carry on and do their important work.

21:58

[Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

I endorse everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) said. It is a great credit to the people in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority that they have done such a good job, but it is a great credit to the House that in that sphere, where there are a great many ethical and practical problems, and where some people wanted no research done and others wanted no restrictions on that research, the House, after lengthy deliberations over two decades, came up with a system that works and is well thought of all over the world, and we are expected to dismiss it in a farcical five minutes at the end of a debate on the Bill.

Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

21:59

Division 376

Ayes: 300

---

Conservative: 257
Liberal Democrat: 41
Democratic Unionist Party: 1

Noes: 224

---

Labour: 217
Plaid Cymru: 3
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 2
Alliance: 1
Green Party: 1
Democratic Unionist Party: 1

Bill read the Third time and passed, with amendments.

Business without Debate

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Commons Chamber

Delegated Legislation

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Constitutional Law

That the draft Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 (Consequential Modifications of Enactments) Order 2011, which was laid before this House on 14 July, be approved.—(Angela Watkinson.)

Question agreed to.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE (26 OCTOBER)

Ordered,

That, at the sitting on Wednesday 26 October, paragraph (2) of Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments) shall apply to the Motions in the name of Edward Miliband as if the day were an Opposition Day; proceedings on the Motions may continue, though opposed, until the moment of interruption and shall then lapse if not previously disposed of; and Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply.—(Angela Watkinson.)

Committees

[Mr Speaker]

With the leave of the House, we will take motions 6 and 7 together.

Ordered,

Scottish Affairs

That Cathy Jamieson and Fiona O’Donnell be discharged from the Scottish Affairs Committee and Iain McKenzie and Graeme Morrice be added.

Work and Pensions

That Kate Green be discharged from the Work and Pensions Committee and Sheila Gilmore be added.—(Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.)

Wharfedale Hospital Ward 1 (Otley, West Yorkshire)

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Commons Chamber

22:15

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

I present a petition from more than 3,000 people on behalf of the Support Wharfedale Hospital campaign, which is a campaign group in my constituency formed for the whole community to show its support for Wharfedale hospital in Otley.

The petition states:

The Petition of residents of Leeds,

Declares that the Petitioners oppose the decision by Leeds University Teaching Hospitals Trust to close Ward 1 at Wharfedale Hospital and oppose any further loss of services at the hospital.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to encourage Leeds University Teaching Hospitals Trust and NHS Leeds to commit to Wharfedale Hospital's future as a genuine community NHS hospital.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.

[P000971]

Constitutional Status (Scotland)

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Angela Watkinson.)

22:16

Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to lead this important debate about the future of my nation. It will not have escaped your notice that the results of last May’s Scottish Parliament elections were less than satisfactory as far as my party is concerned. We now have a majority Scottish National party Government at Holyrood, a Government who are committed to ripping Scotland out of the most successful political and democratic union the world has ever seen.

Although I disagree fundamentally with the nationalists and the very notion of identity politics—my party has always believed that people are rather more important than borders—I nevertheless concede and recognise that the SNP now has a mandate to hold a referendum on whether Scotland should be a nation separate from the rest of Britain and, consequently, Europe.

I want to take the opportunity of this debate to remind the nationalists that the electorate have given them a mandate, not a blank cheque. I want to know from the Minister whether, if the SNP proves to be incapable of holding a free and fair referendum, the UK Government will have any role in ensuring that the Scottish people are properly consulted about the future of our nation. The SNP manifesto earlier this year stated:

“Independence will only happen when people in Scotland vote for it. That is why independence is your choice. We think the people of Scotland should decide our nation’s future in a democratic referendum and opinion polls suggest that most Scots agree. We will, therefore, bring forward our Referendum Bill in this next Parliament. A yes vote will mean Scotland becomes an independent nation.”

Unfortunately, since unexpectedly achieving an overall majority at Holyrood, the First Minister seems to have decided, rather counter-intuitively, that the manifesto on which he was elected matters less than it would have mattered if he had been forced to govern again as a minority. Even now, many SNP members claim that their party’s mandate is to hold the referendum towards the end of this Parliament. The manifesto says no such thing. The First Minister is entitled to hold a referendum at a time of his choosing, and it could be next year, or in 2015 if that is his preference. He obviously knows when it will be, and it beggars belief to suggest that he and his cohorts have not at least narrowed down the time to two or three possible dates. Why will they not share that information with Scotland? Are only high-ranking members of the party entitled to that information?

Whatever one’s view of independence, I am sure we can all agree that this debate will inevitably cause a degree of uncertainty in Scotland. Even if Alex Salmond today condescended to share the date of the referendum with us mere mortals, a degree of uncertainty and financial instability would ensue. The SNP could choose to minimise that, but instead chooses not to do so. More important than the effects on future investment decisions is the simple democratic right of ordinary Scots to know precisely what plans the SNP has for our nation.

Nor does the SNP manifesto feature a commitment to lowering the voting age for the referendum, yet that seems to be exactly what the SNP is planning, since it clearly believes that the chances of the people endorsing their plans for independence would be less if the existing franchise were used. The SNP will, no doubt, point to its long-standing commitment to joining Nicaragua, Cuba, and Ecuador in the group of nations where 16-year-olds vote. Polling suggests that younger people are more likely to support independence, so who can doubt that a one-off reduction in the voting age for one specific event can be anything other than the most cynical move to get the “right” result? If the SNP really cared about enfranchising younger people, why has it made no progress towards lowering the voting age for local authority elections, over which it does have legislative control?

Thirdly, the SNP seems to have a problem with the idea of the Electoral Commission having any oversight of the referendum. I suspect I know why. When the Deputy Prime Minister announced his preferred question to put before the people in the AV referendum, the Electoral Commission said no and insisted on a more objective, more easily understandable question. I think that the Deputy Prime Minister’s preferred question was “AV is great, isn’t it?” To be forced to ask the Scottish people a straightforward, understandable question is something that the SNP, bizarrely, cannot tolerate.

Then there is the biggie: so-called full fiscal autonomy. However long it will be before the referendum, it is unlikely that this option—whatever we call it, whether it is “Devo Max”, “Independent Lite” or “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Independence”—is likely to be any better defined than it is today; it will still mean whatever one wants it to mean, which undoubtedly explains why it is consistently the most popular option in the opinion polls. Not only is it ill defined, it is not even deliverable, since it would affect fundamentally the way in which the whole of the United Kingdom, not just Scotland, was governed. Scotland imposing a form of government on the rest of the UK would be no more acceptable than the other way round.

Moreover, once again, there is nothing in the SNP manifesto, nor in anyone’s manifesto, to justify the addition of a third option on the ballot paper.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Harris]

I am tempted; of course I will.

[Pete Wishart]

I have been listening very carefully to what the hon. Gentleman is saying. When does he think that Westminster should take over the whole referendum process? Given that he is so concerned, perplexed and exercised about the third question, what does he have to say to Lord Foulkes, Malcolm Chisholm, former First Ministers and those of his hon. Friends who believe that a third option should be put on the referendum?

[Mr Harris]

When the SNP starts telling us dates, I will, in turn, give the hon. Gentleman some dates for any deadline that the UK Government might wish to impose.

Even in his typically humble and understated conference speech in Inverness on Saturday, the First Minister gave an opaque hint that “Separation Lite” might yet be included on the ballot paper, but he fell short of clarifying the issue, though his spin doctors had told the press in advance that that was exactly what he intended to do. Let us be clear that none of these things—the refusal to name a date, the lowering of the voting age, the exclusion of the Electoral Commission and the inclusion of a third, vague option—was in the SNP manifesto, and for a very good reason: fair-minded Scots would have concluded that someone, somewhere, was attempting a constitutional sleight of hand; and they would have been right. Whether or not the Scottish people wish to remain part of the UK, it is of the utmost importance that the result of any referendum cannot be second-guessed, misinterpreted, reinterpreted or undermined. It must not be ambiguous.

In 1995, the people of Quebec were asked to take part in their second referendum on independence. One might be forgiven for assuming that the question on the ballot paper was, “Do you want Quebec to become independent?” That would have been far too honest and straightforward a question. After all, the actual question was framed by nationalists. This is the question that was put to Quebec’s voters in 1995:

“Do you agree that Quebec should become sovereign, after having made a formal offer to Canada for a new economic and political partnership, within the scope of the Bill respecting the future of Quebec and of the agreement signed on 12 June 1995?”

Very straightforward, is it not? Given the high esteem in which Scottish nationalists hold the separatists of Quebec, I expect that they looked upon that wording and on the narrow margin of defeat that it suffered with envy and admiration.

It would be a great shame if the nationalists’ posturing, prevarication and cowardice on the referendum were to result in the same kind of solution to which the Canadian Parliament was forced to resort: a Clarity Act to ensure that certain basic principles of transparency and honesty were adhered to in any referendum. That is not a road that I want to go down, but it is something we may have to consider. After all, the sovereignty of the Scottish people and our right to a fair and honest say in the future of our nation trump the pomposity and pride of Scottish Government Ministers of whatever rank.

Perhaps this jiggery-pokery—I do not know whether this will be the first time that that phrase will appear in Hansard—is understandable from a nationalist perspective. After all, politics is about priorities and the SNP priority is independence, nothing else. Jobs, the economy, the health service, schools, the fight against poverty—none of those issues matter as much to the nationalists as the prospect of replacing the words “United Kingdom” with the word “Scotland” on their passports. Perhaps in their minds, the end justifies the means. In my mind, and in the minds of the great majority of Scots, it certainly does not.

It is not too late. The Scottish Government could, even now, rescue their reputation and re-establish their commitment to Scottish democracy by making it clear that the question we were promised—yes or no to independence—will be asked, with no fudging, no cheating, no rigging, and with complete transparency. The Scottish people deserve that at least.

If the SNP Government cannot rise to the challenge of delivering their own manifesto commitment, we may have to accept that the UK Government have a role to play. Alex Salmond is highly thought of in Scotland. [Interruption.] He is. He is a substantial politician and I have no doubt—I am not being sarcastic—that he loves Scotland dearly. If he is guilty occasionally of putting his party’s ambitions above those of the Scottish people, it is only because he too often conflates the two. So what would it say about Alex Salmond if the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron), the Prime Minister, turned out to be more capable than he of delivering the SNP’s key manifesto commitment?

22:28

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Mundell)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow South (Mr Harris) on securing this debate on what is an important issue, and I thank all hon. Members for their presence at it. I note the hon. Gentleman’s participation in the contest for the leadership of the Scottish Labour party. I would wish him well, but I know that that would damage his chances. There is also a contest for the deputy leadership of the Scottish Labour party. As I have already made clear, when a newspaper headline read, “Mundell Backs Davidson”, it did not refer to the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Mr Davidson), so that should help his chances.

The Government have been clear that they are totally opposed to the break-up of the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister has committed to working constructively with the devolved Administrations on the basis of mutual respect. There are many issues on which the Government have worked successfully with the Scottish Government. However, we do not agree with the Scottish Government in their pursuit of separatism. On that issue, we will give them no succour. Whatever factors played a part in May’s election result, a rise in support for Scottish separatism was not one of them.

However, let me be clear that we are not complacent about the Scottish Government’s call for a referendum on the breaking up of the United Kingdom. We are challenging them. They must answer the substantive questions, to which the hon. Member for Glasgow South referred, about what they mean by “independence”. They have been uncharacteristically shy in setting out exactly what independence would involve and what it would cost.

After repeated questioning, the Scottish Government have now told me that the 2009 White Paper “Your Scotland, Your Voice” and the 2010 draft Referendum (Scotland) Bill hold all the answers. As hon. Members would expect, we are scrutinising those papers thoroughly. However, so far they appear simply to raise more questions than answers. We now also have another glossy SNP pamphlet entitled “Your Scotland, Your Future”, in which, as usual, dozens of promises are set out but there are no facts and no evidence.

The hon. Gentleman raised valuable points about the Scottish Government’s proposed referendum. First, the date of the referendum is crucial. Not only is the current situation unsettling, but many people’s patience is being tested by the lack of detail coming from the Scottish Government on what independence would actually mean. Business leaders are now beginning to say that they are worried about the uncertainty that that is creating about Scotland’s future, which is damaging to Scotland and to the United Kingdom. We are trying to get more detail out of the Scottish Government. At present, all that we have to go on is the vague time line of

“the second half of the parliamentary term”

and no other detail. We do not have to accept that that is satisfactory. As the hon. Gentleman said, that time scale was never a manifesto commitment. In fact, the First Minister revealed the notion only a week before the elections took place. If the case for separatism is so strong, why wait to hold the referendum?

Secondly, the hon. Gentleman mentioned the referendum question. The First Minister has raised the prospect of “devolution-max”, also known as “independence-lite”, or possibly “full fiscal autonomy”, and is dangling it as a supposed third way. That is a fallacy. There is no third way. The only choice is between separatism and remaining in the United Kingdom.

We can review and update the devolution settlement, as Calman did and as the Scotland Bill is currently doing. The Calman commission, formed through cross-party consensus, recognised the strength and benefits of the economic and social union between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. Its recommendations are now being implemented through the Scotland Bill, which represents a radical, historic and significant change to the financing of public services in Scotland. We can allow the settlement to evolve, but selling the Scottish people the undefined SNP construct of “devo-max” is selling the Scottish public a pig in a poke. Any referendum question needs to be clear—yes or no to separatism. As the hon. Gentleman said, anything else would simply be jiggery-pokery.

Thirdly, the hon. Gentleman mentioned the franchise. The Scottish Government have indicated that 16 and 17-year-olds should be given the right to vote in any referendum. Many people are already suspicious that the SNP is trying to rig the electorate to get the result it wants. Is it appropriate to experiment with changes to the franchise on a matter of such importance as the future of Scotland?

Finally, the hon. Gentleman discussed the role of the Electoral Commission. It is an independent body, respected for ensuring transparency in polls across the United Kingdom. In their 2010 draft referendum Bill and consultation paper, the Scottish Government stated that they intended to create their own electoral commission for any referendum. Questions have to be asked about that course of action. What is wrong with the current Electoral Commission, which has delivered so much in Scotland to date? What is the motive behind the Scottish Government creating their own commission? How many extra costs would that create for the taxpayer?

The hon. Gentleman also made a valid point about the Canadian Clarity Act, and it is worthy of further consideration. Hon. Members will be aware that the Scottish Affairs Committee is holding two inquiries into questions relating to a referendum and what the break-up of the United Kingdom would mean for Scotland and the rest of the UK. I have no doubt that academics and experts called before the Committee will be keen to explore the Canadian Clarity Act and its parallels with Scotland.

[Mr Ian Davidson (Glasgow South West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister correctly identifies that the Scottish Affairs Committee is looking at aspects of a separation referendum. Will he make the resources of government, particularly civil servants, available to provide information to the Committee? That would help us to clarify some of the questions that we identify in our current trawl. Those issues will require settlement before any referendum is held, so that the Scottish public can be well informed.

[David Mundell]

I can give the Committee Chairman that assurance. The Government will do everything we can to support the Committee’s work, because we believe that the people should be well informed before any referendum takes place. We sincerely hope that the Scottish Government will follow our example and be forthcoming with the same level of information, which is required not just by the Committee, but by the people of Scotland if they are to make a decision on this important matter.

[Pete Wishart]

The Minister does not quite understand that the days of this House determining and dictating what the Scottish do in future are over and gone, and do not matter any more. Does he foresee any situation or condition in which this Westminster Conservative Government will take over the referendum process?

[David Mundell]

If the hon. Gentleman believed a word of that diatribe, he would call the referendum now and demonstrate what the people of Scotland think.

We share so much in common across the United Kingdom and we have a successful partnership that delivers stability and prosperity for all parts of the nation. I think we will see people across Scotland coming out in favour of the most successful economic and social union ever when they eventually get the chance to vote. It is right to keep the United Kingdom together when so much unites us. The best of the UK is still to come.

Let hon. Members be in no doubt that the Government will not be neutral on the break-up of the United Kingdom. We will continue to argue for a better future for Scotland within the UK. We look forward to continuing this debate and to contributing to the Scottish Affairs Committee inquiries in due course, and to the Scottish Government’s co-operation with those two inquiries, when they can answer the questions raised in the debate. What the people of Scotland need now is not vulgar triumphalism from Mr Salmond and glossy brochures from the SNP, but facts, evidence and answers.

Question put and agreed to.

22:38

House adjourned.

Great Harwood Household Waste Recycling Centre (Lancashire)

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Petitions

The Petition of residents of Great Harwood, Lancashire and others,

Declares that following Lancashire County Council’s budget review and report into household waste recycling centres, there are now plans to close further recycling centres across the county; that it has been announced that Great Harwood is one of the sites that has been identified to close; and that the Petitioners believe that this will inevitably decrease recycling and increase fly-tipping in Great Harwood and the surrounding areas of Lancashire

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to write to Lancashire County Council to ask them to reconsider the proposal to shut the Great Harwood Household Waste Recycling Centre and to keep it open, as it is a vital service to the town and surrounding areas.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.—[Presented by Graham Jones, Official Report, 14 September 2011; Vol. 532, c. 1146 .]

[P000962]

Observations from the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

All waste disposal authorities are required by section 51 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (EPA) to provide places where residents of the area can deposit their household waste free of charge.

The Government believe that it is for local authorities to decide how best to meet their legal obligations, taking into account local needs, economic efficiencies and the need to protect the environment. This includes determining the provision and location of individual household waste recycling centres. We also recognise that people feel strongly about their waste services and we want to make it easier for people to do the right thing, with local authorities providing both the kerbside waste collection service and household waste recycling centres to enable people to do this.

While we believe that waste services are a matter for local authorities to develop local solutions that meet the needs and priorities of their communities we will work with councils to support them in delivering this. For example, we believe that better procurement and joint working can improve the efficiency of waste management while improving the frontline service for the public in an affordable and practical manner. DEFRA is working with iESE (Improvement and Efficiency South East) and WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme) to provide support and advice to local authorities on procurement, partnership working, efficiency checks and cost-effective waste services.

The Government believe that it is better to reward householders for doing the right thing with their waste than to penalise them for doing the wrong thing. It is therefore encouraging councils to reward people who recycle their waste. We are interested in approaches that reward or recognise either individuals or communities and those that can apply in different situations and for a range of collection systems and housing types. DEFRA has provided funding of £500,000 this financial year to 16 projects run by both local authorities and community organisations to introduce or trial new schemes that reward or recognise people or communities for adopting positive behaviours towards managing their waste.

In addition, the Government have committed to removing the disproportionate criminal sanctions currently available for local authorities to use against householders who fail to present their waste for collection correctly and to reduce the maximum level of fines that can be issued under the current Fixed Penalty Notice regime. At the same time we recognise that powers must be available to tackle serious waste crime and we are working with local authorities and the Environment Agency to make it easier to enforce fly-tipping and stop persistent offenders.

Westminster Hall

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Westminster Hall

Tuesday 25 October 2011

[Mr David Amess in the Chair]

Business Rates (North-East)

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Westminster Hall

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

09:30

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Amess. I am grateful for the opportunity to initiate this debate on an issue that will have a big impact on the north-east, as is evident from the number of my fellow north-east MPs who are present. The whole country is being affected by the difficulties in the economy, but it is fair to say that the north-east is suffering. Economic growth is stalling and unemployment rising. In the period from May to July of this year, the north-east had the highest unemployment level in the country at 11.3%.

Unfortunately, that is not altogether a new experience for our region. For decades, the north-east was undermined and overlooked as a place of economic growth. In the 1980s in my constituency of Sunderland Central, we saw the shipyards that had defined our city and been a source of pride for generations, employing entire families, almost disappear from the banks of the River Wear. At its peak, ours was the biggest shipbuilding town in the world. When it came to our efforts in world war two, we produced more than a quarter of the nation’s total tonnage of merchant and naval ships. However, in 1988, British Shipbuilders shut up shop. That was followed five years later by the closure, by a Tory Government, of our last coal mine, putting many thousands of people on the dole.

The economic history and future of the north-east is one of manufacturing and production. We are intensely proud of that. Sunderland is now world-famous for building cars. I applied for the debate as a result of the submission by the Association of North East Councils of its response to the consultation on the review of local government finance. That laid out a clear case of concerns about the Government’s proposals. It is worth mentioning that the response had cross-party support from across the region.

Despite our rich heritage, the north-east has not been able to keep up with the economic growth of other regions in our country, and we are still rebalancing our economy after the decline of our traditional industries. That is why the formula grant has been crucial to councils across the region, allowing them to provide the services needed for their residents, while trying to address growth in their areas. For Sunderland city council, the gap between the formula grant that it receives from the Government and the amount in business rates that the city collects is £60 million. In Durham, the figure is £80 million, and across the north-east there is a shortfall of about £400 million. Business rates make up more than 80% of the Government grant to councils, so this really is a critical issue.

No one is arguing that the formula grant could not be improved, but what the Government propose with the localisation of business rates has the potential to make things worse. I am thinking particularly of the lack of information about top-ups and tariffs. The Minister has said that the formula grant method is incomprehensible, far too complex and lacking in transparency and that councils are left at the whim of the formula setter in Whitehall. I agree that the formula grant system is not perfect and it is certainly complicated. However, it does attempt to be fair, redistributing centrally pooled funds to councils according to their needs.

Under localisation of business rates, the system will change completely. The proposed system takes no account of councils’ ability to raise council tax, no account of differing abilities to generate business, no account of future needs and no account of a council’s ability to service the needs of its residents.

Let us examine the differences in council tax yields. In the north-east, most authorities have more than 50% of their properties in council tax band A, compared with Surrey, where the figure is just 2%. In Sunderland, only 9% of the housing is in band D, compared with Surrey, where the figure is 75%. People can see the unequalness in the ability of local authorities to raise revenue. In real terms, that means that an area such as South Tyneside can raise £427 per person, whereas Kensington and Chelsea can raise £795 per person—a huge difference. The system of equalisation under the formula grant worked so that the actual difference was just £3 per person. That enabled local authorities to provide the services needed by their residents, regardless of the economic base of their area. It is a question of fairness, equality and need. If the Government are serious about making the proposed system fair, they need to deal with that issue.

Deprivation levels in the north-east are high: 33% of our population live in the 20% most deprived areas in the country; Sunderland has 34 neighbourhoods in the 10% most deprived areas nationally. That level of deprivation leads to a much greater demand on the services provided by local authorities. I am referring to more people receiving the home care service, more looked-after children and supported adults, more children on free school meals—the list is endless. As the ANEC report states, any system has to ensure that it does not create a spiral of decline in poorer areas, with an impact on health and social care.

