House of Commons

Monday 28th November 2011 Commons Chamber

Monday 28 November 2011

The House met at half-past Two o’clock

Prayers

Monday 28th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

Monday 28th November 2011 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

1. What steps he is taking to tackle benefit fraud in areas where its prevalence is high.

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

15. What steps he is taking to tackle benefit fraud in areas where its prevalence is high.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

I remind my hon. Friends of our inheritance from the previous Government: fraud and error in the benefit system were at £3.1 billion and progress had plateaued since 2005. The joint strategy with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs started in 2010 and included mobile regional taskforces to look at different areas. We are targeting claimants in high fraud areas with visits, phone calls and letters. One pilot has been completed in Birmingham and we have two more in Cardiff and Croydon. We will carry out evaluation once all three are completed. So far, since October, from case cleansing alone we have saved more than £100 million.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I thank my right hon. Friend. Will he share with the House how many benefit fraudsters were actually prosecuted last year?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

We prosecuted almost 10,000 benefit fraudsters in 2010-11, up from 8,200 the year before. Of those, 86% were successfully convicted—[Interruption.] I would have thought that the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) would like to keep quiet, because he has made one mistake already and is bound to put his foot in it again. We will push for the strongest possible sentences. In all cases, benefit fraudsters are required to pay back the money they have stolen.

[Stephen Mosley]

Benefit fraud is not just stealing from the taxpayer; it also leads to less money being available to those who are most in need. One measure that should deter benefit cheats is the one, two and three strikes rules. How successful does my right hon. Friend think that those rules will be in reducing benefit fraud?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

When the Welfare Reform Bill has passed through the other place, that process will begin and I think it will be very successful. Another important thing that we will do is bring together all the disparate benefit groups chasing fraud so that we have a much more cohesive strategy. Under the previous Government data were collected so shoddily that it is difficult to get to the absolute truth about the figures, so finally and importantly, we intend to change that.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to tackle benefit fraud, and he mentioned the scheme in Cardiff. Is he being equally assiduous in tackling a lack of benefit take-up among people who should be entitled to benefits?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

That is exactly what universal credit will help to change. The most important point is that its automatic nature will mean far fewer cases of people not receiving in the first place what they are entitled to. One good example is child care: many women, in particular, who are responsible for looking after children do not get the child care that they need, and under the universal credit that should change.

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

Universal credit is supposed to be much simpler than the current system. Why, according to the Government’s own impact assessment, will 380,000 people receive penalties for mistakes on their application and when will negligence be defined?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The point about universal credit is that it gets rid of quite a lot of the complexity in the system. That complexity has led to so many mistakes by individuals claiming and by the officials who are meant to be settling those claims. The hon. Lady, and her party, should welcome the arrival of universal credit at the earliest opportunity.

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

2. What support is available through Jobcentre Plus for people who wish to start their own business.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

I am pleased to refer my hon. Friend to the announcement we made a couple of weeks ago that our new enterprise allowance is now available nationwide for people who are looking to move from unemployment to self-employment. The early indications from Merseyside, where the scheme started back in the spring, are that a significant number of people have moved into self-employment. Those to whom I have spoken regard it as a really positive experience and are doing well as a result.

[Laura Sandys]

I thank the Minister for that answer. One resource that we do not necessarily use effectively is the help of retired business men and women who are interested in mentoring new start-ups. Would Jobcentre Plus consider recruiting them across the country to ensure that such start-ups have a much greater likelihood of success?

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the importance of mentoring. The difference between the new enterprise allowance and previous schemes is that it involves mentoring, which is often, as she says, provided by retired business people. We are looking to recruit as many mentors as possible through the Jobcentre Plus network and the organisations supporting enterprise allowance participants. Hon. Members on both sides of the House have an important role to play in helping to encourage people whom they come across in their constituency work to put themselves forward as mentors.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

What advice is available now through Jobcentre Plus? I am sure the Minister agrees that we do not want people to end up back on benefits having started businesses which failed only a few weeks or months later because they did not know how to run them effectively.

[Chris Grayling]

That is absolutely the reason we have put mentoring at the heart of the new enterprise allowance—so that participants have a mentor who will work alongside them, not simply to prepare a business plan but to ensure in the first few months of trading that they do not make the kind of mistake that can cause the business to fail immediately.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I am greatly encouraged by the efforts of the Minister and the Department for Work and Pensions to encourage entrepreneurship among the unemployed. The plan currently includes the provision of low-interest loans of up to £1,000, but sadly that amount does not go an awfully long way these days. I would welcome hearing from the Minister that the Department might consider, down the line, providing low-interest loans of up to £2,000, as that would make a significant difference.

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. There are several aspects to the scheme that we intend to review and consider as time goes by to see whether changes can be made to make the scheme even more effective. I will happily give serious consideration to the point he raises.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

The Low Incomes Tax Reform Group points out that tax credits today support self-employment much better than the proposals for universal credit will in future because universal credit will assume that people are earning at least the minimum wage, which is completely unrealistic in the early years of self-employment. Will the Minister look again at that particular problem with universal credit at least for people in the first year or two of self-employment?

[Chris Grayling]

We will monitor carefully how the decisions we have taken on universal credit work. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, we want to encourage and support self-employment, and we cannot allow people to shelter themselves on benefits under the false excuse that they are self-employed. In order to encourage people and to make sure that claimants are genuine, we are putting in place new rules. However, as I have said to him in Committee, every individual will have the right to self-assess or self-refer each month, so that we