The north-east has an ageing population. It is expected that by 2030, 23% of the population will be over 65, leading to an even greater pull on resources. It is right that any new system should take that into account. At the moment, I cannot see how the Government’s proposals will do that. I hope that the Government’s plans for top-ups and tariffs, of which we have yet to see the details, will fully respond to that situation. The gap between the north and south of England is already stark; I am concerned that with these plans, it will only grow larger.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on obtaining the debate. Does she agree that the Government’s proposals would result in exactly what happened in America in the 1980s? Cities such as New Orleans and Detroit became derelict, with anyone who could move out of them doing so to obtain the services that they needed. What the Government propose would create derelict cities in the north.

[Julie Elliott]

There is a real danger that that could happen, which is why it is important that this debate highlights the issues for our region. The situation that my hon. Friend describes is the last thing we need. I cannot believe that is the Government’s intention, but it is the danger in the system that they propose.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

I, too, welcome the debate that the hon. Lady has introduced. Is there not also a problem for areas that have greater difficulty in attracting new business, which is liable to pay high business rates? It may go to city centres, but is much less likely to go, for example, to Northumberland, which at the same time faces the potential loss of its biggest single industrial business rate payer—the large aluminium smelter at Lynemouth.

[Julie Elliott]

I agree. The problems in the north-east are not just in the cities and urban areas. The rural areas of Northumberland and County Durham are as badly affected, but I think that is why the ANEC report has cross-party support. We have Liberals and Tories in government in the north-east, and of course Labour. I think that the reason for the cross-party support is that everyone understands the very difficult economic situation that our region faces.

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

I want to put in a word for the south, because the south-west is equally deprived. There is a view that we live in a land of cream teas and lots of strawberries, but where I am in Teignbridge, we have the twelfth-highest share of small business rate relief. Some 40% of properties get that relief, so if the proposal pooled actual receipts rather than calculating by rateable value, we would lose out. I share the hon. Lady’s concern that for rural areas, such as mine, thought should be given to how money can be brought back to communities that need it, but I support the concept of pooling.

[Julie Elliott]

Other parts of the country are in similar situations; the issue for the north-east is that the entire region is struggling.

The system the Government propose favours the growth of retail space and distribution centres, rather than small and medium-sized businesses and, most crucially in the north-east, manufacturing. Practically, that means that a hectare of land used for retail in the north-east will yield £1 million, compared with £200,000 for manufacturing. It feels as if my region is being punished for manufacturing things. We must remember that manufacturing needs to be at the heart of any national strategy for long-term economic growth. The sector contributes £7.5 billion to the north-east economy per year. We export more than we import, which is helping to rebalance the economy in these difficult financial times. Business rates may value retail and commercial sites the most, but they just do not reflect the way our region’s economy is made up, and with so many people out of work, increasing the number of shops is not the answer and would not be sustainable.

I would be interested to hear more from the Minister about the proposals for introducing mechanisms to overcome economic shocks, which are particularly relevant to the north-east, as we have already suffered from them.

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

Yorkshire, particularly South Yorkshire, will also suffer quite badly under these proposals. Is it not important that any Government legislation makes clear the need for rebalancing by means of top-ups and tariffs, as areas such as ours diverge from richer, more prosperous areas? It should also give a clear indication of when that rebalancing would take place.

[Julie Elliott]

Absolutely. Again, that is why it is important to have this debate and to give the Government the opportunity to hear concerns from formerly heavily industrialised areas as we move forward and try to grow.

In the north-east, councils rely on a small number of larger businesses to generate business rates, but that arrangement can be volatile and vulnerable to shocks, as we have seen in shipbuilding, coal mining, textiles and, more recently, steel making. We need an effective mechanism to manage economic risks and provide protection for areas of poor growth. I support the Government’s view that some of the proceeds of the levy and the set-aside should be used to protect against volatilities.

The Government must recognise that some places have greater economic potential than others. A council’s ability to generate business rates is mainly the result of location, location, location, combined with some effort and a lot of luck. The Government must therefore take account of the issues I have outlined. In particular, they must take longer to consider the wider and unforeseen consequences of their proposals, put in place a regular review of the new system, create a mechanism to protect against volatilities and, most important of all, make sure the system is fair, equitable and based on need.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I think I just caught my hon. Friend before she reached her conclusion, so I am very grateful to her for giving way. She talked about the system being fair and equitable. We both represent the city of Sunderland, which will lose £60 million, as she highlighted. Does she think it fair or equitable that, according to what I have read, the City of Westminster will be able to keep all of the £1 billion it currently raises? How is that fair and equitable?

[Julie Elliott]

That is exactly the point. As currently proposed, the system is not fair and equitable, although we do not have the details. However, the Minister is listening to the debate, and we have an opportunity to highlight the real issues, as well as how unfair and unjust the Government’s proposed system will be if they do not introduce mechanisms to readjust it in more affluent and poorer areas. As the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) said, it is not just the north-east that suffers; we can find the problem in pockets right around the country. The question is how we get the balance right. We all want to promote growth—we are not opposed to promoting growth—but we must allow regions to do so sensibly, and we must support them so that they can provide the services their communities need.

09:44

[Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) for introducing the debate. I feel that I am gatecrashing a tad, but I will not take too long. However, we have many things in common, which I hope to bring out.

I have spoken at length with Councillor Janet Battye, who is vice-chair of Local Government Yorkshire and Humber, and there are real concerns about the proposals. The deadline for submissions is 27 October, so there is still time, and the important point about having the debate now is that it might encourage people to make submissions before the deadline.

There are two overall concerns, which I will detail. First, in terms of those with buoyant business rate bases, the concern is that this will be a case of “to those who have, more will be given”, with the proposals simply sucking in additional investment. As areas get more proceeds from business growth, they will invest them, which will result in more proceeds, which will result in more growth, and so on. There is also a concern about the historic and fundamentally important link between funding levels and the overall assessment of local needs. If that link breaks down, it will be to the detriment of many authorities that serve deprived communities.

As to the details, I am a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, and I realised many years ago that the way to kill off a conversation at a party is to start talking about local government finance. None the less, the issue is crucial to millions of people.

There is a danger that the proposals are being rushed a bit, especially at a time when local authorities—especially many in the north—face huge reductions in their tax base and income, particularly as a result of front-loading. It is also difficult to look at the long-term repercussions of the proposals when local authorities face problems with the amount of Government grant they will receive for council tax.

The second point—perhaps it should have been the first point, because it was raised before the Localism Bill was considered in depth—relates to having a fundamental review of the relationship between central and local government. Such a review should come first; then we should have the structure, followed by the financing of local government. However, we have not really had a serious debate about the sort of relationship we want between central and local government.

There is also the false belief that business rates are the same as economic growth, but that is not necessarily the case. It is certainly not the case that there is a link between business rates and needs in an area. We are in the process—I think we are all signed up to this—of rebalancing the economy in many ways. Hopefully, the economy is being rebalanced from the south to the north, but we are also looking at different sectors in industry, at the type of growth we are likely to encourage and at whether it is likely to be in accordance with our stated rebalancing policy. SMEs and manufacturing have been mentioned, and we lost 15,000 manufacturing jobs in Bradford between 1998 and 2008. We desperately need those jobs back, but will the proposals incentivise the creation of manufacturing jobs, or will we take the more easy route of retail growth?

There is also the issue of the redistribution of wealth that might take place. About £3 billion more in business rates will be generated by 2014.

[Pat Glass]

On that point, one advantage of being a little older is that we have been around before and seen things before. We should remember where the formula grant system came from. Margaret Thatcher introduced it because local authorities—largely Labour ones—in cities were increasing their business rates, and businesses called for the formula grant system. The Government need to think about that because, although we need the detail of the proposed system, they are in danger of being seen as anti-business over this issue.

[Mr Ward]

The details are crucial, and that is why there is a need to take things slowly and not rush. At times trust between central and local government is tested to the limit. We need an established, agreed and fair starting point. At the same time that there are dampening effects on local government finance and a less than accurate assessment of spending pressures on local authorities, we are talking about a base of 2012-13. Many authorities have taken a real smack in the front-loading of the local government settlement and, if the base were 2010-11, that would paint a totally different picture of an area’s needs. That issue has been raised by the Association of North East Councils. We also need regular review, because things change rapidly, certainly in the economy. We need to review the baseline, and five years is too long. I would argue for the resets to be on a shorter time scale.

The point that I was making was about the possible transfer or redistribution of wealth, because £3 billion in additional business rates will be generated by 2014, but that will be happening at the same time that local authority budgets will go down. There may be a transfer of wealth to those areas that initially prosper well from business rate growth, from authorities that have large reductions in their revenue grant.

[Angela Smith]

To add to that point, it has been calculated that Sheffield and Barnsley would have to get significantly more growth in their business base and, under the new system, would have to grow at least at the national average, just to stand still. Does not that make the case for thinking again, and making sure that we get things right?

[Mr Ward]

Absolutely. That is the overall point. I have perhaps spoken too long, as I know other hon. Members want to get into the debate, but that point, more than any other, is the crucial one that we agree on. The issue is serious. The principle is good: we are signed up for the localism agenda. There may be good pressure to achieve growth, and many authorities will rise to that challenge, but the devil is in the detail, and in this instance the details are billions of pounds. There is a need to tread slowly and carefully.

09:52

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) on securing the debate, which I think we all agree is vital to the economic future of the north-east.

The Government’s proposals on business rates discriminate against the north in favour of the south, against smaller authorities with less potential for growth in favour of larger, more metropolitan areas with a wider economic and tax base, against deprived areas with greater social and economic problems, in favour of their more affluent counterparts, and against manufacturing industry in favour of retailing. If the proposed changes to the redistribution of business rates were to take place while everything else in local government finance remained equal, they could at best be given serious consideration. However, we all know that the proposals are made in the context of the most radical, disruptive and damaging changes to local government finance for more than a generation.

I shall concentrate on the borough of Hartlepool and the impact of the proposals there. For the two financial years 2011-12 and 2012-13, Hartlepool borough council’s cuts amount, in terms of the total expenditure slashed by central Government, to some 20%, or an annual change of £10 million. Put another way, the cuts to local government finance in Hartlepool mean a reduction in spending of some £150 for every man, woman and child in the borough, as opposed to a national average reduction of some £50. On top of that, if the business rates redistribution system were to be changed, the borough of Hartlepool could lose upwards of £13 million every year. That is the difference between the amount of business rates collected locally—£27 million—and the £40 million that is redistributed back to the town from the Treasury through the national business rates system. I think we would all agree that such a proposal could not be maintained in any sustainable way for Hartlepool.

[James Wharton (Stockton South) (Con)]

With the proposed tariffs and top-ups, is not that exactly the sort of situation that should not arise? Hartlepool would receive a benefit, added to the business rates that it collects, to top it up to the relevant level, starting at a base point to maintain its funding level in the year of the introduction of business rate retention.

[Mr Wright]

Those last few words are the key phrase. It is what will happen after 2013 that I worry about. There will be potentially very damaging consequences for the north-east economy, and for the services that local government provides to the most deprived communities in our areas, about which we are most concerned.

A further difficulty in Hartlepool is the specific nature of the tax base. It is difficult to raise revenue locally. Forty-three per cent. of council tax is raised locally, as opposed to similar areas which could raise as much as 80% or 90% locally. Three quarters of properties in Hartlepool fall within council tax bands A and B. My hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central mentioned a figure of 9% for properties in band D. In Hartlepool that figure is 7%, so on top of the proposed changes in business rates, the borough’s ability to raise taxes locally is limited, and the Government are doing nothing to address that. The way they are stripping demand out of the local economy through cuts is making things worse.

I mentioned earlier that Hartlepool collected £27 million in business rates. The Hartlepool economy—my hon. Friend touched on this question with respect to the wider north-east economy—depends on a small number of business rate payers. Ten businesses contribute £11 million, or nearly 40% of the annual business rate revenue collected in Hartlepool. One business alone contributes 15%, or £4 million, of the rates collected. If one of those businesses were to relocate or cease trading, the effect on the finances of Hartlepool would be catastrophic. The Minister must appreciate that it would be impossible to regain such revenue for many years in the event of such a large business leaving. What will the Government do to mitigate that risk?

In his statement to the House on 18 July, the Secretary of State said at column 672 in response to a question from me that Hartlepool would not be worse off as a result of the proposals. Following the intervention from the hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton), I think it is fair to say that that will be true until 2013-14, but what happens afterwards? It is important for the council’s planning that it be given more details, so will the Minister provide more information on such matters as the basis for setting the baseline; setting the initial tariff and subsequent top-ups; whether such top-ups will be uprated through RPI, CPI or some other measure; and the frequency of resets within the system, to allow councils to plan?

The policy of the Government, certainly when it comes to tackling public finances, and particularly with regard to the relationship between central and local government finance, is to target higher grant cuts on those local authorities with relatively greater dependence on grants and with more deep-rooted social and economic problems. The proposals on business rates make such problems even worse and target the north-east and authorities such as Hartlepool particularly severely. I hope that the Minister will think again.

09:58

[James Wharton (Stockton South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) on securing the debate.

It is not unusual, as a Conservative Member for a constituency in the north-east, to feel a little outnumbered, and today the odds are perhaps slightly on the side of the Opposition, as far as weight of contribution is concerned—although perhaps not quality; we shall find out about that.

The way we fund local authorities is very centralised and has been for some time. The OECD says that we have less funding autonomy for local government than France, Germany, Spain, the United States and Japan. That is not sustainable, and successive Governments have considered, and commissioned reports about, ways to move funding, to give local authorities more responsibility over what happens in their area, to allow them to benefit from success, and to transfer responsibility, so that local democracy can be more effective in holding to account the representatives who run an authority. More than half our local authority funding, on average, comes from central Government grant—money redistributed through the Treasury.

What the Government appear to be trying to do is to reverse that trend. We have seen in areas other than funding, such as localism legislation, that councils are going to have a general power of competence. Local authorities will be empowered to do things that are in the interest of the communities that they represent. In doing that, there is a need to reform funding and the way in which local authorities receive their funding, so that they will have autonomy, freedom and the local accountability that comes with such autonomy and freedom. I am prepared to believe—giving credit to the Government—that that is the foundation for the proposals on business rate retention.

Local authorities collect about £19 billion in business rates annually. That goes to the Treasury, which redistributes it. As the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) pointed out, some authorities get more back than they put in. That is quite right, because there is a discrepancy in the ability of different local authorities to raise rates from the existing infrastructure in their areas. The challenge for Government is to find a fair way of tying future growth and so incentivising councils to promote growth in their authority area without unduly disadvantaging areas that will find it more difficult to do so.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman not think that the Government’s policy at the moment is slightly counter-intuitive, given that the Tees valley local enterprise partnership has a manufacturing-led sector growth policy? If manufacturing per hectare brings in only a fifth compared with retail, does he not think that the new policy could hinder the sector growth policies of business-side LEPs?

[James Wharton]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point, and I will touch on that later in my brief comments. We are consulting on how the policy would work, and there is a challenge for the Government to ensure that the areas that promote a manufacturing base as the driver for economic growth are not disadvantaged. It is a valid point, but we must not jump the gun and assume that it will be a problem, because we do not yet know what the framework will be—it is a matter for consultation.

There are weaknesses with the current system, such as accountability, which I have touched on, and a weakness in the freedom of local authorities to respond, because they are so dependent on central Government grants. We have seen, over many years, the problems of the central Government grant funding system, which include its complexity and how it often plays out in ways that cannot be easily predicted and are not necessarily to local benefit. There is also a problem regarding the incentive that it gives to some local authorities and councils, which may perceive that they can get more benefit for their area by lobbying central Government for more support than by focusing on promoting growth and improving their area.

What are the Government doing? The first and most important point, which some hon. Members, to give them their due, have touched on this morning already, is that there is a consultation, which is an opportunity to feed in, talk about and outline proposals, and to ensure that the concerns of local authorities in places such as the north-east, where there is a genuine fear that they may be disproportionately disadvantaged by any move towards local retention of business rates, are properly taken into account.

[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

It is well known that the Tory mayor of North Tyneside always supports Government policies. However, on this occasion, she supports the Association of North East Councils’ criticism of the consultation. Does that not show something?

[James Wharton]

The excellent Conservative mayor of North Tyneside, Linda Arkley, who is doing a superb job and is no doubt looking forward to her re-election by popular acclaim next year, has raised some concerns as part of the consultation process on behalf of the people whom she represents. I do not accept that it is a criticism of the consultation; it is feeding into the consultation in the hope of influencing the result in a way that will benefit the people whom she represents. The good mayor that she is, she is doing the right thing. I am delighted that the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon) has given me the opportunity to raise that point.

Another important point, apart from the consultation, is that there should be no effect on what businesses pay. When the policy is introduced, we will not see business rates rising. Levels will be set, as I discussed briefly in an exchange with the hon. Member for Hartlepool, to ensure that the funding that councils receive at the point at which the policy is introduced is kept level. No council should initially be disadvantaged by the introduction of the policy. [Hon. Members: “Initially.”] I fully accept that. It will then be a responsibility for local authorities to engage—within a framework that we must all see as fair and to which we must contribute to ensure that it is fair, so that the rules do not disadvantage any area—with that new system, grow their local economy as best as they can and reap the benefit.

What are the Government going to do? They will set a baseline, tariffs and top-ups. Tariffs and top-ups will mean that wealthy areas—we have heard of some of the wealthy areas that take a lot of money in from business rates—will see some of that money taken away from them and redistributed, often to councils such as those that many of us here today represent in the north-east. The top-ups will be the benefits that some of our authorities receive.

There will be a levy for disproportionate benefit, so if a council sees a huge rise in its business rates that is disproportionate to the benefit that that council should receive, that will be redistributed again in some way.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman should accept that we should be specific. The Government’s proposal is to take back not the disproportionate benefit, but a share of the disproportionate benefit, which is an entirely different thing.

[James Wharton]

That is a fair point. As part of incentivising growth, it is important that local authorities are able to keep some benefit. Residents who have a large industrial complex built in their back yard may feel entitled to a share of the income that that brings to the Exchequer. There will be a levy that will allow for a redistribution of disproportionate benefit and for a safety net. For example, one of the questions raised by hon. Members was, what if a large industry disappears or if a large manufacturer or retail site closes down in the north-east? What about that potentially catastrophic effect? There is already in the consultation a potential mechanism for addressing that through the levy, which will create a pot of money that councils that find themselves disadvantaged will be able to tap into. We look forward to hearing from the Government how they will administer that and what their proposals for that are.

There will also be five-year revaluations to ensure that the system is seen to be and remains fair. Hon. Members have raised concerns about the frequency of revaluation, and the Government should look at those. The Government should also consider the balance between providing an incentive and ensuring adequate funding, and more frequent revaluation could form part of that formula. We have discussed the difference between the business rates brought in by retail and manufacturing. Again, that is a fair observation and should form part of the consultation, and I hope the Government will pay attention to that. We have also discussed dependency on small numbers of large businesses; I have just touched on that in my comments. I would like to see more detail of how a levy for disproportionate benefit will help those areas when a large industry or business closes down and potentially impacts local government finances.

Overall, however, the Government are pushing power back down to people, empowering local authorities and communities to take control of and responsibility for the areas in which they live, and incentivising councils to create and foster growth. That should be welcome in the north-east, where we need to see greater private sector growth. I hope that we can have a constructive engagement with the consultation to deliver the best for our region, not simply to score political points, which may appear on Tyne Tees later this evening—one never knows.

10:07

[Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess. May I begin by commending my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) for securing this important and timely debate? It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward)—clearly the north-east has just got bigger—and the hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton), who, if I have interpreted his speech correctly, has just taken personal responsibility for the success or failure of Government policy in the north-east.

[James Wharton]

I have not.

[Mr Campbell]

If we are talking about what the hon. Gentleman has not done, he has not shared the information that, of all the councils in the north-east, only Stockton council stands to gain from the proposal—some £4 million.

Whatever argument there is for localising business rates, concern has been expressed on both sides of the Chamber today about the impact that the policy might have on the north-east. We welcome the opportunity to play a constructive part in the consultation and the wider debate.

Why should the north-east have cause for nervousness? I am reminded of the comments of the then Leader of the Opposition, now Prime Minister, on the eve of the general election. He said that when the changes and cuts in public spending are made, it will be the north-east that can expect to be hit hardest out of any region. That is why local authorities in the north-east are united across the parties under the banner of the Association of North East Councils in the information that they are providing to the consultation. I believe that that is also why the wider business community shares those concerns.

I want to address the concerns not from a political point-scoring perspective, but in the context of what the Government say they are trying to achieve for the region. Under this change, my local authority, North Tyneside, stands to lose £19 million, which is half as much again as the level of cuts that are necessary because of local government funding changes. The region as a whole stands to lose a third of a billion pounds. Compare that with an area such as Westminster that generates £1.8 billion in business rates each year. The fundamental question is how local economies in the north-east can compete with areas that have a large business rate tax base and the resources to invest not only in attracting future jobs, but in continuing to provide local services. The Government’s own local growth strategy aims to rebalance the United Kingdom’s economy, but if we are not careful, this proposal will have the opposite effect. London and the south-east are not the only areas that stand to do well. Scotland will continue to have Scottish Enterprise, which will attract businesses and jobs. The north-east is losing its development agency and its regional growth fund is proving ineffective.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

My hon. Friend is making a good case. Middlesbrough stands to lose £27.5 million a year as a result of these changes and Redcar and Cleveland borough council stands to lose £18 million a year. Is my hon. Friend also aware that the unemployment rate in Middlesbrough is 14.3% and it is 12.4% in Redcar and Cleveland? Many of the issues outlined by the Government in the consultation are counterintuitive to their own growth agenda, especially in an export-led manufacturing recovery.

[Mr Campbell]

As ever, my hon. Friend makes a better argument than me. His point is precisely the one that I am trying to make. If we are not careful, the results will be counterintuitive to what the Government say they want to achieve. We all want to see economic growth in the north-east. It is not only good for the region but the best way in which to cut the deficit. The Government want to see economic growth, but I am not sure whether they know how to achieve it. The north-east has a good record of growing small and micro-sized businesses, yet those are the very businesses that do not generate high levels of business rate income, at least in the short term.

The Government also say that they want to see the growth of manufacturing. Again, we all want to see that. The north-east has a proud manufacturing tradition, but it cannot make a living in a modern world on tradition alone. The manufacturing sector is still an important part of the north-east economy, but the most recent report from the north-east chambers of commerce expresses concern about the weakness of manufacturing in the area. Again, as we have already heard, manufacturing tends to generate less business rate income than large retail businesses. Therefore, if a local authority is looking to regenerate an area to increase its business rate and to create jobs in an area, would it be better to have a retail or a manufacturing development?

If we are to see a more level playing field with regard to public spending, we should do what was done in the past and bring infrastructure project investment to the north-east. We are told that the Government are considering bringing forward infrastructure spending to get growth started. Certainly, investment over and above the return of business rates will be necessary if we are to unlock the potential of the north-east economy. Take for example the next stage of the improvement of the A19 at the junction of the Silverlink roundabout. The previous Transport Secretary had a very strange view of cost-benefit analysis. In his new role, such a view would equate to him requiring soldiers to pay for half of their tanks and sailors to pay for half of their ships. If the Government are looking to grow businesses that then pay business rates and to rebalance the economy at the same time, it really will require a joined-up approach. They must be careful about the impact of this particular policy.

If these changes go ahead, can the Government assure us that councils will be given time to adjust? How large will the safety net be? Will there be a long-term approach to adjustment? If not, the situation for councils will deteriorate year upon year. Will any adjustment mechanism take into account inflation, which is high and rising? Above all, will the new system be fair? Will it have a national element? The localisation of business rates in the north-east is important, but so too is the localisation of business rates across the country as a whole. If we do not have a national element, the system will not be redistributive in any way.

What would be indefensible is for richer areas in a region or council to have to subsidise poorer areas. We need to see richer areas of the country subsidising areas that require support. Will the new system be fair? Despite the improvements of the past decade, we have higher than average levels of deprivation. Child poverty and the calls on the health services are high and we have an ageing population. This is not special pleading, but a request to the Government to give the north-east a fair deal. Without a careful examination of their proposals to ensure that they are fair, the north-east will be in for an even more difficult time than we imagined.

10:16

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) on securing this important debate.

As an accountant for ICI in the mid-1980s, I remember signing cheques for more than £6 million for local authority rates and the furore in 1988 when the then Conservative Government decided to centralise business rates, take money from the industrialised north and move it to the leafy south—as it was portrayed at the time. It is somewhat ironic, therefore, that we are now having this debate about taking money from the deindustrialised north and again moving it to the leafy south. Although I speak for the Government I also speak very strongly for my constituency and as a member of the north-east community of MPs; both of those come ahead of my party or Government loyalty on this issue.

My constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward) share the distinction of being the two constituencies on the Government side of the House with the worst unemployment rates, so it is a pleasure to see my hon. Friend in the Chamber. My constituency also shares a lot of characteristics with Sunderland, Hartlepool and a number of the other areas that have already been mentioned.

We have not spoken about the views of business. Some 66% of businesses have spoken in favour of the move, and only 20% against. It is important that we listen to them as part of the consultation. Businesses want to be part of their local communities. They want their success to be shared in the local community. Most of them do not want to see any benefits being siphoned off to Whitehall. Apart from Malta, we have the most centralised tax system in Europe, so some move towards localisation of tax raising is surely sensible.

I do not know how many hon. Members are friends of the complex formula grant system. Only last weekend, I joked in a speech that I thought that my hon. Friend the Minister was probably the only person who really understood the full detail of the formula. Of course most north-east councils are not happy with the current formula grant system. It is too complicated and too subject to the whim of Whitehall. I do not know who its friends are, but I would not mourn its passing.

There seems to be a lot of misreporting or misunderstanding of the scheme the Government propose. As I understand it, no one will be worse off in the first year, although some speakers today have suggested that they will be. Both the Deputy Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government have said that the starting point will be equalisation, top-ups and tariffs, so in the first year of launch all councils will be in the same position. Obviously what happens after the first year is a concern. We have talked about industries dying and being born. I think that the Government have spoken about what they will do in those circumstances but we need more detail, as previous speakers have said. I hope that the Minister will respond to that point.

The proposals include provision for a full 10-year review of where the system has got to, but nobody seems to be recognising that. Hopefully, the Minister will give us more detail about the review.

There is nothing to stop councils pooling resources or using other arrangements, if they feel that they want to share the benefits or issues in their area. We should all welcome the freedom that local councils will have. Nobody has spoken about the effect on local councils of the new Government scheme; I hope that the Minister will do so. From the way people have been speaking so far in the debate, there seems to be an assumption that every council is unitary, but I have had a letter from the Cleveland Local Councils Association asking what the effect of the new scheme will be on its members. Our parish, town and district councils are not clear about how the new scheme will work for them. As I say, I hope the Minister will address that point too.

Some interesting points have been made in the debate, but the overwhelming feeling of the speakers so far has been pessimism. That is one of our problems in the north-east; we are generally seen to be pessimistic.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

The pessimism among Labour MPs that the hon. Gentleman is probably referring to might be born from, for example, the Government’s programme on the regional growth fund. We have waited six months for funding. It will be welcome funding, for example for a potash mine in my constituency, but it still has not arrived. That type of practical example might lead to pessimism.

[Ian Swales]

The local enterprise partnerships are doing a good job, certainly in our area, and with the regional growth fund there is a simple due diligence process going on. There is a project starting in my constituency right now, with holes being dug in the ground this week. That project has attracted £7 million of regional growth fund money. The time lag has simply been to ensure that the schemes that will be supported are the right ones.

I want to pick up on the point about manufacturing versus retail. Clearly, it is a fallacious comparison, because manufacturing takes up more space than retail. Right now, a manufacturer in my constituency wants another acre of land to add to the acre that they already have. There is no retailer asking for another acre of land, so the basis for saying, “It’s all about retail, not manufacturing”, does not stand up at all.

I am optimistic, because we have enormous potential in the north-east. The other night, I went to the launch of Energi Coast, when 19 companies involved in the offshore renewable energy industry came together to launch joint marketing. They are all talking about a boom time, like the start of the North sea oil industry.

Nevertheless, I worry about the proposals. We need a lot more detail, but we also need a can-do attitude. I say that to my local council all the time, because it often does not have a can-do attitude when it comes to new business. Sharing the benefits of business growth is in all our interests.

[Mr David Amess (in the Chair)]

The Front-Bench responses to the debate are due to start at 10.40 am. I think that there are just two hon. Members left who wish to speak.

10:23

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Amess.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) on securing this debate, which is on a very important issue. We can tell that from the number of hon. Members who are here in Westminster Hall.

For me, the point about the proposal in the consultation is what it will actually do for economic growth in the north-east of England, where manufacturing, for example, is worth £7.5 billion. I think it is the only region in England that actually exports more manufacturing goods than it imports. We have Hitachi coming to Newton Aycliffe in my constituency, which will create 500 jobs in a train-building facility and thousands of jobs in the supply chain.

I am concerned that in the future local authorities will have to generate more money from business rates because of cuts in other rates. For example, County Durham will lose £125 million in grants over the next four years, including £64 million this year. That money must be made up from somewhere. Under this proposal, however, we also know that the county could lose up to £80 million, but its annual budget is only £300 million. At the moment, leisure centres are closing and in many areas we are now able to provide only statutory services to local communities; we are no longer able to provide discretionary services.

The big thing for me is that the Association of North East Councils has said:

“Business Rates are not a suitable measure of economic growth. Rewarding growth in Business Rates income gives disproportionate benefit to the encouragement of growth in retail space and large distribution centres, rather than encouraging growth in small businesses (whose Business Rates attract substantial levels of relief), technology businesses that do not require much physical space, and manufacturing.”

In the future, local authorities might not pursue major manufacturers to come to the area, as they have done in the case of Hitachi, but instead they might pursue major distribution centres and major retail providers, because they cover more space.

I have some figures for retail sites. They can generate more than £1 million per hectare in business rates, but manufacturers can only generate £250,000 per hectare. However, what we get with manufacturing is high-value jobs. With Hitachi, it is not just the 500 jobs that are being directly created but the thousands of jobs that will be created in the supply chain. In my area, I want young people to have high-value jobs, providing a future for our local communities, and I am not sure whether the Government’s proposals will achieve that aim.

I want to mention E.ON’s plans for my constituency. E.ON wants to build the largest wind farm in the country, with 45 wind turbines. It will cover 7.5 square miles, which is 5% of my Sedgefield constituency, but it will generate less than £1 million in business rates. There will be no jobs; there will be reindustrialisation of the landscape without any jobs and less than £1 million in business rates will be generated.

I am really worried, not because I do not think that Durham county council and other authorities in the region will not want manufacturing industry to come to the area, but given the cuts that they are already struggling with, the incentive for them will be to look for big retailers and distribution centres rather than the manufacturers of the future. If we want to rebalance the economy and bring in lots of private sector jobs, we have to look at the quality of the jobs that we are creating. I need more businesses on the science park at NETPark—the North East Technology Park—such as Kromek, which is creating major jobs for the area and actually saving jobs at Thorn Lighting, because of the quality of the people who work for Thorn Lighting.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) accused Labour MPs of being unduly pessimistic. However, from my constituency’s perspective, in an area such as Gateshead we have actually been very can-do and built things such as the Metro centre and the Team Valley trading estate, which employs more than 20,000 people. We also have a £150 million development in Gateshead town centre at the moment, but my council is still very pessimistic about what will come from this set of proposals. Why would that be?

[Phil Wilson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As a person, I am optimistic. I know what we did with Hitachi, to attract it to the north-east of England. We brought the Government—struggling—to the table on that project. When the north-east of England stands together, we achieve great things.

We have to look at the location of the north-east of England. It is a long way from here. My constituency is 263 miles away, according to the sat-nav in the car. To the north, we have Scotland, which has its own regional development agency. The regional development agency for the north-east of England is being done away with. The regional growth fund is offering only a third of the money that we used to receive under the previous Government. To the south of us, there is a burgeoning economy. The number of distressed businesses has gone up by 20% in the north-east, but the number in the south-east has actually fallen by 6%. We ask the Government to look at these proposals and take into consideration the great concerns that we have about our area.

I keep mentioning Hitachi because I am proud of what we have achieved, but Hitachi has said that it came to England and the UK not only because it is a great place but because it is in Europe. We are part of Europe and should remain so.

Finally, I want to ask a few questions of the Minister. Will the readjustments be over five years, or is he thinking of reducing that time scale? What guarantees are being offered to manufacturing. Under the proposals, will incentives come to areas? Will any grants take inflation into consideration, as was mentioned? Will that be the consumer prices index, the retail prices index or another measure of inflation?

10:30

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Amess, for calling me to speak this morning on a subject that has far-reaching implications for my constituency and the north-east as a whole. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) on securing the debate.

The Government’s ambition to “incentivise” councils to boost local economic growth by linking it to a meaningful increase in funding for local services is laudable in its aims. However, I feel strongly that their proposals will have a raft of unintended consequences which will have a damaging effect on the north-east and other less developed areas of the country, such as Yorkshire. They will not encourage strong, sustainable growth in local areas but rather undermine the manufacturing companies that are so vital to the north-east’s economy. There is no doubt in my mind that the Association of North East Councils is correct when it says that wealthy areas could grow stronger and poorer areas weaker if business rates are localised as proposed. The 12 councils warn that wealthy parts of London and the south-east, led by Westminster and the City of London, could have resources reallocated to them while poorer areas lose out. The new system must take account of local needs, including cost pressures resulting from deprivation.

The current system recognises the systemic inequalities in Britain, providing different councils with different levels of resource to meet different needs and ensuring that the service needs of the poorest areas are met. That is fundamental, as there is substantially greater need in the north-east in terms of pressures on local services and the smaller commercial and business areas. One example is children’s services. Proportionately, several times more children are on free school meals in my Stockton North constituency than in the affluent areas of the south-east, so our local authority’s costs are proportionately much higher on children’s services alone. Some may claim the Stockton borough will benefit marginally—it would only be marginally—from the changes, but any small benefit will be dwarfed by the total loss across the north-east. This is about the north-east region and not about individual authorities—it is about a regional, shared economy.

Despite the diversification of the region’s economy and considerable action over the 13 years of Labour Government on health and poverty, the region sadly still has the largest percentage of its population—around 33%—living in some of the most deprived areas of England. The proposals will make it much worse. If the Government’s proposals were applied to the 2011-12 or 2012-13 grant settlements for the north-east, it would result in grant losses above the national average in percentage terms and substantially above average reductions in cash grant. That significant reduction means that councils would inevitably have to make deeper cuts in their budgets, thereby putting greater pressure on the delivery of the most essential local services.

The Government should realise that not only do different areas of the country face different levels of need and dependency on public services, but they have different business and economic structures. The north-east is very proud of its manufacturing sector, which currently, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) pointed out, contributes £7.5 billion to the regional economy. However, the sole focus on business rates as a means on incentivising local business growth will hugely undermine that sector.

Business rates from retail or commercial developments are significantly higher, as others have pointed out, than from manufacturing and, under current proposals, it is likely that manufacturing developments will be seen as less attractive propositions, despite the wider economic benefits such as exports, supply chain industries, jobs and skills, compared with retail developments which have the capability to secure greater levels of business income.

[Ian Swales]

Does the hon. Gentleman believe that his area of Stockton has unlimited potential for more and more retail development, which would thereby stop manufacturing investment, which seems to be his proposition?

[Alex Cunningham]

One of the things that I have fought for over the years is to restrict the growth of retail outside our town centre, which, as with so many town centres throughout the country, is suffering. We will not get anything extra for the empty properties sitting in our high streets; I want to see them filled up with new businesses and contributing to our economy.

There seems to be a contradiction between the Tory-led Government’s rhetoric and their actions. When the Tory leader first became Prime Minister, he claimed that he wanted to give manufacturing “another chance” and sang the praises of small businesses by saying that they were the “lifeblood” of the economy. During the general election campaign, he—not then Prime Minister—told the north-east media that the region would be safe in his hands. Sadly, he has failed to keep any promise in that direction, delivering less investment, a laughable growth fund that has yet to achieve any single thing of note, enterprise zones without any real, up-front, hard cash to support them and a banking sector that ignores his pleas for loans to businesses. Now his proposals for business rates fail our north-east region.

I also have strong reservations, as does my local Stockton borough council, about the lack of a clear mechanism for adjusting to changes in the needs of local authorities. I was encouraged that the hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton), who has now left his place, agreed that that is a major issue. Under the present formula grant system, needs are adjusted every year through changes in data and every three years by considering changes to the actual formulae. To move to a much more infrequent reassessment of need in the proposed rates retention scheme would be a worrying move, particularly in such uncertain economic times. It is therefore of the utmost importance that the Government forecasts of business rate yield are realistic, and that updated estimates are based on adjustments arising from continuing economic indicators.

I started with how the Government want to incentivise local authorities, but it is important to emphasise that the notion that local authorities in the north-east do not promote economic growth in their area because they do not benefit from increased business rates is fundamentally flawed and, I would go so far as to say, deeply insulting. People in the north-east are working extremely hard to develop, to grow our local economies and to create jobs. Local authorities, including those in the north-east, have embarked on economic development in their area for countless years because they will attract jobs and benefit their area. The Government reforms are not only likely to hinder the prospect of a strong business sector in the north-east but very likely to worsen public services when they are needed most. That “survival of the fittest” model is simply the wrong policy, with the north-east again paying the price.

10:37

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) on securing the debate. She is a powerful advocate for her region, as are my other hon. Friends who have spoken today. For instance, my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), who is a former Local Government Minister, highlighted the problems that might occur after 2013. My hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell) highlighted the need for infrastructure to unlock potential in the north-east. My hon. Friends the Members for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) and for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) highlighted the work that has already been done to attract manufacturing industry to the region. However, what is clear from the debate, in all parts of the Chamber, is a deep suspicion of the Government’s motives. The Government document consulting on the localisation of business rates contains some ringing phrases, and “No more will proud cities be forced to come to the national government with a begging bowl” has been one comment. That sounds good and, to be fair to the Government, it has some history: lots of investigations into local government finance have suggested more control and more autonomy for local councils. So why are we so suspicious?

In the first place, the Government have form, do they not? In their Localism Bill, we saw all the fine phrases about devolving power to local authorities and more autonomy, yet the Bill contains 100 new powers for the Secretary of State. Their local government finance settlement manages to centralise power and devolve blame. Now they are trying it again. The whole local government resource review is based on a wrong premise. It says clearly that

“local authorities can be reluctant to allow commercial development and promote economic growth.”

I say to the Minister: name one. I know of no local authority, especially in the north-east, that is not desperate to attract jobs and growth.

The reason why our economy is not growing is not local authorities; it is this Government’s policies, which have made it flatline and stifled growth. What is more, the Government do not have a plan for growth. In fact, they are proud of not having one; they tell us there is no plan B. We are back to the ’80s and our old friend TINA—“There is no alternative”. Local authorities did not cause that recession, and they did not cause this one.

We will scrutinise the Government’s plans carefully. We support measures that stimulate growth but, as with all this Government’s policies, the devil is in the detail, and the detail is often well hidden. The Government propose to set the baseline using the 2012-13 formula grant. It must come within the expenditure controls set out in the 2010 spending review, but that spending review is inherently unfair to many local authorities. It began by making in-year cuts to specific grants in 2010, which mostly targeted the most deprived local authority areas, and over the next two years, it will make spending cuts in the most deprived authorities. Newcastle city council has produced a heat map showing where the cuts will fall: the north-east, the north-west, Yorkshire, part of the midlands and inner-London boroughs. Funnily enough, most of those places overwhelmingly vote Labour. I am sure that that is entirely coincidental.

By 2012-13, the cumulative cuts in per capita spending will be £183 in Hartlepool and South Tyneside, £156 in Middlesbrough and £144 in Newcastle—I could go on—although the national average is £47 and the average in the south-east is £31. The Government are starting from a position of unfairness before introducing their top-ups and tariffs. They say they will include equalisation, but no system can be fair unless it starts from a fair base.

Moreover, the Government will give no assurance that local authorities will not lose out after the first year. The Deputy Prime Minister told the Local Government Association:

“The new system will start on a level playing field. Where you progress from there is up to you.”

Life is simple for Liberal Democrats, is it not? Both those sentences are wrong. We will not start with a level playing field, and it is not entirely up to local authorities how they will progress, as hon. Friends have mentioned. Some local authorities already have a large business rate base. Westminster has been mentioned. If it got all its business rates back, it would be £1 billion better off. By comparison, Hartlepool receives £13 million more than it collects. That is equivalent to 18 more supermarkets, which I doubt Hartlepool could sustain. Newcastle would be £39 million short, or the cost of 16 airports.

Even that is not the whole story. We know that councils that already have a large business rate base find it easier to attract more investment. Westminster, with its multi-million pound national and international company base, finds it easier to bring in investment than Consett does. Cambridge, which has a fine high-tech hub centred on the university, is much more likely to attract more such firms than a council starting from scratch. The worry is that, if the Government get it wrong—to be honest, their record so far is not encouraging—they could increase the gap between north and south. Tony Travers of the London School of Economics said to The Times:

“The risk is that northern authorities will find it impossible to attract businesses as fast as councils in the south. If that happens, the gap between the south and north will widen”.

The Government say they will deal with that using a levy on disproportionate gains. Let us be clear that they are discussing recouping not the whole disproportionate gain but only a share of it, and that the review contains no definition of “disproportionate” or any clarity about how the levy will work. They say that it could be 1p in the pound. In that case, local authorities with a high tax base will generate much more revenue from the same amount of growth than those with a lower tax base. The levy could work similarly, but place local authorities in bands. In that case, we will face the problem of a huge disparity between local authorities at the top of one band and those at the bottom of the next. The Government say that the levy could also involve an individual rate for each local authority. They could change the ratio of business rate growth to revenue growth. Would that not be returning to the central control that the Government say they want to avoid?

The Government want the power to reset the system. It is obvious that resetting will be necessary. Hon. Friends have asked for clarity on that. The Government say that they might reset the system based on a completely new assessment of need rather than on formula grant. If I were still serving on a local authority, a shiver would go down my spine at that. This Government have shown no capacity to assess need properly in any of their decisions on local government finance. The system is open to yet more political manipulation and interference.

The other point, as hon. Friends have mentioned, is whether business rate growth is a proper test of economic growth. The Government’s proposals would make large retail developments much more attractive to local authorities than manufacturing, because they generate higher income. There would be no similar incentive to develop manufacturing or to support small businesses, despite the wider benefits to the community. We need such businesses. We need the skills that they generate, the exports that they develop and the effect that they have on the supply chain, just as we need the innovation that comes from small, high-tech companies, yet the proposals carry a risk that local authorities in the north-east and elsewhere could lose out by supporting the growth that the country needs. As hon. Members have said, retail in the region will generate between £800,000 and £1 million per hectare, while manufacturing and small businesses will generate between £100,000 and £200,000. I say to the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) that it has nothing to do with the space that businesses occupy. We are talking about returns per hectare.

Regional growth often depends on national policies. Northumberland, for example, has a sparse population, a huge national park and poor infrastructure. In order to grow, it needs huge national investment in infrastructure, yet we have heard nothing from the Government about how they propose to make that necessary investment, nor have they told us how they will manage risk in the system. Most importantly, we have heard nothing about need, or about the services that local authorities must provide for the elderly, children and families in distress. The huge question that the Government are ignoring is this: if a local authority’s future income is linked to business rates, what will happen if a big business fails and the anticipated level of growth is not reached?

We will support a sensible review of local government finance, but as usual this Government are going too far, too fast. They have a system that begins with unfairness, that is progressing through muddle, and that has the potential to lead to a postcode lottery in services. They have to think again.

10:50

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) on securing the debate. I think that this is the second time that she and I have found ourselves discussing matters of importance to the north-east in this Chamber. The proposed reforms are important, not just for local authorities in the north-east but, as some Members have noted, for areas throughout the country. There are implications beyond the north-east.

I thought that there was general agreement and consensus that this country has the most centralised and complex local government finance system in the world, with the possible exception of Malta, which has a much simpler governance structure in any case. In all my time in local government—I served on three different local authorities in the north-west of England—I never liked the decisions of any Government on local government finance. I have seen a series of disastrous mistakes, resulting in more power and responsibility being taken away from local authorities and their being subjected to choices—sometimes arbitrary and, clearly on many occasions, not taking account of local services—made in Westminster and Whitehall.

[Mr Iain Wright]

Will the Minister give way?

[Andrew Stunell]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, who is a former Communities and Local Government Minister and one of those who has delivered so many arbitrary decisions to people like me.

[Mr Wright]

I am grateful to the Minister, who is my successor at the Department for Communities and Local Government. Does he think that, with tariffs, top-ups, resets and redistribution, the system that he has to implement will be less complex than the current system?

[Andrew Stunell]

Yes, most certainly. It will be transparent. I think that the hon. Gentleman, for whom I have a great deal of respect, knows that the formula system, which was made even more convoluted during his period in office, has clearly passed its sell-by date. It is impenetrable, even to chief finance officers of local authorities, not to mention voters on the street.

In the time remaining, I will explain some of our proposed scheme’s features and talk about the consultation process. The aim of the proposals is to change the dynamic from a centrally controlled system to a locally controlled system. That is the purpose of the reform.

[Alex Cunningham]

The Government do not let local authorities set the business rate and they dictate the council tax through freezing, so where is this great accountability and devolution of power to our elected councillors when it comes to finance?

[Andrew Stunell]

I do not want to go too far astray, but I point out to the hon. Gentleman that the referendum proposal in the Localism Bill, which will change who is accountable to the local electorate for excessive council tax rises, is a huge transfer of control from Whitehall to local communities over the council tax income-raising power of councils. The transfer of business rate distribution from a formula determined by central Government to one that gives local councils a real incentive to build their own income base is a fundamental change in both of the aspects that have been mentioned. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, like me, would like to go much further than that, but let us be clear: these are significant steps.

The consultation was published on 18 July and was backed up by the publication of eight technical papers on 19 August. They included an interactive, electronic paper that allows councils to feed in different parameters of the consultation so that they can establish what the outcome would be for their local authority. I can only suppose that local finance officers in the constituencies of certain Members who have spoken during the debate have not shared that information with them, because there is a clear gap between the worst possible case constructed by that interactive model and the worst case presented in this debate.

I want to make it clear that the baseline will be based on the formula grant that would have been received by a local authority had there been no reform of the system, and that it will be neither better nor worse than that. We made that clear in the consultation. That baseline will not get lost in the future, so local authorities in the north-east will have it as their fixed point for the future. Once we get beyond the period of the comprehensive spending review, growth beyond that baseline will be theirs to have.

[Mrs Hodgson]

The Minister is short of time, so I am grateful to him for allowing me to intervene. Will he clarify whether Sunderland will not be worse off by £60 million, but that we will retain our current funding level, upon which we can grow?

[Andrew Stunell]

That is exactly what I said and it was clear in the consultation document from the very beginning. I am sure that the former Minister, the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), had his tongue in his cheek when he said that he thought that Hartlepool faced a drop of £13 million. That is not the case. If the figure for Hartlepool is £40 million—which is the figure that he quoted—that is the baseline from which all further development for Hartlepool will be taken.

[Helen Jones]

The Minister is being generous in taking interventions. Will he confirm that the only promise from the Government is that local authorities will not lose out in the first year that the scheme comes into operation? There is no guarantee after that first year.

[Andrew Stunell]

The hon. Lady misunderstands what the Government have said. The baseline is fixed permanently in the system. The losses and gains come from changes in the business rate income that an authority might receive. I point out to Members who represent constituencies in the north-east that, over the five years from 2006, the total business rate income in England rose by 5% per year—not 5% overall, but per year—and by 5.1% in the north-east. In other words, the rise in business rates in the north-east during that five-year period was greater than that in England as a whole. Furthermore, a rise of 5% per year is significantly higher than RPI, CPI or, indeed, any rise in formula grant that any of those authorities gained. This is not a zero-sum reform. Beyond the CSR period, there is every prospect that the north-east will do well out of this system of having an increasing flow of business rates.

A number of points have been made about whether or not this is an incentivising system. If, during that five-year period, the north-east was able to secure an annual rise of 5.1% in its business rate income without any incentive, it seems to me that, even if the incentive effect turns out to be quite weak, it is likely to be better than that, than RPI and than the increase in formula grant, which the previous Government, in their munificence, decided was appropriate for north-east authorities. It is important that we nail some of the misunderstandings that have arisen.

My hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) made the point that the regional growth fund is active and effective. Fourteen companies in the north-east have had support, and that will provide more than 5,200 direct jobs and 8,300 indirect jobs.

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury has announced a £500 million growing places fund for infrastructure in England, for which local authorities in the north-east will be eligible. I am sure that the hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell) will make sure that his local authority makes a suitable proposal to deal with the roundabout on the A19 that he mentioned.

The consultation is still—

[Mr David Amess (in the Chair)]

Order. It is time for the next debate.

Sex and Relationship Education

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Westminster Hall

11:00

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Amess. I am delighted to have secured a debate on the important issue of what is being taught in our primary schools about sex and relationships. There is no doubt that children need to be taught about sex and how to be responsible and safe, as we try to tackle issues such as teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. However, experiences in my constituency, as well as organisations’ campaigns such as “Too much, too young”, have highlighted material being used that is completely inappropriate and that sends out totally the wrong message.

At the moment, schools often ask their local authorities to recommend material, but there is no process for sourcing age-appropriate material; instead, material that may be completely inappropriate is provided by unlicensed suppliers for use in primary schools. At a time when there is widespread concern about the sexualisation of childhood, using sexually explicit and inappropriate materials in primary school classrooms can only make things worse.

The aim of holding this debate is, first, to call on the Government to make sure that material taught in primary schools is appropriate, not sexually explicit and not exploitative of our young children. Secondly, I would like to ensure that school governors are required to be actively aware of what kind of material is being used in their schools and to take a sensible and responsible view on the matter. Thirdly, and most importantly, I want parents to be able genuinely to have their say and to be made actively aware of what kind of sex education is being taught to their children. I want there to be a system whereby parents take a decision on whether to allow their children to be taught sex education and have to opt into the lessons, rather than having to opt out as is the currently the case.

Before I am accused of putting too great a burden on hard-working parents, let us not forget that all of us with school-age children—I have three of my own—are expected to sign up proactively to music lessons and school trips. Therefore why should we not have to proactively sign up to one of the most important learning experiences of a child’s early life?

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Notwithstanding the hon. Lady’s point about the opt-out for parents, does she think that all primary schools should teach sex and relationship education?

[Andrea Leadsom]

It should be for the schools, the parents and the governors to make that decision as is appropriate for their school. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.

Moving on, at the moment, parents can only choose to opt out of SRE, and I have been given several examples in my constituency alone of instances where parents have been made to feel extremely uncomfortable for deciding that they do not want their children to attend SRE lessons.

I am a huge fan of our Government’s localism agenda and I want to make it clear that I am not trying to change the way decision-making for SRE is delegated to schools and parents. It is entirely right that we should trust our local communities to run local services and to make the correct decisions. I also absolutely do not advocate censorship and do not want central Government dictating to every school what is appropriate. However, guidance should be given to aid local authorities, school governors and parents in finding the right material to use in SRE in our primary schools.

So what is the best form of guidance? We already have the perfect template that we can follow and implement with minimal distraction or disturbance: that of the British Board of Film Classification. That organisation does an excellent job of classifying films, videos and DVDs, and it has done so since it was set up in 1912. The BBFC gives guidance on what is suitable for certain ages in cinemas and for home viewing. It is important to note that rather than being a body of censorship, the main job of the BBFC is to guide and classify films. Statutory powers on film remain with local councils, which may overrule any of the BBFC’s decisions. Local councils can pass films the BBFC rejects, ban films it has passed and even waive cuts, institute new ones or alter categories for films exhibited under their own licensing jurisdiction.

The BBFC bases its classifications on three main qualifications. First, it considers whether the material is lawful. Secondly, it considers whether the availability of the material at the age group concerned is clearly unacceptable to broad public opinion. It is on that basis, for example, that the BBFC intervenes in respect of bad language. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, it considers whether the material either on its own or in combination with other content of a similar nature may cause any harm at the category—in other words, the age—concerned. That includes not only any harm that may result from the behaviour of potential viewers, but any moral harm that may be caused by, for example, desensitising a potential viewer to the effects of violence, degrading a potential viewer’s sense of empathy, encouraging a dehumanised view of others, suppressing pro-social attitudes, encouraging anti-social attitudes, reinforcing unhealthy fantasies, or eroding a sense of moral responsibility.

Those criteria are all directly taken from the BBFC’s categorisation of its own activities. Regarding children, harm may also include retarding social and moral development, distorting a viewer’s sense of right and wrong, and limiting their capacity for compassion. All of those things are taken into account in the BBFC classifications and I would like those criteria to be applied to the material being used in our primary schools to teach SRE. The BBFC, with its 99 years of experience, should be asked to implement such measures.

So why do I think that that is necessary? Currently, schools are teaching SRE to young children with the best of intentions. However, it has been brought to my attention by numerous people in different organisations that some of the material being taught to children as young as five is completely inappropriate. I have seen cartoons of two people engaged in sexual activity with the caption:

“here are some ways mummies and daddies fit together”.

Other images depict two cartoon characters locked in an intimate embrace accompanied by a vivid explanation, using sexual terminology, of the act of intercourse. As well as cartoons, I have been shown a video of two people engaged in intercourse with a child’s voice over the top saying, “It looks like they’re having fun.” I have also been shown leaflets given out to primary school children that give graphic definitions of orgasms, masturbation and prostitution. That is the kind of material being taught to children as young as five and there are accounts of the traumatic experiences of those children, who have been put off having boyfriends and been left thinking, “Do grown-ups really do this? It looks absolutely horrific.”

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I am listening very carefully to what the hon. Lady is saying. Has she come across some of the very good materials being used in the classroom that concentrate not on the biology of sex, but on relationships, children being kept safe, appropriate touching and things like that? For a five-year-old, that is much more important than the obsession some people have with the biology of sex.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I completely agree with the hon. Lady on that point. Of course, there is some excellent material. As I said, schools are teaching SRE with the very best of intentions. The problem is that there is no licensing regime and no sense of appropriateness of the material. A wide-range of material is used, with varying amounts of intervention and careful analysis by schools, parents and governors.

[Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)]

My hon. Friend says, on the one hand, that she wants to see a national licensing system and, on the other hand, that she thinks schools should be able to decide for themselves. Are those two positions compatible?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I think that they are. I am not talking about a national licensing regime; I am simply talking about material that is used in schools being rated as age appropriate by the BBFC. By the same token, I do not know if my hon. Friend has any children, but if he does and he wanted them to watch 18-rated videos when they were only 12, that would be down to him as a parent. However, he would take such action with the clear understanding that the BBFC does not consider that to be appropriate for his children. Likewise, I will not show my seven-year-old videos that are above the relevant classification. I take the advice of the BBFC and only show my children things that are deemed to be age appropriate for them. My point is that there is no such guidance where SRE is concerned. At the moment, it is left to county councils, schools, governors and parents to make that decision. Parents and governors are often very busy and do not look at the material that is being shown to their children, and some of it is extraordinarily inappropriate.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

I apologise for missing the beginning of the hon. Lady’s speech; she may well have already answered this question. What discussions has the hon. Lady had with the BBFC about whether it would want to take on this additional work?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I confess that I have not spoken to the BBFC. If the BBFC’s responsibility for rating a particular type of output was changed, I am certain that, as a licensing authority, it would be happy to do that. In a previous parliamentary inquiry on internet porn, the BBFC talked about what it could do to help in relation to inappropriate websites. It would be willing if it was asked, appropriately resourced and paid, so I do not consider that that is an issue. However, the hon. Lady makes a fair point that I will take up with the BBFC if the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb) is minded to respond in a positive way.

I, and many parents who have contacted me, find that such material, shown to children as young as five, completely inappropriate. What should we be talking about in SRE lessons?

[Kevin Brennan]

The hon. Lady has cited specific material that she has seen. Will she tell us how prevalent the use of that material is, who produced it and what schools it is used in?

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Gentleman will forgive me for not citing schools, because some are in my constituency and, as I have said several times, schools are teaching SRE with the best of intentions. There is no intention to harm, but I have talked to head teachers in my constituency who have said that they feel that the guidance they have been given is lacking, and that they would have appreciated more instruction on what is age appropriate in this very sensitive area.

Headmasters raised a separate issue, which is that many teachers find it extremely difficult to go through this type of material with very young children. They find it easier to provide something that, in response to the hon. Gentleman’s question, is often produced by television stations. For example, Channel 4 has provided some sex and relationship education, as has the BBC. However, such material is not licensed, so it is left to the discretion of schools, which feel ill-equipped to make the decision, as to what is appropriate for a seven-year-old. The hon. Gentleman will know as well as I do that, unless one happens to have a seven-year-old, which I do, one cannot really project oneself into a seven-year-old’s shoes very easily and decide what is appropriate for them. It would be far more helpful to have guidance from an organisation such as the BBFC, which has been providing guidance for 99 years.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. Does she agree with me that the starting point ought to be about training teachers? I would not want my grandchildren to have sex and relationship education given by people who were not qualified to do so. Training teachers has to be the starting point. It would then follow that the best packages of education would be chosen.

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. That is a significant concern for some schools. They lack confidence in knowing for sure what material is appropriate for each age group. I do not need to explain to the Chamber that that varies with age. What one might show a 13-year-old is vastly different from what one might show a seven-year-old. This is what I am trying to get at—the specific point about age-appropriate material. From the contact I have had, that is a big concern for schools and parents.

[Diana Johnson]

My experience is that in the best schools head teachers buy in experts who know what is age-appropriate and bring in the relevant materials. Is that the hon. Lady’s experience? I saw a very good Catholic school in south London use such expertise not long ago. That would fit with the Government’s agenda around schools buying in services and getting the best expertise they need.

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Lady makes another good point. That could certainly be one way of addressing the problem. However, I still advocate an easy and uniformly good way of dealing with the issue, which is to have some sort of classification of material from which all schools can benefit. As we know, some schools are more engaged with this issue than others. Some head teachers are more knowledgeable than others, and some governing bodies are more proactive than others. We need a level playing field, so that all schools have access to good advice without having to go out and seek the experts. Schools have said to me that access to experts is simply not there. When they talk to their county council about what to do on this subject, it often has no real advice for them, other than to point them in the direction of unlicensed material.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. It is an excellent idea for outside bodies to come into primary and secondary schools. In Northern Ireland, we have an organisation called Love for Life, which is approved by the health service and the education board to go into schools to teach children about relationships. However, it does not go into primary schools to deal with the explicit details to which she has alluded. Bringing in an outside body is one way of doing it, as I am sure she will agree.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I agree that that has some merit and is worth consideration. Equally, there is a counter argument that for very young children in primary schools, it is a fundamental principle to have one teacher for almost every subject. When introducing such an enormous topic as sex and relationship education to very young children, there is a case for sticking with the teacher pupils know and are often very fond of. To bring in an outside expert, no matter how sensitive and well informed, could be counter-productive in primary schools.

What should we be talking about in schools? We are talking today about sex and relationship education. I agree completely that, when we deal with the issue of teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, our schoolchildren have to be aware of those issues and how to prevent them. Sex education is vital. However, relationship education is equally, if not more, important, particularly at a young age. Nowhere in the material that I have seen has there been any emphasis on building relationships. We should be teaching children primarily about relationships. We should be teaching them about emotions and responsibility. Our children need to understand that as well as fun, happiness and contentment, sex and relationships can evoke other feelings, such as jealousy, sadness and guilt. Our children need to understand that sex is almost always better when you are in love, or when you are in a committed relationship. Unfortunately, a lot of what is being taught at the moment does not address those issues.

Finally, I want to consider who needs to have a say in what our children are being taught. I am concerned about the number of constituents who have said to me that they had no idea what was being taught to their children, and that when they found out they were horrified. I have three children. I allowed them to go to their RSE lessons and I have no idea what they were taught. I put my hand up to being a busy mum who was invited in one morning, on a work day, to watch what the children would be watching and who did not take the school up on the opportunity. The expectation that all parents have is that school knows best—it knows what it is doing, is best placed to do this, and that that is great as it gets me out of that extraordinarily awkward conversation.

Many parents have told me that they were completely horrified when they finally found out what their children were being taught. I believe that schools are acting with the best of honourable intentions, and I am not about to lay the blame at head teachers’ doors. Parents must share the responsibility, and there must, therefore, be better communication with them. They need proactively to know what their children are being taught on such a sensitive issue. Only parents can decide whether their child is ready to be taught about this subject. All of us who are parents and grandparents know that children mature at very different ages, and something that one seven-year-old finds funny and entertaining and is mature enough to deal with might not be appropriate for another.

Parents often simply trust schools and assume that they know best. That is no bad thing, but we must help schools to make the best decisions. Teachers and governors must make the decisions about whether material is appropriate, just as parents must be aware of what their children are being taught. We have the assumption that if parents are uncomfortable with the material they can opt out of SRE lessons for their children, but there should be the assumption that parents opt in, particularly for primary school children. Parents have to opt in to music lessons, school trips and even school lunches; no one assumes that they can take a child rock climbing or to a music concert without explicit consent.

[Annette Brooke]

I am concerned that a child living in an abnormal situation, with abuse taking place, will not know what a normal situation or normal touching is. If we have an opt-in, is there not a danger that such a child will have a prolonged life of misery?

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend makes a fair point, but the problem with it is that we are saying that to catch the small minority for whom sex education might make a difference to what is going on at home we must inflict potentially inappropriate SRE on all children. I have quite a degree of knowledge of, and have had a great deal to do with, such situations through my nine-year chairmanship of the Oxford Parent Infant Project, a charity that has helped families in potentially extremely dangerous situations for many years. Simply forcing these children to have sex and relationship education at school will not make the difference—turning them into whistleblowers or giving them the ability to stop what is going on at home—and the harm done by inappropriate material could outweigh that potential. We should not inflict that type of material on all our children for the sake of, what I consider to be, a vain hope.

I want to see all material used in sex and relationship education in primary schools licensed and given some kind of classification, and school governors and teachers deciding what is appropriate to teach on the basis of that guidance, and I want parents to be given the appropriate information and the final say on whether and when their child should opt in to SRE.

I would be grateful for the Minister’s thoughts, first on whether a classification system that used the BBFC’s certificates could be implemented for SRE material in primary schools, to ensure that the material was suitable and conveyed the right message and had a guide to what age it was suitable for. Secondly, I would like to hear his comments on a commitment to provide clear guidance to schools that would ensure that not just sex but relationship education was properly taught, including the discussion of emotions and consequences, and of the benefits of love and committed relationships. Thirdly, I would like to hear his comments on a requirement that governors and teachers work together to decide what material is appropriate, and on having a cast-iron guarantee that parents will be properly informed of the full facts about what their children are taught, and be allowed to make the final decision on whether it is the right time for their children to opt in to SRE, rather than their having to opt out. I look forward to his response.

11:19

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I have listened to the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) with interest, and feel that the ideas of a licensing regime and of parents opting in to sex and relationship education ought to be discussed. However, I am not convinced that that is the way to go on this important subject, and I am concerned about examples being cited of inappropriate information or resources being given to very young children. I have yet to be given explicit details of the schools, areas, teachers and materials involved, but I am open-minded, and if that evidence is available I would like to see it. Many comments are made, but where is the evidence that this is a problem in schools? I am concerned that we are not looking at the actual evidence. We should trust our teachers; our teaching profession is better educated and better resourced than it has ever been, and in most of our schools, most of the time, really good work is going on, especially in primaries. Teachers, on the whole, do their best, and use appropriate resources.

In the previous Parliament, there was an opportunity to make personal, social and health education compulsory in all primary and secondary schools, which would have ensured that the subject was given proper consideration and that resources followed. PSHE teachers could have been expected to be properly trained and have the necessary resources to deliver that part of the curriculum. In the last few months of the previous Government, I was the Minister trying to take the measure through Parliament and I was disappointed because we ended up with the Conservative party refusing to back what was a very sensible proposal. There was a specific issue with sex education, but, as the hon. Lady mentioned, there is the opportunity for parents to opt out. A parent can withdraw a child up to the age of 18, and the Government must consider the legal anomaly that that creates, because at 16 a young person can have lawful sexual relations. I hope that the Minister comments on that when he deals with the hon. Lady’s suggestion of opting in, because there is a knock-on effect.

[Andrea Leadsom]

On a point of clarification, I am looking for an opt-in in primary schools, for children up to the age of 11, and I share the hon. Lady’s concern about an opt-out up to the age of 18.

[Diana Johnson]

I am pleased to hear that because this whole area needs to be considered carefully. I am disappointed that the Government have so far turned their face away from addressing the important issue of teaching to produce rounded individuals, rather than narrowly focusing on the academic side. Our schools play an important part in educating children in the issues they will face as they become adults. I accept that the hon. Lady is dealing with primary schools in this debate.

[Annette Brooke]

I concur with the hon. Lady. I supported her in her desire to strengthen our PSHE, and during that time I found it bizarre that the teaching of the mechanics of sex was compulsory in the science curriculum but that the teaching of sex and relationships, which must be taken together, might not happen. Does she share my concern?

[Diana Johnson]

I pay tribute to the hon. Lady, who has long championed PSHE and children being given the information they need to make safe and good choices.

The hon. Lady is absolutely right: young people are taught the mechanics of sex under the science curriculum, but important issues such as relationships, confidence and saying no are not dealt with. In debates in the previous Parliament, the Minister, who is a decent and honourable man, took a close interest in this area. I hope he will say whether the Government are minded to include this in their review of the national curriculum.

In the good schools I have visited, parents and governors are very much involved in this issue. Parents can look at material and see what goes on in PSHE classes, and we should build on that rather than thinking about an alternative licensing regime.

[Alison Seabeck]

On access to information and a classification, the Sex Education Forum’s website is accessible to teachers, parents and governors. It sets clear criteria on relationships and the appropriateness of material, including whether it is age-appropriate. Does my hon. Friend recommend that people visit the site as a starting point?

[Diana Johnson]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I think that that resource is well used by the teaching profession, and if people are struggling it is one of the websites people can visit.

I visited a Catholic school in south London. Its head teacher was fully engaged with parents, and as a Catholic school it has to ensure that particular sensitivities are addressed. He reassured parents and governors that what was happening in the school was good and fine and that the children were benefiting from it. PSHE is taught throughout the school. Children in the class I visited were given different items of clothing, and an expert who had been brought in was discussing which bits of clothing people would wear. It was fun, interesting and educational, but it had a serious point because they were discussing parts of the body and what clothing was used to cover them. It was age-appropriate and it allowed children to name parts of the body without embarrassment—without sniggering and laughing. The lesson was well organised, and the Catholic church and that school should be congratulated on their approach to SRE and PSHE.

The Department of Education might consider spreading that practice around other schools, but it is important that we begin in primary schools by talking to children about the key issues of relationships, keeping them safe and giving them the confidence to make wise choices. I agree with the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire about inappropriate materials not being used, although I am a little unsure about whether that happens. Most schools do their best and use appropriate material. Teenagers tell us that they wish they had received information much earlier about being confident about their bodies, about relationships and about what is acceptable. A survey recently conducted by one of the big charities showed that a high number of young women were in violent and verbally abusive relationships. I am greatly concerned that we are not giving our young women the confidence to say, “I am a valued human being and I won’t put up with this behaviour.”

[Andrea Leadsom]

I strongly agree with the hon. Lady: we cannot teach the mechanics of sex without teaching the relationship that goes with it. She gives an example of what happens if children are led to think that sex is fun and everyone does it without their being told that there are inappropriate sexual contacts; that they can end up feeling used, dirty and awful about themselves; and that somebody can deliberately put them in that position.

[Diana Johnson]

I think we can agree on that point.

The Government’s national curriculum review of primary education should consider whether this subject should be formally included in the curriculum. I do not want to pre-judge the Minister, but I suspect he will say that it will not be. The vast majority of people accept that giving good information to primary school children can help to deal with problems in secondary school. The rate of teenage pregnancy in my constituency is still too high and there are too many young people in inappropriate relationships. Let us start to deal with this issue early and let us get it right for our young people.

11:29

[Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve again under your chairmanship, Mr Amess, following our many deliberations on the Committee that considered the Localism Bill.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) on securing this important debate. Although I am not a parent, I am an uncle to two children and a godfather to two more. I think we all agree that good parenting is about protecting childhood and preparing children for the future. I should like to explain what that future might be as some young people grow up.

Last year, young people—who form just 12% of the population—accounted for half of all sexually transmitted infections in the UK. Twenty-five per cent. of sexually active 15 to 24-year-olds test positive for chlamydia; 75% of 16 to 24-year-olds report not using condoms when they have sex; in 1990 the proportion of women who reported first intercourse before the age of 16 was about 10%, but 10 years later the figure had doubled to 20%. The equivalent figures for men were 20% and 27%. Teenage pregnancy in the UK has been reducing in recent years, but we still have by far the highest levels in Europe.

Far from trying to move away from teaching sex and relationships, the Government should be doing a lot more to embed this, if Members will excuse the pun, in the curriculum. We talk a lot about the three Rs—reading, writing and arithmetic—but there is a fourth R that is equally important if we are to create happy and confident young people: relationships.

We know that good SRE gives children confidence. It teaches them about their body—how it changes as they grow up—and it gives them the self-awareness and confidence to start to combat some of the sexualised imagery and body fascism prevalent in so much of our media today. It helps to safeguard them by equipping them with the skills to negotiate safe sex and decent relationships—to understand, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) said, when their relationship would not be considered normal and, at an extreme, when it might be considered abusive. It also helps them later, through biology lessons and other parts of the secondary school curriculum, to understand how to negotiate the kind of safe sex that will help to stop them from becoming one of the statistics we have all read about. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire that SRE must be appropriate and sensitively delivered and that we must ensure that schools do not use inappropriate material, but I cannot agree with the “Too much, too young” campaign, whose tips on actions for parents at the back of its campaign material include seven ways of monitoring their child’s SRE, but do not include one positive way of talking to children about relationships and the consequences of unprotected sex.

That is quite ironic. Mr Amess, you may remember that The Specials had a number one record in 1980 called “Too Much Too Young”. I will not sing it, but it ends with the following lyrics:

“Ain’t you heard of contraception

D’you really wanna programme of sterilisation

Take control of the population boom

It’s in your living room

Keep a generation gap

Try wearing a cap.”

In the 1980s, when teenage pregnancies were rising significantly, that political song of the time said to a generation that relationship counselling and education needs to be embedded much further into the curriculum.

[Andrea Leadsom]

On a point of information, what do those song lyrics say about relationship education? Absolutely nothing, surely. That is a complete trivialisation and part of the problem, not part of the solution. There is no relationship guidance in those lyrics.

[Stephen Gilbert]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s point. I am trying to make the point that the consequence of not embedding relationship guidance at primary school level leads to the consequences of teenage pregnancies and the rise in sexually transmitted infections that so damage our society. We have to make this a continuous process, which is why I agree with Opposition Members who asked the Government to put the programme on a statutory basis.

It is a shame that debates such as this perpetuate some myths. The first is that sexual relationship education does not work. It does work, when it is established, properly resourced, appropriate and embedded in the curriculum. The second is that it leads to young people engaging in more sexual activity. All the evidence is to the contrary. Continuous, proper sexual relationship education actually helps people better negotiate the point at which they want to take part in sexual activities.

We have the notion, mentioned by my hon. Friend, that parents are excluded from the process, that somehow they do not have the opportunity to monitor and consider what their children are exposed to. Most surveys suggest that eight out of 10 parents think that their children should be receiving sexual relationship education. I think 0.04% choose to opt out at the moment.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I have to make the point again. I do not want to show one-upmanship—having three kids to my hon. Friend’s none—but the fact is that most parents now work. Therefore, when the school invites them in on a Monday morning to come to see what the children are to be taught—when they have an important meeting with their boss—the tendency is to think that school knows best and to let it go ahead. I agree with my hon. Friend in principle that parents have the chance, but in reality life gets in the way. That is why it is important to ask parents to engage and not just, by default, go along with whatever is being taught.

[Stephen Gilbert]

Again, I think my hon. Friend is trying to find disagreement where there may be none. As I said earlier, I think the materials should be appropriate and they need to be monitored. I like her suggestion of a classification system. However, I do not like her suggestion that parents could opt out of something that is so important and such a fundamental part of being a fully functioning human being in the 21st century.

[Alison Seabeck]

We are exploring a very important point. As the mother of two daughters—one of whom went on to teach in primary school and was responsible for sex education—I think it is important that we can trust our teachers to understand what is going on in the classroom and what the children can cope with. As a busy parent, I did not get to the Monday morning meetings either; I trusted my daughters’ teachers. Now we have access to the worldwide web, and there are very good sites to which parents could be pointed by the school, saying, “This is what we intend to teach your children. If you cannot come along, look at the internet.” A vast number of parents—certainly the working ones—would have access to a computer and be able to do that.

[Stephen Gilbert]

The hon. Lady makes an eloquent point. The explosion and proliferation of modern technology make such supervisory duties much easier for all of us. In future, perhaps she will be able to do so in the Chamber from her iPad.

[David Simpson]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the research papers with which we have been presented include an article from The Times Educational Supplement of 13 May 2011, which makes it clear that almost six in 10 parents do not think that sex education should be taught to children at school?

[Stephen Gilbert]

There are occasions when hon. Members have to say, “On that point I have to disagree.” Why would one not teach geology? Should parents be given an opt-out from geology or from history? If we are to create happy, confident, rounded citizens, we need to be embedding sexual relationship education from the earliest possible age. Of course, we need to do so in an appropriate way; it must be suitably delivered, well resourced and properly monitored. However, we must move away from the “No sex, please, we’re British” attitude, which has so damaged individuals and segments of our society. We need to demystify sex and relationship education. We need to see it as a spectrum and I think we need to move it on to a statutory basis. I will be interested to hear the Minister’s views on that. Rather than the three Rs, we should think of a fourth R: relationship and sex education.

11:46

[Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Amess.

I start in the unusual situation of agreeing with everything said by the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert). I congratulate the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) on calling the debate, which is crucial and timely. It is right to discuss the matter now while the Government are reviewing the PSHE curriculum.

I also speak in the capacity of chair of the all-party group on HIV and AIDS, which has long campaigned for mandatory sex and relationship education at primary and secondary level. Its members are drawn from all political parties and we are extremely concerned about the rising levels of HIV infection in the UK, and the subsequent impact on public health. It is predicted that in 2012, the number of people in the UK who are HIV-positive will hit 100,000, a quarter of whom are unaware of their status. New HIV diagnoses in young people have risen by 48% in the past decade. That is horrendous.

My generation just missed the extremely successful Tombstone campaign in 1986. When I speak to my friends about HIV, it is not at the top of their list of priorities; they do not think it can affect them. The Minister recently told the Lords Select Committee on HIV and AIDS in the UK:

“When you have a survey that says one in four children are not taught about HIV, which is a deadly disease which can be simply avoided and simply caught, a lack of knowledge in this area is unforgiveable in our school system.”

A basic knowledge of HIV is essential to all our young people. HIV sadly remains a highly stigmatised condition, with the National AIDS Trust finding that one in three people diagnosed with HIV have experienced HIV-related discrimination. Research has shown a strong association between poor understanding of HIV and stigmatising attitudes. Good, comprehensive sex and relationship education would help to improve understanding of HIV, dispel myths and thus reduce stigma.

Lord Fowler’s recent Committee in the House of Lords reported that current policies to tackle HIV in the UK are “woefully inadequate”. One in four young people did not learn about HIV at school, which was condemned by the Minister. Young people simply are not learning the facts about HIV and AIDS, and that has to change if we are to make any headway in reversing the number of new infections.

I shall move on to the “Too much, too young” report, already mentioned. The hon. Member for South Northamptonshire is a known supporter of the report, which she launched earlier this year. Unfortunately, many of its claims are at best alarmist, if not simply false. The campaign suggested that children as young as five are being shown explicit cartoons and taught about sexual pleasure. If we look at the small print in the report, which I have with me, it is clear that the majority of that imagery is actually suggested for older children. I have found no evidence that younger children have seen such material. The sexual health charities that I have spoken to, including the National Aids Trust, the Family Planning Association, Brook and the Terrence Higgins Trust, are not aware of any school where that has taken place. Furthermore, they would never endorse that type of teaching.

All schools currently have the right to decide which resources to use when teaching children about sex and relationships, and have the right to consult parents and governors to decide which materials should be used. The suggestion that the materials that have been referred to are used as a matter of course, or that sex education campaigners would like materials to be imposed on schools is misleading and misrepresents the excellent work that many of those organisations do in campaigning for comprehensive, high-quality and age-appropriate sex and relationship education for all children.

We might like to live in a time when children did not grow up so quickly and their “innocence” was preserved until a later stage in life, but unfortunately that era, if it ever existed, is long gone. Children are curious about sexual relationships. We cannot and should not shield them from all the influences of the modern world. If they want information, they will find it from another source: teen magazines, the internet and gossiping friends in the playground.

In a survey by UNICEF and the Terrence Higgins Trust, three quarters of young people said that they used the internet to obtain information about sexual health. That risks children receiving inaccurate information. My fear about the suggestion by the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire of opt-in sex and relationship education is that many children would miss out. They would not receive sex and relationship education at home; indeed, they might be in a damaging and abusive situation at home.

I have no interest in promoting specific sexual behaviour or introducing concepts to children before they are ready to hear about them. Children are naturally inquisitive and will ask when they are ready to be taught. Primary school sex and relationship education is essential for laying the foundations to ensure that, when old enough, young people receive good sex and relationship education that gives them the information they need to make the right decisions to protect their health and well-being. Given that we have the highest rate of teen pregnancy in western Europe—it is falling, but slowly—it is clear that we are not getting that right, so I welcome the current Government review.

I want to raise a point about homophobia and the positive role that sex and relationship education at an early stage can play in tackling homophobic bullying, which has never been more prevalent in our schools than it is today. A recent YouGov poll found that nine in 10 secondary school teachers and 40% of primary school teachers have witnessed children being subjected to homophobic bullying in their schools. In addition, 75% of primary school teachers have reported hearing the word “gay” shouted as an insult in the school playground. Such words are used commonly by children, without comprehension of their true meaning, as a form of abuse. If children are not taught from a young age about the different possibilities of relationships and about the normality of same-sex relationships, it is not surprising that they grow up with those prejudices. To become active, appropriately behaved citizens, children must learn at that age about the possibilities of different relationships.

As pupils generally start puberty at the later stages of primary school, it is important that schools have an open and intelligent approach to same-sex issues. Basic HIV education should be taught in an environment where same-sex relationships are normalised, not stigmatised or off-limits.

In a recent report by Stonewall, a London primary school teacher is quoted as saying that

“the younger it is addressed…the more receptive the children are to believing that other ways of life are acceptable. You don’t have to shove it in their faces, just teach them that some people have other ways of life and it is just as normal as the ways of life they are familiar with.”

[Andrea Leadsom]

There is an age below which children have no concept whatever of sex, so I cannot agree with the hon. Lady. A four or five-year old has no concept of what on earth sex is about. Until children are pre-pubescent at the very least, they cannot get their heads around it, so to talk to them about different sorts of sexual relationship would be entirely pointless and probably quite frightening.

[Pamela Nash]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention, but her earlier remarks showed how strongly she feels about the importance of relationship education and how sex and relationship education should be paired together. I suggest that homosexual relationships are separate from sex education and sex.

[Alison Seabeck]

We must also bear it in mind that there is an increasing number of single-sex families of all types. The children of those families will be in school and therefore it makes sense to talk positively about relationships in that context.

[Pamela Nash]

I completely agree.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I just want to clear this up. I am saying that people should absolutely talk about relationships, but not sexual relationships, because below a certain age there is simply no point. I agree with the hon. Lady that there is a need to talk about relationships, but there is no need to talk with very young children about sex.

[Pamela Nash]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention, but I am not clear about the difference she is getting at between relationships of another sort and sexual relationships. My understanding from what she said earlier is that she is happy for people to talk about heterosexual relationships. I am happy to take another intervention to clarify the issue.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I thank the hon. Lady for her patience in giving way. I am specifically talking about very young children. For them, the focus needs to be on the relationship, not the sexual act. That is where a lot of the material being shown to children now is simply inappropriate, because they really do not get it. There is a point below which a child is not old enough to conceptualise what the act of sex means. I agree with the hon. Lady that it is entirely appropriate to teach that sometimes men love other men, but it is not appropriate to teach what sometimes men do with other men, for example. That is where I am drawing the line. I am saying that the relationship side can be separate from the sexual side at a very young age.

[Pamela Nash]

I thank the hon. Lady for that explanation. I am talking about relationships. I suggest that no images of sex between a man and a woman, between two men or between two women should be shown to very young children, of four or five. However, I do think that it is appropriate to teach young children about relationships, including same-sex relationships.

[Mr George Howarth in the Chair]

[Stephen Gilbert]

Without wishing to continue the love-in, I agree absolutely with everything that the hon. Lady is saying. As I said earlier, I have a four-year-old nephew who, from what he has said to me, is aware or beginning to become aware of sex as well as relationships. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need to deal with the world in which we live, not the world in which we would like to live?

[Pamela Nash]

I entirely agree. I have had similar experiences with the young children in my family. I have stories about comments on sex and relationships that they have made, even at the ages of three and four, that it would not be appropriate to tell here. They are inquisitive and they have that knowledge. They watch television and hear people speaking. They see people around them who are in relationships that might be different from what they see at home, and they should be taught that that is okay and why it exists.

I have been looking this morning at the UN convention on the rights of the child. Article 29 refers to the following:

“The preparation of the child for responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes, and friendship among all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups and persons of indigenous origin”.

That is one of the rights of the child, and I believe that good relationship education is part of it and will prepare young people for a normal life.

Children must also be prepared to deal with their own sexuality. The high levels of self-harm among homosexual teenagers have been well documented. Again, high-quality and age-appropriate sex and relationship education will help to tackle that heartbreaking problem.

Let us be clear: sex education is not about the sexualisation of children, nor is it intended to promote promiscuity or a certain kind of lifestyle above another. Taught well, sex education is about teaching children the facts of life and how to handle their personal relationships.

The challenge we face is that SRE is patchy and inadequate. An Ofsted report in 2010 said that the quality of PSHE is poor in a quarter of schools and that teachers lack the knowledge and skills to teach pupils the subject effectively. My experience of sex education, which was not so long ago, involved an expert visiting my school and telling the 14-year-old girls in my class that they should not let boys touch them from the neck down. That was the message in its entirety, and I do not believe it was entirely adequate.

There is strong support from parents for teaching SRE in schools. A poll run by the Department for Children, Schools and Families in 2009—I am sorry these are the most recent figures I could get—showed that eight in 10 parents thought their children should receive SRE lessons, while only 0.04% had withdrawn their children from SRE. To conclude, we need high-quality, age-appropriate and mandatory SRE in all primary and secondary schools throughout the United Kingdom.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Order. Two Back Benchers are indicating that they want to take part in the debate. I intend to call the two Front-Bench spokesmen at 12.10. If people are restrained in their contributions, it may be possible to get the remaining Back Benchers into the debate.

12:01

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) for raising this important issue. I congratulate her on an excellent speech on a subject that is of great concern to parents in my constituency and across the country. I welcome her positive contribution and her constructive ideas, as well as the fact that she has expressed concerns about some of the educational materials in primary school classrooms.

The debate is about how, when, where and what sex and relationship education should be promoted in primary schools. Crucially, it is also about involving parents in deciding content. Equally, it is about promoting the outcome I think we all want: a generation of young people who fulfil their potential in all areas of life, including personal relationships.

Although “Sex and Relationship Education Guidance”, which was published in 2000, gives schools guidance on working with parents, such work is not a requirement. The guidance says:

“Schools should always work in partnership with parents, consulting them regularly on the content of sex and relationship education programmes.”

In practice, that does not appear to happen, and there is no legal requirement for schools to enter dialogue with parents. The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) queried whether graphic content of the type that has been described was causing parents concern, but a group of parents came to see me in my surgery because they were concerned about the content of the sex education materials that it was proposed to use in a primary school; I think they were based on some of the media productions mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire. The parents felt there was no appropriate route for them to register their serious concerns about the content of those educational materials, so they had to come to see me about them. The opt-in requirement my hon. Friend proposes for parents would ensure that there was such a route.

My hon. Friend’s positive contribution is welcome. The previous Government should perhaps have considered rating the content that could be used in this sensitive and delicate subject. As the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) said, the evidence shows that this country should be far from proud of its levels of sexually transmitted disease, teenage pregnancy and relationship breakdown, and one cause among others for those things may be the lack of parental involvement in our sex education content.

We should be moving towards an environment where, as my hon. Friend said, parents make a more active choice regarding the material they believe is fit for purpose for their child, and where they can actively opt into the curriculum. If they participate in that way, it might improve the dialogue between themselves and their children, which might be a better way forward for our society.

[Pamela Nash]

I appreciate the point the hon. Lady is trying to make about parents being more involved in making these decisions in schools, but does she not agree that the children of parents who do not opt into SRE if they are given the option will be at serious risk of receiving no SRE at all?

[Fiona Bruce]

If we have a satisfactory procedure, such as that proposed by my hon. Friend, schools and the responsible teachers hon. Members have described should ensure that that does not happen.

Let me add another suggestion to those that have been made. To aid parents and schools, the Government could create a website where varied sex and relationship tools and programmes could be explained. That would offer schools, governors and, above all, parents a diverse range of options. The recently launched ParentPort website is a model of how we could move forward and engage parents and others who are concerned about content. The website was recently launched by the Prime Minister as a result of the Bailey review and is aimed at helping parents to navigate the regulatory media and broadcasting framework. I was struck by the fact that within a few days of its launch about three weeks ago, 10,000 people had registered concerns. That shows the desire of many—I am sure many parents were among those who registered concerns—to have a say over such issues.

I am glad the Conservative-led coalition Government are taking their localism agenda forward. For it to be a success, an informed citizenry is required, and that is as true in respect of relationship and sex education tools as it is of any other area.

12:06

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) for bringing this issue before us, and I totally support her point of view. We live in an age of high teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections and multiple partners. No man is judge of how people live their lives as adults, but there must be safeguards in place to protect the innocence of children and to keep them as children for an appropriate time.

I questioned two mothers about their children’s education in primary school. One was a married mother of three, who also had a grandchild, and the other was a single mother of two, who had one child in primary school. Both told me the same thing: “Teach my daughter what is appropriate touching and what is not. Do not teach my daughter about sex when she is not even old enough to stay up past 9 o’clock.” No matter what their religious background, most parents agree that primary school is much too soon to be teaching these things.

When my three boys were young, they played with their G. I. Joes—I think that was the thing at the time—and little girls played with their Barbie dolls to encourage their imagination. Now children are told that that is babyish and that they should be playing on computers and hanging about with their friends. We now have six to seven-year-old girls wanting to wear padded underwear, wearing full faces of make-up to school and wearing high heels that harm their backs, all to look like their favourite TV stars.

As we know, Primark announced it was to stop selling padded bikini tops for children as young as seven, after criticism from the general public and politicians. The company, which was criticised for its £4 bikini sets, apologised to customers and said it would donate any profits to child welfare organisations. Penny Nicholls of the Children’s Society said:

“There is a big distinction between children dressing up for fun and retailers producing items of clothing that target children and encourage premature sexualisation.”

There is a clear difference, and I want to develop that point.

Last week, I attended a Prayer for Parliament and the Nation meeting in the House, as did other Members here. We were given a presentation about sex education at primary school level. It was very graphic, very physical and very technical. I am not a prude by any means, but I felt uneasy sitting watching it, and I suspect many others in the Room would probably feel uneasy, too. Thirty to 40 people were present at the meeting, and they gave examples of how their children had come home from school and told them that they could not get their heads round the sexual act; they were fearful. Let me just say, therefore, that it would be wrong to take sex education out of the hands of parents, schools’ boards of governors and teachers without the agreement of parents.

In Northern Ireland we have an organisation called Love for Life, which my hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) mentioned. It talks about not the technical details but emotional relationships; and that is what we must try to do. Love for Life in Northern Ireland has been able to affect 30,000 people in their school education. That is an example of what can happen. I urge hon. Members fully to support what the hon. Lady proposes.

12:10

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

We have had a good-natured, interesting and informative debate. I am the father of a 17-year-old daughter, so I think about the issues in question as a parent, as well as a politician. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) on securing the debate. She raised some interesting new ideas, including using the British Board of Film Classification to put a kind of health warning on to materials that could be used in schools for sex and relationships education. Departmental guidance about such education is clear; the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) read some of it out, and I wonder whether we need to nationalise—that in effect is the proposal—the classification of materials for use in schools. That seems to be the opposite of localism.

The hon. Member for South Northamptonshire said she knew of schools in her constituency that use inappropriate materials, and she went on to cite the materials, but did not say who produced them or name the schools where they were being used. There is a problem in the debate, which reminds me of the debate going on when I was a teacher in the 1980s about the teaching of homosexuality in schools, and the encouragement of children to engage in homosexuality. It was often said that that went on all over the place, and that homosexual lifestyles were being encouraged. With no evidence, the Government of the day turned that into legislation—section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988. I talked with a young male teacher who was gay, and he lived in fear of revealing his sexuality because of such legislation. If we are to have this debate, let us cite the evidence, and make that evidence clear. If inappropriate things are happening and inappropriate materials are being used for young children, that should be stopped. We can all agree about that.

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Gentleman will recall that I said that I have the evidence but was not prepared to mention specific schools in the Chamber. He will know that the relationship between schools and parents is delicate. I can provide evidence, but will not do it on the record, for good reasons. He is being mischievous in suggesting that no evidence exists, simply because I am not prepared to have it mentioned in Hansard.

[Kevin Brennan]

My view is that the hon. Lady should put it in the public domain. If she thinks that inappropriate practices are going on in our schools, wherever they are in the country—my or her constituency, or anywhere else—and that children are being exposed to materials that could damage them, that is an important matter, of public concern, which should be in the public record. I am sorry to disagree with her, but that is how it should be.

The hon. Lady also suggested that parents should be able to exercise an opt-in with respect to sex and relationship education. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) has pointed out that there is an opt-out, which extends to the age of 18, which is an anomaly. My hon. Friend, who was an able and successful Minister in the Department for Children, Schools and Families, tried to address that anomaly, by reducing the age to 15—although she did not quite get the relevant measure passed at the end of that Parliament—so that children could have the opportunity of a year of sex and relationship education before reaching the age of consent and what was at that time the school-leaving age. That seemed to me to be an entirely sensible proposal, but it was lost in the wash-up, as my hon. Friend pointed out, along with the proposal to make sex and relationship education a compulsory part of the primary curriculum.

An opt-in system would be inappropriate. The opt-out is available, and it provides parents with the necessary protection if they are concerned about what their children are being taught. Some argue that there should be no opt-out, and I think that the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) was arguing that, but I do not agree.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North said that we need to source the evidence if we are to make accusations about the material being used in schools. If there is an accusation of widespread use of inappropriate materials for sex and relationship education we should know about it. She also pointed out the danger that, if there is insufficient sex and relationship education, young women will not be taught sufficiently to be confident about themselves and their ability to take control of their relationships, whether sexual or other personal relationships. I would add—and I am sure that my hon. Friend would agree—that it is important for young men to be taught about appropriate behaviour. When I was a Minister in the Department for Children, Schools and Families, we heard a lot of evidence from charities about the effect of the more widespread availability, in the age of the internet, of hardcore pornography, and its influence on the practices of young men, and their expectations of young women in a sexual relationship. If young men see that material in their daily lives they need to be taught that that is not necessarily how a relationship should develop. That is where sex and relationship education in school can be important—in helping young people to develop healthy, good relationships.

[Jim Shannon]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the national opinion poll, which showed that six out of 10 parents are concerned about any sex education in primary school? Those 60% of the ladies and gentlemen who were questioned suggested that sex education should start at 13. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that they too have an opinion, which needs to be taken on board?

[Kevin Brennan]

I do accept that they have an opinion. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman clarified the statistic, because when he spoke earlier he did not mention that it related to primary education. I am afraid that it all depends, in such situations, on how the question is asked. I think most people would understand the appropriateness of teaching children about relationships, which is what we are talking about, at an appropriate level at primary school. I know that the Minister was not very keen when the previous Government introduced social and emotional aspects of learning, but it had a huge impact on improving relationships between children. When parents are given an explanation of what is in mind, and of the scare stories and unsubstantiated scaremongering about sex and relationship education, they will change their mind.

I pay tribute to other hon. Members on their speeches. The hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay made some important points and gave some important statistics about sexually transmitted diseases and the prevalence of sexual activity among young people. It was not necessarily wise of him to quote The Specials. I could tell him the whole lyric, which I know by heart, and it is not necessarily entirely helpful to his case, but I thank him. My hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash) told us about her role as the chair of the all-party group on HIV and AIDS, and she too mentioned the importance of evidence in discussing the topic. She told us that the inspectorate has said that SRE is patchy and inadequate. That is not good enough, and we need to do something about it. There were also good contributions from the hon. Members for Congleton and for Strangford (Jim Shannon). The hon. Gentleman said that we should teach what is appropriate, and went on to talk about the sexualisation of young people. Sex and relationship education can help to counter such sexualisation of young people by teaching them what is or is not appropriate, and about the relevant issues. He should reconsider the issue and see the opportunity to counter the sexualisation of children.

The Opposition are disappointed that in the review of personal, social, health and economic education, the Government have made a U-turn. When we criticised the Conservatives in the wash-up for forcing the then Government and the Liberal Democrats, who supported them, to drop the sex and relationship education issue, they criticised the then Secretary of State for suggesting that they were not in favour of extending sex and relationship education. However, it turns out that they have ruled out in their review any change to the law on sex and relationship education. That is highly disappointing. There is plenty of evidence, certainly from the recent Brook study, of young people’s ignorance about sex and relationships. There is also plenty of evidence from the inspectorate about why we should do something about it.

I have praised the Minister, and I praise him again, for tackling head on homophobic bullying in schools, as we tried to do, and for being the second Minister from the Department, after me, to address the Schools Out conference. He should show the same kind of vision when it comes to sex and relationship education.

12:20

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan). I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) on securing a debate on such an important and sensitive issue. Today’s debate has highlighted a wide range of views on the subject, and genuinely reflects the divergent views on the issue among the public and parents.

I fully understand the concerns of some parents, particularly those with children of primary school age, who do not want their children exposed to materials that they feel are harmful and show images that are simply too explicit for the child’s age. Parents want to protect their children and preserve their children’s innocence. I know that a number of hon. Members share those concerns. My hon. Friend is right when she says that we must ensure that any materials used in schools are properly scrutinised to make sure that they are suitable for young children and do not add to the sexualisation of children instead of protecting them from it, a point that was also made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon).

We want all young people to have high-quality personal, social and health education, including sex and relationship education. SRE is not compulsory in primary schools and we have no plans to make it so.

Although we are currently conducting a review of PSHE—I thank the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash) for her welcome for that review—my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education has said clearly that its remit does not include making PSHE as a whole a statutory requirement. There will be no change to current sex education legislation or to the parental right of withdrawal from SRE. We believe that the current statutory arrangements strike the right balance and reflect the range of public views on a sensitive issue.

[Diana Johnson]

Will the Government consider tabling amendments to the law on the issue of the age of 18 and the opt-out up to that age?

[Mr Gibb]

No. We have made it clear that we do not intend to change legislation on the matter. When children are in full-time education, the rights of parents are important in how their children are brought up.

The review of PSHE fits within the schools White Paper strategy of devolving power and responsibility to schools and of trusting professionals. The vast majority of primary schools provide SRE, and it must be done in a way that provides the right teaching at the right time.

In developing policy, we have looked at the evidence available. In 2010, Ofsted published a report on PSHE, which found that some aspects of SRE were less well taught, particularly relationships. More positively, it found that in about two thirds of the primary schools visited, teachers used a range of resources effectively, including computers and story books, to enable pupils to discuss issues without embarrassment. Previous inspection evidence reported by Ofsted in 2007 showed that schools judged as being particularly effective providers of SRE had developed successful and constructive links with a range of support services, which could advise young people on a variety of issues and respond to their needs.

Many schools draw on expert help, as was alluded to in the debate, for aspects of PSHE in which they do not have expertise, inviting professionals such as school nurses to give sex education lessons, or external organisations that use drama to explore sensitive issues. Research from Sheffield Hallam university found that school nurses were involved in the teaching of SRE in 45% of primary schools that taught it, and other external organisations were involved in 22% of schools. That research looked into different aspects of PSHE in primary and secondary schools, including SRE.

The researchers conducted a nationally representative survey with more than 900 primary schools and around 600 secondary schools. The study looked at which aspects of PSHE were taught and how frequently. In primary schools, more than 50% taught all elements of PSHE and 40% taught some elements. More than three quarters taught emotional health and well-being every week. Other aspects, such as diet and safety, were taught at least once a term by two thirds of primary schools. Three quarters taught SRE once a year or less often, with similar coverage on personal finance, enterprise and drugs education.

The study also examined aspects of PSHE in depth with nine primary schools. It found that the schools most valued official sources of support for planning or for signposting other resources. Teachers valued resources that were easy to use, enjoyable and engaging for pupils, which responded to pupils’ needs and were relevant to the context of the lessons. One of the key aims of the PSHE review is to identify the support that teachers need to provide high-quality teaching. The use of resources and expert support for schools are critical in that regard.

I am aware of the Christian Institute’s booklet, “Too much, too young”, which was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire. It raises the question of which teaching materials are appropriate for school children. A search of a number of the local authority websites cited in the booklet did not reveal any that had a list of SRE resources recommended for primary schools, although some had an intranet that could not be accessed externally by officials.

Local authorities tell schools about available resources in a number of ways, which may include directing them to websites where SRE resources are listed. The Sex Education Forum website has a list of resources, which includes some of those cited by the Christian Institute booklet. The Sex Education Forum website clearly advises professionals to make their own choices about which resources to use and does not endorse the resources on the list. The website also provides a list of questions to help teachers choose and use a resource.

[Andrea Leadsom]

Does my hon. Friend acknowledge that unless one happens to have a seven-year-old who has exactly the same mental capacity as every other seven-year-old, one cannot decide what is absolutely right for all seven-year-olds in a class? It is extremely difficult for an adult to decide what might terrify a seven-year-old, particularly as children are not all the same. Does my hon. Friend agree that some form of uniformity, by making better classification, would be extraordinarily helpful in decision making?

[Mr Gibb]

I will come to that and the other points made by my hon. Friend in a moment.

The questions on the website include the following. Is the resource consistent with the values set out in the school’s SRE policy? Is it appropriate for the age, ability and maturity of the children? Have parents been consulted? Will the resource be used in its entirety or will it be more appropriate to adapt it and select from it?

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) asked whether such material was being used in schools, so I will talk to the Sex Education Forum and to my hon. Friend about the materials, how their content is decided and how they are used in schools. I think the SEF, with its wide range of member organisations, including those representing children and youth, faith groups, health, parenting and families, should have a perspective on such matters. I also want to explore how the range of resources available influences practice in schools, and I will talk to the makers of BBC Active and Channel 4’s “Living and Growing” resources to understand how such resources are selected for particular age groups and how parents are involved.

My hon. Friend and others raised entirely legitimate concerns in the debate, and we must ensure that parents are listened to. There are safeguards in place to protect children from inappropriate materials. First, governing bodies have a statutory responsibility to ensure that schools have a policy on sex education, which, as a minimum, should give information about how sex education will be provided, any sensitive issues that will be covered and who will provide it. Secondly, local authorities, school governing bodies and head teachers must have regard to the Secretary of State’s statutory, “Sex and Relationships Education Guidance”. Paragraph 1.8 states:

“Materials used in schools must be in accordance with…the law. Inappropriate images should not be used nor should explicit material not directly related to explanation. Schools should ensure that pupils are protected from teaching and materials which are inappropriate, having regard to the age and cultural background of the pupils concerned. Governors and head teachers should discuss with parents and take on board concerns raised, both on materials which are offered to schools and on sensitive material to be used in the classroom.”

My hon. Friend also proposed the licensing of materials, potentially by the British Board of Film Classification. I can readily understand her wish for materials—

[Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Order. It is time for the next debate.

Community Groups (Lottery Funding)

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Westminster Hall

12:30

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to have this 30-minute debate with you in the Chair, Mr Howarth.

I want to talk about one of the most deprived communities in my constituency and about problems in the distribution of lottery funding in general. I also want to talk about delays in using the lottery funding that could and should be helping that community but has not been doing so.

The constituency of Worsley and Eccles South is in the west of the city of Salford and it contains the ward of Little Hulton. Salford is the 18th most deprived local authority in the country, and Little Hulton is one of the most deprived wards in Salford.

Many issues need to be addressed in the area, including low levels of qualification and high levels of worklessness and child poverty. The ward also has higher than average numbers of people with limiting long-term illness, which leads to higher caring work loads for unpaid family carers. An area such as Little Hulton needs support to address such issues and to build the capacity of its community groups.

Historically, my constituency has not benefited much from lottery grants. We are ranked 624th of 650 constituencies in the award of grants for community arts and sports groups. Indeed, since 1995, lottery distributors have allocated only £6 million of funding and 262 grants to Worsley and Eccles South. By comparison, the Cities of London and Westminster constituency has benefited from £914 million and 2,231 grants, which is more than 150 times as much lottery funding to more than nine times as many groups. I notice that the Minister’s Faversham and Mid Kent constituency has also benefited from at least £15 million of funding. I am sure he would agree that there is probably not as much need in Faversham and Mid Kent as there is in my Salford constituency.

This disparity in funding is unacceptable. On a number of occasions, I raised with the Big Lottery Fund my concern about how few grants were being made to community groups in my constituency. Some redress of that grossly unfair distribution was promised in July 2010 with the announcement that Little Hulton ward was to benefit from £1 million of Big Lottery funding due to its having been “previously overlooked” by the lottery. I was pleased about that, but I was somewhat concerned to hear that it might be some time before the community in Little Hulton actually started to benefit from the funding being allocated to it.

At the time of the announcement, it was said that a charitable trust would be set up. The BBC news item said:

“It is expected that the charitable trust responsible for the lottery money will be in place by October and that projects will begin to receive funding from June 2011.”

It is now nearly the end of October 2011, 15 months after the announcement of the funding for Little Hulton, yet not one penny of the lottery money has gone to the local community.

There are plenty of ways that the funding could be used to good effect, and there are people with excellent knowledge of the area who could help to suggest them. The council has a competent neighbourhood team, headed by the excellent Vincent Nash, which has a really good grasp of the issues and opportunities in the area. Indeed the announcement of the grant to Little Hulton said that the neighbourhood team,

“played an important part in ensuring Little Hulton received the money, conducting a two hour tour for representatives from the Big Lottery Fund and explaining to them what some of the key challenges are in the area.”

There is also an outreach and engagement forum, which is a network of agencies in the area. It includes community representatives who live in the area, represent local people and understand local issues. They come from different residents associations, and I have worked with them on a number of local issues. Also included is Sylvia Phillips, the chair of the community committee covering Little Hulton.

Sylvia is a life-long resident of Little Hulton and she has substantial knowledge of local issues. At the announcement of the Big Lottery funding, she was bubbling with ideas. She said:

“One of the things we feel we’d like to do is have some sort of community resource in the centre of Little Hulton, so it’s accessible to all the residents. Maybe we could have it for the old and the young, like a recording studio on one side and then there could also be a meeting room where the older people could meet...we have a good park which could be used for lots of things and the community spirit in Little Hulton is alive and kicking.”

I should like to report that some of those ideas had been examined for feasibility over the past 15 months but I cannot. The 15 months have been characterised by false starts and by long periods when nothing appeared to be happening.

In August 2010, the neighbourhood management team met lottery representatives to see how they could support them in getting local people involved. It was six months later, in February 2011, that a Salford-based voluntary organisation was appointed as the lead organisation. An initial meeting was held. Twenty residents, the neighbourhood team and other partner organisations gave their views on what the trust’s development funding should be used for. Sylvia Phillips tells me that she knocked on people’s doors to get them to come along to that meeting. Months then elapsed with nothing happening. The residents who came to the meeting used to stop Sylvia in the street to ask her what was happening, but she was unable to tell them.

The allocation of £1 million to a deprived area that has missed out on funding should be good news, but all we have seen for 15 months is false starts and lack of progress. The Big Lottery has been unable to get a scheme going effectively, which could be because the area does not have an established infrastructure of voluntary and community organisations. Existing structures and individuals were ignored by the Big Lottery, which seemed to be looking for further community networks that do not exist in Little Hulton. The structures that exist are centred on the local council, the Churches and the schools. Salford council has established ways of reaching out to the community and engaging local residents.

I shall list the issues that I believe have caused the delays and false starts: ignoring existing structures and key individuals; searching for a lead organisation to establish the trust—that caused at least nine months of the delay; and appointing staff from outside the area rather than recruiting a paid staff member to work in the area. I have seven years’ experience of the constituency and I, along with people from outside Salford, have had a lot to learn about how to work with local people. In September, a Manchester-based organisation was put forward as the lead agency and a Leeds-based consultant was appointed as the representative for the Big Local Trust in Little Hulton. What we have seen even over the past few weeks is a lack of understanding by people who come from outside the area. I do not blame them for that; it is difficult being brought into an area for the first time. It was not a brilliant start. The newly appointed people scheduled meetings for the residents in a different area of Salford. That appeared to be for the convenience of the organisers, but it confused people. There was suspicion that it meant that the funding was to be used over a wider area.

I understand the need for consultation in establishing a charitable trust such as this, but the consultation has been repetitive. A sizeable group came together in February to give their ideas and input. None the less, the agenda for the meeting in October included “involving community organisations.” As I said, we do not have a vast network of community organisations.

The appointed consultant sent me a report before this debate. He said that

“community associations in the area will be approached and involved in the next phase of consultation and community visioning work.”

Clearly, he is adopting a particular approach to community development that ignores the context he is in. I do not know who briefed him but such an approach will not work. At a recent meeting with residents, he suggested that they go on away-days. The residents are frustrated. They have contributed a lot to this process and they do not want to go on away-days. In fact, being taken out of their own ward made them feel as though they were on an away-day.

However, I can report some better news. The view of Sylvia Phillips and other local representatives prevailed at that meeting. They conveyed some understanding of what would work in an area such as Little Hulton. They had their own sensible ideas, including holding meetings in Little Hulton itself and not in other venues. They suggested that consultation should be done at existing community events, such as the upcoming bonfire night. They also suggested using an empty shop in the district shopping centre as a way to make better contact with local people. As I heard about these things, it seemed to me that much of the process is about basic good practice in community development. If people coming from outside the area do not understand the local context, they must listen and learn from local residents.

Even at this point, 15 months into the process, and even with the recent developments in the scheme, the focus is still on the seemingly small item of how to bid for and spend £30,000, which is a small amount of development funding, and on how to get consultation going again. It really is time that the scheme got past that stage and that residents started to see their ideas being taken more seriously. Although the £1 million has been sitting about, inflation is at 5% and the £1 million allocated to Little Hulton has already eroded in value. If we go too many months down the road, it will be worth less than the £1 million that it was worth last year.

Little Hulton is an area where unemployment, including youth unemployment, and child poverty are getting worse. We had riots in Salford this summer, although I probably do not need to remind people of that.

I understand that the Big Lottery Fund is independent, but the Government give them directions, and I believe that the Cabinet Office is currently consulting on changing those directions. In fact, I hope that the problems that the Big Local Trust has had in getting started in Little Hulton—problems that I am reporting today—can serve to inform the consultation.

The Big Lottery Fund’s mission states:

“We are committed to bringing real improvements to communities and the lives of people most in need.”

It also says that the Big Lottery Fund will “give money” to neighbourhoods that have failed to access cash and will let them

“decide where and how it can be put to best use.”

I must say that that is not what we have seen with the Big Lottery Fund’s work in Little Hulton during the last 15 months. In a flurry of criticism earlier this year, the Big Lottery Fund was criticised for spending a reported £71 million each year on its own running costs and wages for its 988 staff. The high staff salary levels were justified by the Big Lottery Fund, which said they reflected the fact that their employees were graduates who did not do “routine clerical jobs” but jobs that require

“skill and judgement, managing 26,000 ongoing projects.”

Again, I must say that we have not seen much of that “skill and judgement” being exercised in the last 15 months in relation to our scheme in Little Hulton.

I hope that this report of a local situation—I admit that it is very local—is useful in showing what can go wrong. It provokes some questions about how the Big Lottery Fund is running its Big Local Trust scheme.

I have a few remaining points to make and I also have a question to put to the Minister. I believe that a better way to establish a Big Local Trust scheme in an area such as Little Hulton is to start by utilising all the existing structures in the area, including the neighbourhood management team and the Churches. I have not talked about the contribution that the ministers of our local Churches make, but it is substantial; they do a lot of work in the community. Other existing structures and representatives include ward councillors, local residents and even the local MP. I have not been consulted and nor have the local ward councillors. I would be happy to meet representatives of the Big Lottery Fund to ensure that the fund is finally going to start working effectively on the scheme in Little Hulton.

Some of the approaches used for community capacity building that I have described today, such as talk of “community visioning”, may not be the way to start that work in a community such as Little Hulton. They are more suitable for areas with an established voluntary sector and where individuals are more used to going on away-days and using all those training development techniques. I do not decry those methods. In the right place, they can be very useful, but people in Little Hulton are impatient to see something get off the ground.

Does the Minister agree that a distributor such as the Big Lottery Fund, which has nearly 1,000 staff and running costs of £71 million, should understand how to establish a project to distribute funds of just £1 million in an area with fairly minimal community capacity? Also, can the Big Lottery Fund look at what has happened in Little Hulton and learn some lessons that it can apply in other deprived communities?

12:43

[The Minister for Sport and the Olympics (Hugh Robertson)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), both on securing this debate and on the way that she has put her case across. Having said that, I must say at the outset that I owe her two apologies. First, I am not the Minister in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport who has been responsible for the national lottery. That is the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) and I am afraid that he is away at a European meeting today. Secondly and probably even more fundamentally, because it took the DCMS some time to make contact with the hon. Lady’s office and establish the precise points that she wanted to raise, we are no longer even the Department that she needs to answer her questions. As she knows, the responsibility for BIG—the Big Lottery Fund—has now transferred to the Cabinet Office. So she really wants the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, who is now responsible for BIG.

Needless to say, I have a wonderfully drafted speech, but it answers very few of the hon. Lady’s questions. The best thing that I can do is to give her an undertaking that I will write to the chair of BIG. She can either write me a letter that I will send on to him, or I am very happy to get officials in my Department to write to him and ensure that the questions that she has put today are taken on board and that something is done about them.

At the end of her speech, the hon. Lady asked me if I thought that what has happened in her area was an acceptable way to operate. The honest answer is, “No, I don’t think it is.” I am not an expert on the exact administrative charges that apply to BIG. However, when BIG was administered by DCMS, as part of the comprehensive spending review we set all our non-departmental public bodies—including the two that I am responsible for directly, which are UK Sport and Sport England—a target of bringing their administrative costs down to 5% of their spend. I would be very surprised if BIG was allowed to be an exception to that at any stage in the future.

I absolutely share the hon. Lady’s analysis of what has gone wrong here. It is very likely that the lottery distributor looked to an existing pattern—a form of working—that, for the reasons she has perfectly outlined, simply does not exist in Little Hulton. Therefore, having promised this money, it was imperative for BIG to find some other way to deliver it, because there is nothing more frustrating and draining for community groups than to be offered the opportunity to bid for a pot of money such as this one, which, as the hon. Lady correctly said, could and should be very profitably used in the local community—indeed, that is exactly what the national lottery was set up to do and it is why ticket sales have increased year on year, as they have done—and then the promise not to be delivered on over a protracted period of time. I am absolutely with her on all of that.

[Barbara Keeley]

In fact, we did not even have to bid for this money. The important thing about this element of BIG funding is that it is meant to redress the imbalance. Clearly there is a big imbalance to be redressed, whereby the constituency of Cities of London and Westminster has received £914 million of lottery funding and my constituency has received only £6 million, which is a very small amount.

What has happened in Little Hulton is an absolute indication that we do not have a community infrastructure, whereby groups are ready, able and full of the sort of people who can put bids in. There is a sort of double disappointment, that this is a scheme like the previous scheme, Fair Share, to try to redress that imbalance a little bit, but what happened is that a series of new barriers were erected. The right thing to do would have been for BIG to send someone in with some experience of community development in an area such as Little Hulton—there are people up and down the country who have that experience—and they could have tried to work with local people to develop their agenda.

Having looked at this project in Little Hulton, it seems crazy for BIG to have a scheme to distribute money in areas that have failed to bid for lottery money but then to look for a bidding organisation in those areas. That is the point, really. There will be 50 of these projects and the Big Local Trust really needs to have a different path that, as the Minister says, helps those projects to get started in areas where there is no community infrastructure. Instead, people could use councils, churches, schools and those sorts of bodies.

[Hugh Robertson]

I can only say to the hon. Lady that I agree with her absolutely. As she correctly said, the problem points to the fact that much of the infrastructure that would normally be needed to apply for lottery grants is simply not present. Therefore, if money is to be delivered effectively—no one wants to see money promised but not translated into projects on the ground—alternative delivery mechanisms to the normal ones will be needed. I suspect, without wishing to over-egg the pudding, she will find that that is the case not only for the areas for which BIG is responsible but for sports, arts and heritage, which are the three other beneficiaries of lottery funding, falling outside the allocation to BIG.

I can give the hon. Lady some small words of comfort: the problem is probably better understood than it was 10 years ago or at the start of the lottery in 1994, and a pattern can now be clearly established. All the national lottery distributors are aware of that. I spent an hour before I came to respond to the debate talking to Sport England about community sports grants, in connection with London 2012 and the inspired and iconic facilities, specifically concentrating on how we might get more of that money into areas where it is needed. We talked about the riots and about how we might increase the capacity for people to play sport, not only by putting in coaches and officials but by doing something about the facilities. The process has been lengthy but, slowly, some understanding has come about.

[Barbara Keeley]

I want to mention StreetGames—I am sure the Minister knows it—which, in my experience, has a wonderful model for going into deprived communities and getting projects off the ground. Perhaps BIG needs to be talking to StreetGames about how it does things.

[Hugh Robertson]

Let me immediately give the hon. Lady some comfort. It would probably be invidious of me not to name them all, but in our meeting we were talking about three organisations in that regard and StreetGames was one. When the party conference was in Manchester a few years back, I went to see a number of its projects, and I have seen it sponsor things here. Absolutely, StreetGames is that sort of provider organisation. I suspect that the problem she is facing with the Big Lottery Fund is that BIG has not recognised that other local organisations such as StreetGames in the voluntary and community area could deliver the sort of improvements for which she is looking.

I could test everyone’s time in the period before lunch by reading through my speech but, given what the hon. Lady has said this morning, I am not sure that it will add greatly to the nation’s sum of knowledge. By far the best thing that I can do to help her and her community is to give an undertaking. If she is prepared to write a letter to me, I will write on her behalf to the chairman of the Big Lottery Fund, telling him that I have given her an undertaking that he will meet her. We will arrange a meeting with him at which she can take up the issues directly. We might then achieve what we all want to see, which is that her community gets the money promised to it—which it clearly needs—as quickly and as efficiently as possible, commensurate with the need to account for the money correctly.

[Barbara Keeley]

That is a useful way forward, Mr Howarth, and I am happy to do what the Minister suggests.

[Hugh Robertson]

With that, I need detain the Chamber no longer.

12:52

Sitting suspended.

Fire and Rescue Centres (North-West)

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Westminster Hall

13:00

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I am extremely grateful for this opportunity to discuss the future of Cumbria’s fire and rescue control centre. The proposal to close the control room and regionalise it in Warrington is of deep concern to my constituents in south Cumbria. It is a threat to public safety and a waste of public money.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth, and to see the Minister in his place. After our discussions about Cumbria county council’s botched single-status project, he might think that this is the latest in a long line of concerns over which he has no direct jurisdiction that I have brought to him. To add to his consternation, I am here in part to praise his actions and those of the coalition Government in this matter.

The previous Government proposed a centralised series of regional control centres for fire and rescue services, which would have led to a programme of forced closures and amalgamations of fire control centres, but after the coalition formed in May 2010, the new Government called off the project after a Public Accounts Committee report labelled it an expensive white elephant. That wise decision by the Government was welcomed in Westmorland and throughout Cumbria, and it should have been the end of the matter.

Sadly, however, Cumbria county council decided to ignore the Government’s sensible conclusions and proceed with the project anyway, planning to close the excellent control room in Cockermouth and keep faith instead with the white elephant in Warrington. The county council proposes in 2014 to merge all north-west fire and rescue service control centres into a single control room in Warrington, although the plans have received a severe setback after the announcement that the Merseyside services would be withdrawing from the project.

Merseyside’s decision does two things. First, it undermines even further the viability of the regional model and plays havoc with the project’s finances. Secondly, it provides an entirely sensible alternative model. Merseyside has chosen instead to pursue a merger within the county with the control rooms of other Merseyside emergency services. Merseyside has recognised, as must we, that there is a financial imperative. It is completely necessary to make efficiency savings in a time of financial crisis, but Merseyside, unlike Cumbria, has demonstrated a bit of lateral thinking by choosing an option that saves money and keeps the service securely within the area, protecting public safety.

Although many are concentrating on the proposal to set up the regionalised centre in Warrington in 2014, we must remember that the closure of the Cockermouth control room will come much sooner, in June next summer. The county council plans pre-emptively to close its control centre in Cockermouth and outsource its work to the Cheshire fire authority. From next summer, 999 calls from Cumbria for fire and rescue emergency support will be answered in Winsford, more than 100 miles from most places in Cumbria—that is, if we are lucky. The Cheshire service, like many other authorities, has a resilience partner, its neighbouring service in north Wales. However, as hon. Members might be aware, the Welsh services plan to co-operate in a single service, meaning that Cheshire is looking for a new resilience partner. The favourites at the moment are Humberside and Buckinghamshire. That is where Cumbrians can expect their emergency calls to be answered by next summer, unless the county council changes its mind.

That is desperately worrying for all of us who believe that there are extremely good reasons for having a local control centre. I have no doubt that the people and technology in Winsford, Warrington, Wycombe or wherever Cumbria’s 999 calls might be answered will be excellent. I am in no way suggesting otherwise. However, it is also the case that the team at the Cockermouth centre are outstanding professionals who have shown immense dedication to our county week in, week out, particularly recently, when they have made an amazing difference by responding to catastrophic floods in 2009, the Grayrigg tragedy in 2007 and various other tragedies and near-tragedies off Cumbria’s coast, especially in Morecambe bay. It is peculiar for Cumbria county council to say thank you to those who have played a huge part in saving lives by outsourcing their jobs and moving their entire operation to the other end of the region.

The main reason why we must resist centralisation is that it will damage public safety. In more than 90% of cases, the regionalised system will provide an excellent response to people in emergency situations. Capable call handlers with a modern mapping system will scramble the right team to the right address swiftly and with the right result. However, some occasions seriously require local knowledge. For example, there are two Staveleys in my constituency and two Troutbecks and a Troutbeck Bridge in the county of Cumbria. Finsthwaite, where I was on Saturday, has three houses in the same postcode called Rose Cottage. A person sitting in Warrington or wherever, taking a panic-stricken call from someone in one of those places who cannot give an exact postcode or grid reference, will not know to ask critical supplementary questions such as “Which Staveley?” or “Is that the Rose Cottage by the church?” Such questions could save a life.

Even the best systems can only pinpoint a grid reference based on the nearest mobile phone mast when someone is out of range, which means that a grid reference given to the fire crew could be up to 18 miles away from the address where the emergency is taking place. I am not sure whether you have visited the Lake district recently, Mr Howarth, but getting a mobile phone signal is not always simple. Having a human being at the other end of the line who knows that there are two Staveleys 20 or so miles apart will save lives. There is no training like on-the-job training. Working in a control room where 100% of work relates to Cumbrian emergencies provides call handlers with the expertise needed to ensure a safe, specific and speedy response.

If Cumbria were to follow Merseyside’s lead and consider creating efficiencies by consolidating the control rooms of Cumbria’s emergency services, it could improve safety by exposing call handlers to the full range of Cumbria’s communities and to the geographical uniqueness of a county teeming with mountains, lakes and mountain passes, some of which are misnamed, being impassable. Meeting the needs of people in distress in our county involves understanding the county, the nature of road communications and the time distances as well as mileages involved.

This week, we started the inquest into the tragic death of Mrs Margaret Masson, who died in the Grayrigg derailment in February 2007. The emergency services’ response to that tragedy was instant, and one reason was that the Cumbria-based control room staff knew the nature of the area and, crucially, that it was right, for instance, to call out volunteer mountain rescue teams, which had the kit and the expertise to respond the most quickly. That is why the mountain rescue teams got there first. Would a call handler in Warrington have pictured the scene in their mind’s eye and have had enough experience of our area to know automatically that it was a job not just for the professionals of the fire service but for the expert volunteers of mountain rescue? I am not sure, but I am sure that that quick response, based on the call handlers’ local knowledge, prevented a worse tragedy and saved lives.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my neighbour, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), on securing this debate. He makes some strong points. Does he agree that part of the problem is the impossible position in which local authorities such as Cumbria county council have been put by the scale of the reductions that they are being forced to make across the piece? They are being forced to consider efficiencies such as the £300,000 saving that the proposals will generate.

[Tim Farron]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. Without doubt, all local authorities face huge pressure, because of the pressure on public finances. I simply make the case that the situation in Merseyside is no harder than that in Cumbria, and Merseyside has thought of an intelligent way through it. I am sure that all involved are not jumping for joy at having to make a difficult decision—merging control rooms is never easy—but, even at the hardest of times, whoever is to blame, it is possible to think laterally and to try to ensure that the service in the county is protected. The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, but that does not let Cumbria off the hook, given Merseyside’s rather more intelligent response.

Having spoken to members of the Fire Brigades Union in Cumbria and to other fire and rescue staff, I know that they strongly oppose the proposals, because, as I am sure we all know, it is the firefighters themselves who rely more than anybody else on the accuracy and professionalism of the Cumbrian-based call handlers to get them to the right place, with the right information and at the right time. They know that a control centre 100 miles away, however fantastic and professional it will be, cannot be as reliable or responsible as a centre committed to Cumbria, focused on our county and understanding its quirks.

This is a rare opportunity for me to be critical of the coalition—the Labour-Conservative coalition in Carlisle that runs Cumbria county council. I will qualify that, however, by saying that I am proud to represent a county where six MPs—only two of us are present—from all three parties work closely together, not just on this issue but on others. I know that my colleagues share my deep concern on the issue, even if we might not always come to exactly the same conclusions. I think that there is exasperation across the county—including all three parties and, more importantly, in the community—about the county council’s decision to resist all attempts to get it to rethink.

The recent decision of the Merseyside authority to turn its back on this wasteful project seems to have been ignored. Only a fortnight ago, the county council’s own overview and scrutiny committee, chaired by Jo Stephenson, the county councillor for Windermere, discussed the project, objected to it, for the reasons that I have outlined—the objections came from all three parties—and strongly recommended that the cabinet of the county council think again. The cabinet responded in less than 24 hours, without any time to consider the committee’s recommendations, and obstinately proclaimed that it was not for turning. I am sure that the Minister will understand our extreme frustration. There are intelligent, safer and more efficient alternatives, yet the county has so far refused to countenance them.

As someone who believes that decisions such as this should be taken at a local level—not least because it means that voters know exactly who to blame at the next local election—I do not want the Minister to intervene and override the county council. He could not, even if he wanted to, and even if he could, he absolutely should not, in the interests of democracy and localism. I would, however, like him to help us all the same.

The Government rightly withdrew their backing for the national programme of regionalised control centres. The logic behind that decision was right. I would be immensely grateful if, as a result of this debate, the Minister wrote to the leader of Cumbria county council to explain why he feels—indeed, why this Government feel—that such a move is inefficient, wasteful and a threat to public safety. If it wants to ignore his advice, as well as that of many of the county’s MPs and the vast majority of Cumbria’s citizens, it can do so, but it will, of course, face consequences. An intervention by the Minister would do no harm and would be very welcome, especially given that all I am asking him to do is restate what he said about this flawed proposal last year.

We are not saying no to any reform or restructuring, but we want the county to use its imagination and value the unique nature of our county. It is a county where fire and rescue means a lot more even than our excellent fire brigade—it means mountain rescue, such as the teams in Kendal, Ambleside and the Langdales, and inshore rescue, such as the bay search and rescue team in Flookburgh. Ours is a county in which understanding all that is essential in responding to people in acute distress. By all means, let us look at how we can consolidate our emergency control centres in Cumbria, but do not go down a route of regionalisation that will cost more money and could easily cost lives.

13:14

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

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Howarth. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) on securing this debate. I appreciate that the subject is important for his constituents. Indeed, the whole issue of fire control centres is one of real importance.

It is worth setting the issue in its full context. My hon. Friend has rightly referred to the failure of the previous Government’s fire control project, and to the incompetence, inefficiency and waste highlighted by the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office. I have seldom seen a more ringing condemnation of a Government policy than that given to the project that was embarked upon by the now Lord Prescott as part of an enforced regionalisation agenda. There is common ground between my hon. Friend and me in that regard. It is clear that lessons needed to be learned.

My hon. Friend is right to say that, when the coalition Government—by which I mean the Westminster coalition Government—came into office, we discovered that the project was already running 19 months late and experiencing problems. That was the situation that confronted me when I became Minister with responsibility for the fire service in May 2010. As my hon. Friend has rightly said, the NAO report, which was published on 1 July 2011, and the PAC report, which was published on 14 September 2011, highlights a litany of failings. That catalogue of problems led to the project wasting some £469 million of taxpayers’ money on an over-ambitious, over-complex and essentially imposed solution for fire control rooms that, frankly, was not proportionate to the risk faced and that failed the fire services themselves.

Two key failings were identified. The first was the lack of any consultation or involvement with the fire and rescue services at the beginning, which was highlighted by both reports, particularly that of the PAC. It was a top-down, imposed solution, and originally part of a broader regionalisation agenda that was killed off by a referendum in the north-east. The project under discussion was the last bit left hanging around. Secondly, the principal failure related to incompetence in the procurement of the IT—the software and the computer works. Part of the overall scheme involved the procurement of the nine regional control centres, and it is ironic that that was the one bit of the scheme that was actually delivered on time and pretty much to budget—the centres were there, but the properly working kit to put in them was not. That was why this Government took the view that we should negotiate with the suppliers, and we eventually concluded that a pass had been reached whereby we could not guarantee sensibly the delivery of the scheme to time, to budget or to the proper specification. Ultimately, therefore, we terminated the contract.

[John Woodcock]

Will the Minister put on record how much public money was wasted by that decision to terminate the project part way through?

[Robert Neill]

Although the matter was subject to commercial confidentiality, the hon. Gentleman should be made aware that damages were paid to the Government by the suppliers of the scheme, so we in fact recouped some money as a result of our actions.

[John Woodcock]

How much?

[Robert Neill]

The figure has been put in the public domain at about £22 million. The Government respected that confidentiality agreement, but since the figure is now in the public domain, I will not shirk from it. The Government got some money back. I say to the hon. Gentleman that his Government poured £469 million down the drain before we could prevent it from happening, so I do not accept any criticisms whatsoever of the decision to terminate the contract.

What we now have to do, sensibly, is find a solution that deals with the ongoing needs of the fire service for their control centres—that will vary from place to place—and that finds uses, as far as practically possible, for the nine control rooms that are left and in which a certain amount of public money has been invested. To that end—this is the background to the decision that Cumbria has taken—we determined that we would not go down the route of imposing a centralised solution. That is what went wrong before and is where I have common ground with, for example, the Fire Brigades Union, which is also very critical of that scheme.

We have decided that decisions on improving the efficiency and resilience of local control room systems are best made at a local level because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale fairly says, that is where the risks are best understood. In addition, if it is practical to do so, we want to make good use of the buildings that are available. Frankly, it is preferable that fire and rescue services should take them over because they are purpose built for that service, but if they do not do so, other emergency services could also be appropriate users. We have said that we will not force fire authorities down such a route and that it is a matter for them to decide. If there is no fire and rescue or emergency service use for a particular centre, we will consider other uses to try to minimise the damage incurred to the public purse by past failings.

To that end, in July this year, I announced an £83 million scheme to build the national resilience that we all want to encourage through locally determined solutions and collaboration and innovation. Every fire and rescue authority—in Cumbria we are talking about the county council and in other places about stand-alone or combined fire authorities, for example, Greater Manchester and Merseyside—can apply for up to £1.8 million to improve the resilience and efficiency of their fire and rescue control services. The funding will cover the installation of improved communication equipment to give the enhanced voice and data services that are a priority for the sector. We consulted widely with the sector before introducing the scheme and the people we spoke to said that the ability for fire and rescue services to talk to each other—the transfer of voice and data, so that they can mobilise across boundaries and so on—was a key priority. We have therefore concentrated on that.

Fire and rescue services can either apply for the funding individually or collaborate by pooling their funding and providing further enhancements across a group of fire authorities. That is a decision that four of the authorities in the north-west have decided to take. As has been rightly observed by my hon. Friend, that area is not the same as the old north-west region because Merseyside has decided it does not want to be part of it. The scheme is not steered by the Government: it is a collaboration of sovereign authorities coming together to decide that they want to go down that route. Those authorities have been advised by their chief fire officers, who are their principal professional advisers.

Cumbria will be able to use its pot, either jointly or alone. As well as enhanced voice and data services, some of the things we want the funding to be used for include common standards to underpin collaboration and interoperability, and the facilitation of improved overload and fallback arrangements. My hon. Friend referred to the catastrophic floods in Cumbria. There are circumstances in which an individual control room can become heavily weighed down with the burden of such matters and it is sensible to have some resilience not necessarily physically in the same area. In fact, there are occasionally some advantages in having what is called a remote buddy system, whereby one control centre is able to rely on the support of another that is not affected by the same physical events. All those things can be in the mix. The Chief Fire Officers Association has indicated that it intends to apply for funding under our scheme to disseminate that sort of good practice.

Of course, my hon. Friend is right: the Merseyside fire authority decided that a north-west consortium was not an option that it wished to pursue. That is entirely its right and it will therefore pursue its own arrangements. However, I understand that the chief fire officers of the remaining authorities—Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Cheshire and Cumbria—have indicated that they are keen to proceed. That is the professional judgment that the chief officers have made, which I respect and do not seek to second-guess. They are also accountable to the elected members of their fire authorities, which in the case of Cumbria is the county council. As my hon. Friend indicates, the county council must ultimately make a decision on the matter. I will not second-guess its decision because it is on the ground and the decision is a local matter. What it is doing is not out of line with decisions being taken elsewhere in the country as a number of collaborative arrangements of one kind or another are taking place.

My Department is determined to be supportive and work with consortia where that is what people on the ground want. Where people think that a stand-alone solution is appropriate, again, they can bid to enhance on that basis. Inevitably, there are local concerns when such changes are made, but it is worth saying that whatever arrangements any fire authority makes with its control room, that does not alter the fact that it is the local fire crews on the ground who will be responding to the emergency calls, wherever they are directed from. Their local knowledge remains available. I just observe that the arrangements for a collaborative approach going beyond one county are not unique to the fire service. It is fair to say that the North West Ambulance Service mobilises on a much more regionalised basis from a control room in Preston. So the fire authority is not going out on a limb in that regard.

[Tim Farron]

The Minister makes some very good points. I thank him for mentioning that matter because it takes us down the road of where we might end up if we have a regionalised fire control room. Since the North West Ambulance Service went to a regionalised system based in an urban area, at least initially the number of times the volunteer first responder unit in Cumbria and north Lancashire was scrambled by the call handler dropped significantly. The urban-based call handlers did not have experience relating to first responders. The analogy I would make is with the mountain rescue teams. If somebody—wonderful as they may be—has no direct experience of the quirks of living in a rural area, those volunteer services will not be scrambled when they could save a life.

[Robert Neill]

With respect to my hon. Friend, I would not go down the route of saying that that is automatically the case, because much depends on the briefing and the knowledge of the people in the control centre. At the moment, within the large county of Cumbria, calls are taken at a county-wide level. That is not as local as doing something at a fire station level, which we know would not be practical. Frankly, the appropriate level is a matter of professional judgment. It is also fair to say that a number of other fire authorities have similar arrangements. Suffolk and Cambridge, which cover a very large geographical area, are due to merge their control rooms. I have not seen evidence to suggest that that would pose an enhanced risk.

The key thing is that there is proper input from the fire authorities. The north-west consortium is being overseen by a project board and has very straightforward governance arrangements. The project board is led by a chief fire officer—a professional—as project director and there are senior representatives from each of the fire services in the consortium area on the board. Ultimately, they have reported to their authority. The decision has been scrutinised through the county council’s scrutiny procedure and the cabinet has concluded that that is the route it wishes to go down.

[Tim Farron]

The Minister pointed out earlier that the Government kyboshed the previous Government’s regionalised programme for two reasons, one of which was the lack of consultation. The consultation across Cumbria has been absolutely appalling. The Minister talked about the overview and scrutiny committee. It considered the proposals and rejected them, and the cabinet ignored that. Will he make a comment on the failure of consultation in that respect?

[Robert Neill]

The Government do not run those consultations centrally; it is for the county council to use its processes. I say again that the county council was advised by its chief fire officer. Often support for collaborative arrangements comes from professional fire offices, who frequently take the view that a modern and viable control centre can work well.

We are talking about a matter for local decision, which is why, with every respect to my hon. Friend, I will not be tempted down the route of telling the county council how to run its business. I have made it very clear already that we thought a centrally imposed solution was wrong, but that a locally developed solution—whatever it may be; it will vary from place to place—is the right one.

Ritalin

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Westminster Hall

13:30

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you chairing the debate, Mr Howarth. I secured the debate because I want to talk about how we treat behavioural problems such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children, and, in particular, about the increasing use of drugs to treat those problems.

I have been tabling questions on this issue for some months. I am sure that it is a complete coincidence that this morning, just a few hours before the debate, the Government announced an extra £32 million for children’s mental health therapy, including talking therapies. That news will be welcomed by parents and professionals, because it is important—a point that I want to stress—to have a range of treatments available for young children who suffer from this condition. Will the Minister confirm whether that is new money, or whether it is part of the wider £400 million announcement, made in February, on mental health? If it genuinely represents extra resources for mental health therapy for children, that is of course welcome. I also welcome its happy coincidence with this debate today.

My main focus is on the use of drugs to treat ADHD and similar conditions. The main drug that we usually talk about in this field is Ritalin. Ritalin is a brand name for methylphenidate hydrochloride, and it is this whole family of drugs that I want to talk about. I want to set out the trend of increasing use of these psychotropic drugs to treat ADHD, and the growth in their use for very young children—sometimes in breach of National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidelines. I want to spell out why many in the field believe that this trend is likely to continue. Finally, I will issue a plea to the Minister to carry out a proper, comprehensive review of the use of these drugs involving professionals from the medical, psychology and teaching fields, as well as the families of those who have been prescribed the drugs.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Had the young Mozart been on Ritalin and the young Beethoven been on anti-depressants, we would probably never have heard of them. Does my right hon. Friend agree that trying to drug children into conformity and uniformity is the enemy of creativity?

[Mr McFadden]

My hon. Friend makes an eloquent point. I do not take the view that the drugs cannot work. I am not qualified to say that, but there are serious questions to be asked about the growth in their use.

The increasing use of these drugs has not just happened in the period since last year’s general election. I am not here to make a party political point. This has been going on for many years and is part of an international picture, so it is not the responsibility of a single party or a single set of politicians. Some professionals and parents believe that these kinds of drugs can be effective and have a role to play where ADHD is correctly identified, although it is also true that some psychologists believe that there is significant over-identification and diagnosis of ADHD in children. The real question is whether the drugs are considered alongside other appropriate treatments, and are used as a first option, or only after alternatives have been properly explored and considered. Let us look at the trend in the number of prescriptions in England in recent years.

A written answer in July showed that between 1997 and 2009 there was a more than sixfold increase in the number of prescriptions for methylphenidate to the point where, in 2009, 610,000 prescriptions were issued. The number had almost doubled in five years. There is no doubt that there is an increasing reliance on these drugs to treat behavioural problems in children. Methylphenidate is not always used on its own. It can often be combined with other drugs, so that the child ends up taking a cocktail of powerful drugs to control their behaviour in different ways during the course of the day.

What lies behind this trend towards the medicalisation of child behaviour problems? Why are we prescribing more and more drugs to treat such problems? Do we really believe that there has been a sixfold increase in the occurrence of ADHD and similar disorders in recent years, or are these drugs being used to treat behavioural patterns that were dealt with in different ways by parents and teachers in the past? Is the increasing labelling and categorisation of behavioural problems increasing the tendency to treat children with drugs?

Sue Morris, director of professional training and educational psychology at the university of Birmingham, recently said:

“It’s not uncommon for the diagnosis of ADHD to be based on parental reports - without observation of the child in a home or school environment. The prescription of drugs certainly shouldn’t be the first step in treating the disorder. Sometimes drugs are being used in the absence of talking therapy and psychological assistance, and that is wrong.”

There is clear guidance from NICE on the use of these drugs:

“Drug treatment should only be initiated by an appropriately qualified healthcare professional with expertise in ADHD and should be based on a comprehensive assessment and diagnosis.”

NICE also makes it clear that methylphenidate

“is not currently licensed for use in children less than 6 years old”.

NICE makes it clear that it should be discontinued if there is no response after one month, and that treatment should be suspended periodically to assess the patient’s condition. What evidence does the Minister have that this guidance is being adhered to? Are these drugs always used as part of a comprehensive assessment and diagnosis? Are they used as the first option, or only after alternatives are considered? Are they given only to children aged six and over? Are children routinely taken off them after one month if they are not effective? Is their use periodically suspended to assess the patient’s condition?

I suspect that the Minister does not know the answers to many of these questions. In fact, when it comes to the number of children under the age of six being prescribed the drugs, I know that he does not know because the Department of Health has already told me. That is not a reflection on him personally, but it exposes a gap in our knowledge that must be filled. Why is it, despite the clear guidance from the Department of Health about the appropriate age for use of these drugs, that the Department does not know how many children under the age of six are being prescribed the drugs?

Evidence from the Association of Educational Psychologists suggests an increase in the use of methylphenidate for very young children. An informal survey of their members in the west midlands suggests that more than 100 children under the age of six in that region alone are on some form of psycho-stimulant medication. As we do not ask for someone’s age when a prescription is written, the Department of Health has told me that it cannot say whether its own guidance is being adhered to. I am sure the Minister would agree that that is an unsatisfactory situation. We have clear guidance from the Government, but no clear knowledge about whether that guidance is being breached on a regular basis. That is not an acceptable situation and the Government must establish a clear picture of what is going on.

I am not asking the Minister to ask the age of every person issued with a prescription, but it would be possible, through a proper survey of practitioners, to establish how much prescribing involves very young children. Will the Minister commit today to carrying out a proper research survey of professionals in the field to establish the degree to which the guidance from NICE is being adhered to and to establishing a clearer picture, particularly with regard to the use of these drugs by children under the age of six?

The question of age is not only about the youngest children. The sharp increase in the use of these drugs in recent years means that we now have a generation of teenagers who have taken psychotropic drugs for years. What happens when they reach adulthood? What are the long-term effects and what is the appropriate alternative treatment for people trying to come off these drugs after a number of years? In its review, NICE concluded:

“Given that ADHD is a chronic condition which may require long-term treatment, there is a need for further data on long-term outcomes of drug treatments.”

There is significant regional variation in prescribing patterns, with the BBC reporting a few years ago that the highest prescribing area prescribed 23 times more than the lowest. I can understand that in any health system in which people are asked to use their judgment prescribing patterns will not be uniform, but 23 times more is a very large difference, and there is similar variation abroad. In the United States, for example, the closer someone lives to the east coast the more likely they are to be diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed these kinds of drugs.

An important feature of the growth in the use of methylphenidate to treat behavioural disorders is the American Psychiatric Association’s “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition”—DSM-IV. The manual breaks down and categorises various psychological and behavioural disorders and has significant international influence. In 2013 it will be replaced by DSM-V.

Some people believe that such publications exacerbate a trend towards the over-medicalisation of behavioural problems. The British Psychological Society, for example, has expressed serious concerns about DSM-V. Its response to the impending introduction of the fifth edition states:

“The Society is concerned that clients and the general public are negatively affected by the continued and continuous medicalisation of their natural and normal responses to their experiences; responses which undoubtedly have distressing consequences which demand helping responses, but which do not reflect illnesses so much as normal individual variation.”

It goes on:

“Diagnostic systems such as these therefore fall short of the criteria for legitimate medical diagnoses. They certainly identify troubling or troubled people, but do not meet the criteria for categorisation demanded for a field of science or medicine”.

What is the Department of Health’s response to those serious concerns? How does the Department intend to work with the professions on the introduction of DSM-V, and does the Minister share the concerns of the Association of Educational Psychologists and the British Psychological Society that it might exacerbate the trend towards the medicalisation of behavioural problems?

It is for all those reasons—the growth in the number of prescriptions, the evidence that they are being given to very young children, the wide regional variations in their use, and the lack of firm data and evidence about the long-term effects of combining these drugs with others—that the Association of Educational Psychologists has called for a review of the use of the drugs. The review should involve paediatricians, child psychiatrists, GPs, teachers, parents and other relevant voices. We must get to the bottom of what lies behind the increased use of the drugs, and establish whether we are dealing with childhood behavioural problems as best we can.

The association’s call for a review is a call I echo today, and I hope that the Minister can confirm that the Government will undertake such a review, before the introduction of DSM-V in 2013. I hope also that he will be open-minded about my questions. I welcome the money for children’s mental health therapy that has been announced today, but it does not mean that we should ignore the questions raised in this debate. If recent trends of growth in the use of the drugs were to continue, we could end up with more than 1 million prescriptions for them, each year in England. Would the Minister be comfortable with such an outcome?

Having highlighted the growth in the use of the drugs and raised concerns about their being taken by very young children in particular, I am essentially asking the Minister to do two things. First, will he commit his Department to carry out a proper research project into the use of the drugs, including the age of the children receiving them? Secondly, in the light of the huge growth in prescriptions, will the Government carry out a proper review of practice in the field, as called for by the Association of Educational Psychologists, before the new guidance comes into effect in 2013? Those requests are moderate and measured, and I look forward to a positive response.

13:40

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) for securing this debate and for allowing me to address a simple question to the Minister.

Like my right hon. Friend, I am not qualified to say whether people should be on treatments or not, but I am struck by the increasing number of children in Birkenhead who are given what a group of teachers has referred to as “medical coshes” to keep them quiet. In some instances the drugs are no doubt necessary, and they work, but along with my right hon. Friend I question the growth in the number of prescriptions.

Will the Minister work with his colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions to consider the moral hazard of someone ensuring that their child is on Ritalin so that the prescription gives them access to disability benefits? Clearly, that was never the Government’s intention, but we now have a system in which, if someone can prove that their child is ill, and keep them ill, the likelihood of the child being passported on to disability benefits increases. I know that this is not in the Minister’s sphere of influence, but in his response to my right hon. Friend’s most detailed points will he tell us whether he will co-ordinate with the relevant Minister in the Department for Work and Pensions to look at the moral hazard of someone proving their child needs to be on Ritalin to increase their chances of getting disability living allowance for that child?

13:47

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

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) on introducing a particularly interesting and sensitive subject. He made his points very fairly and very well. In passing, I should, I suppose, declare an interest because a member of my family has for a number of years been on Ritalin and, contrary to the observations of the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), the benefits to that person’s education have been immense—the decision was taken on clinical advice, not on the advice of parents.

I am pleased that the right hon. Gentleman has welcomed the announcement by the Minister with responsibility for social care, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow), of £32 million to help with children’s mental health. The right hon. Gentleman asked whether that was new money. It comes from within the £400 million that was identified by the Treasury in the spending review last year.

The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) asked about the link between disability allowance, and other entitlements, and children on Ritalin. The entitlement is based not on having a specific health condition diagnosis or treatment, but on what help is needed with personal care as a result of the disability. Nevertheless, I will certainly draw his comments to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whose Department will hopefully get back to him.

Let me set out some of the background to this issue. According to NICE, between 3% and 9% of school-aged children and young people in the UK meet the broad criteria for mild to moderate attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, and between 1% and 2% suffer from severe ADHD. Methylphenidate, commonly known as Ritalin, and similar drugs are used to treat a range of mental health conditions, including ADHD. The NICE guidelines, published in 2008, recommend that medication should always form part of a holistic package of care, which might include talking therapies. I fully appreciate the concerns raised by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East about the increase in the number of prescriptions for Ritalin and similar drugs. We need better to understand the reason for that. It is always wrong for doctors to prescribe medication inappropriately, and medication should not be the sole response to an individual’s condition.

I fully appreciate the concerns of those worried about the growth in prescriptions for Ritalin. We do, however, need to acknowledge the fact that too many young people and their families are not getting the support they need. The NICE clinical guidelines on ADHD said, at the time of their publication in 2008, that a minority—fewer than 50%—of all individuals who should be receiving medication and/or specialist care were in receipt of such care. If left untreated, mental health problems can lead to low attainment in school, antisocial behaviour, drink and drug misuse, worklessness and even criminality in adult life. Getting things right for children and their families—through a broad range of support to promote good mental health from the start of life, through the school years and into adulthood—can make a real difference to young lives.

The costs of doing nothing are simply too great. Across hospital and primary care, the prescribing of drugs for ADHD increased by around 12.5% between 2007 and 2010, the latest four years for which data are available, and by around 6% in 2010 alone. Prescribing in primary care alone increased by 22% in that four-year period, reflecting a significant shift in prescribing activity from a hospital setting and into primary care. Looking back further, one sees that prescribing in primary care has tripled in the past 10 years. Some variation in the prescribing of ADHD drugs around the country must be expected in the light of the distribution of specialist services, which might be more likely both to diagnose children with ADHD and to support GPs in taking responsibility from hospital teams for repeat prescriptions; the different local patterns of prescribing across primary care and specialist settings; and demographic factors, such as deprivation, which might be correlated with ADHD.

We do not, however, have good-quality data on the number of children and young people assessed with ADHD, against which prescribing patterns could be compared. If we had, it would be possible to gain a true measure of variations in clinical practice. Prescribing data are not routinely collected by age, but we do need better to understand the position. In the shorter term, we are investigating whether further helpful information can be derived from prescribing research databases. As a result, the data we do have must be interpreted with care and in the context of all the evidence that suggests under-diagnosis and under-treatment of this distressing behavioural disorder.

[Mr McFadden]

The point about age is important. The NICE guidelines on children under six could not be clearer. The Minister acknowledges that the Government do not know—I will leave aside whether that is a good state of affairs—how many children are prescribed these drugs. His Department has a research budget, so, rather than trawling other research projects, why can it not commit to research to find out from professionals how many children under six have been prescribed such drugs?

[Mr Burns]

The right hon. Gentleman anticipates my remarks on the NICE guidelines, and I hope that once he has heard them the situation will be clearer.

The 2008 NICE clinical guidelines on the treatment of ADHD are clear that medication is an appropriate treatment for severe ADHD, but that it should be initiated only by a specialist and should form part of a holistic care package that may include talking therapies. The guidelines do not recommend drug treatment for pre-school children, and health care professionals are expected to take the guidelines fully into account when exercising their clinical judgment. They do, however, have the right to prescribe the drugs if they feel it is clinically justified and in keeping with specialist consensus, given the individual circumstances of the child and in consultation with the parent or guardian. Such prescribing can include so-called off licence prescriptions, which means a prescription of medication outside its licensed age indications.

The right hon. Gentleman has asked the Department of Health to conduct a review of the prescription of drugs for the treatment of ADHD, working with families, teachers, medical and mental health professionals. It is, however, for NICE, as an independent organisation, and not for the Department of Health, to review the evidence and to provide national clinical guidance. Between 30 August and 12 September, NICE consulted stakeholders on whether to update its 2008 clinical guidelines. The review is a thorough assessment of the ways in which evidence on ADHD, including pharmacological treatments, has since developed. It will announce a final decision on its review shortly.

In June 2007, the UK led a European review of the risks and benefits of Ritalin and sought advice from independent scientific advisory groups on the available evidence. As a result of that review, the prescribing guidance for patients has been updated to ensure that it contains clear, comprehensive information about the effects of Ritalin and the importance of monitoring children and adolescents throughout their treatment. The safety of Ritalin remains under close review. In addition, the findings of research continue to inform the field and a number of bodies may commission such research, including the National Institute for Health Research. The Government are committed to improving mental health outcomes and have laid down important principles for the future in the strategy, “No health without mental health”, published earlier this year.

The emotional well-being and mental health of children and young people are vital to them as individuals, to their families and to wider society. A principle of the Government's mental health outcomes strategy is the importance of prevention and early evidence-based intervention. Half of those with lifelong mental health problems first experience symptoms before the age of 14, and three quarters of them before their mid-20s. Indeed, today, the Minister with responsibility for social care, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam, has announced £32 million of funding to improve access to psychological therapies for children and young people over the next four years.

Psychological therapies can in some cases form part of the holistic package of care that NICE recommended for children and young people with ADHD. It is important that a range of clinicians—paediatricians and GPs as well as child and adolescent mental health service professionals—are well informed on the diagnosis and treatment of mental health problems in children and young people. I am pleased to tell the right hon. Gentleman that the chief medical officer and the NHS medical director plan to write to clinicians to remind them of the full range of NICE guidelines on conditions—including ADHD—that affect children's mental health. They will highlight the opportunities to support rigorous use of evidence-based treatment through the improving access to psychological therapies programme. High-quality, evidence-based treatment is central to our programme to transform mental health services for children.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to DSM-V. This point goes much wider than ADHD alone and touches on the appropriateness of diagnostic categories that are the subject of international professional consensus through the American Psychiatric Association and through the World Health Organisation. The Association of Educational Psychologists and other concerned professional organisations might wish to make their representations on this issue through the American Psychiatric Association and the World Health Organisation.

The right hon. Gentleman asked what the Government’s response would be, but it is not the responsibility of the Department of Health to respond. The professional bodies respond and reach a broad, scientific consensus on the way forward.

I fully appreciate the concerns of those worried by the increasing number of prescriptions for Ritalin and similar drugs. We are investigating whether further helpful information can be derived from prescribing research databases. It is of course for NICE, not the Department, to review the broader evidence and to consider the case for updating the existing clinical guidelines. That is what it has been doing and we await its conclusion. Furthermore, the NICE clinical guidelines on ADHD state that drug treatment for children and young people with ADHD

“should always form part of a comprehensive treatment plan that includes psychological, behavioural and educational advice and interventions.”

The NICE guidelines do not replace the clinical judgment needed to treat individual cases, but health care professionals are expected to consider fully the guidelines alongside professional consensus when exercising their clinical judgment.

14:00

Sitting adjourned without Question put (Standing Order No.10(11)).

Written Ministerial Statements

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Written Statements

Tuesday 25 October 2011

Warrior Capability Sustainment Programme

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Peter Luff)]

As the previous Secretary of State for Defence, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), announced to the House on 18 July 2011, Official Report, columns 643-645, we are proceeding with a number of high-priority equipment projects vital to Future Force 2020 as set out in the strategic defence and security review.

I am pleased to announce today the successful outcome of the Warrior capability sustainment programme competition. Subject to final contractual negotiations we intend to award a contract to Lockheed Martin UK for the demonstration and subsequent manufacture of the upgraded Warrior vehicles with a potential value of £1 billion.

The Warrior infantry fighting vehicle has been in service with the British Army since 1989 and has been deployed extensively and with distinction in theatres including Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The Warrior capability sustainment programme will provide a major upgrade to the vehicles and extend their service life to beyond 2040. The programme includes an improved turret and a new stabilised 40 mm cannon, an enhanced electronic architecture to cope with the demands of modern communications and vehicle systems, and the provision of a common armour mounting system to allow interoperability with current and future protection technology.

The upgraded Warrior platforms will be key components within the new multi-role brigade structure, and will provide armoured infantry battalions with battle-winning capability for the future. The turret and cannon will enable the ability to fire on the move and represent a step change in lethality ensuring that our armed forces are able to counter the threats of the future. Warrior gives the Army the mobility, firepower, and protection to deliver infantry into battle and on to an enemy objective while under fire. The comprehensive upgrades will ensure that Warrior will continue to play an essential role in the conduct of land operations—whether within a coalition or nationally.

The upgrade programme delivers a cost-effective, timely, and efficient commercial solution for this essential Army capability.

The award of this contract to Lockheed Martin UK will create and sustain approximately 600 British jobs within the company and its supply chain, representing 90% of UK content, as the programme moves through the demonstration and manufacture phases. This will ensure the sustainment of UK jobs, UK skills, and UK capabilities within the armoured vehicle sector.

London Conference on Cyberspace

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)]

I would like to inform the House that I will be hosting the London conference on cyberspace at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre from 1-2 November 2011 in association with the International Chamber of Commerce, the Royal Institute for International Affairs and Wilton Park.

The rapid development of the world wide web, from 16 million users in 1995 to nearly 2 billion today, has created economic and social opportunities unforeseen less than two decades ago.

At the Munich security conference in February, I proposed that the UK host an international conference, to bring together the major actors in cyberspace and to launch an inclusive dialogue on how, collectively, we should respond to the challenges and opportunities which the development of cyberspace presents. The purpose of this conference is to discuss ideas and expected behaviour in cyberspace. This will form the basis of the “London Agenda” which will help shape future international and national discussions on cyberspace. A number of countries have agreed to host a follow-on conference within 12-18 months of the London conference.

I proposed seven principles as a framework for discussions:

(1) The need for Governments to act proportionately in cyberspace and in accordance with national and international law;

(2) The need for everyone to have the ability—in terms of skills, technology, confidence and opportunity—to access cyberspace;

(3) The need for users of cyberspace to show tolerance and respect for diversity of language, culture and ideas;

(4) Ensuring that cyberspace remains open to innovation and the free flow of ideas, information and expression;

(5) The need to respect individual rights of privacy and to provide proper protection to intellectual property;

(6) The need for us all to work collectively to tackle the threat from criminals acting online;

(7) The promotion of a competitive environment which ensures a fair return on investment in network, services and content.

Over 60 countries will be represented at the conference at senior ministerial level with heads of industry, international organisations including the UN, World Bank and EU, academic and civil society organisations.

The conference will support the UK’s commercial objectives by helping to establish UK industry as a leader in cyberspace. Thirty UK companies will exhibit at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre.

The conference will be live-streamed and the wider online community will be able to participate directly, feeding in their views through social media networks. A series of interactive events around the conference led by business, youth groups and civil society, will demonstrate at first hand the power of the internet to connect people.

Further details are available at link: www.fco.gov.uk/londoncyber. A programme, including participants, will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.

Air Travel Organisers' Licensing Scheme Reform

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mrs Theresa Villiers)]

I am today announcing a change to the planned implementation date for the proposed reforms to the air travel organisers’ licensing (ATOL) scheme.

The ATOL reform consultation, which took place between 23 June and 15 September 2011, proposed that the new regulations for bringing flight-plus holidays into ATOL would come into force on 1 January 2012.

Over 80 responses to the consultation were received. The final details of the ATOL reforms are being decided in light of these responses. However the overwhelming view from the travel industry has been that implementation on 1 January 2012 would provide insufficient time for businesses to make the necessary preparations to comply with the new requirements. This is partly due to the time needed to update IT systems and put in place the processes required to enable businesses to identify when a flight-plus holiday has been formed.

In recognition of these concerns, and to ensure that the new regulations are implemented fully, consistently and in a way that minimises the scope for error and subsequent confusion among passengers, I have decided that the new regulations will not now come into force on 1 January. Instead I intend to implement the reforms in April 2012 in order to give the industry enough time to respond to these new consumer protection requirements.

I expect to make a further announcement before the end of the year about decisions on the other ATOL reform issues in the consultation.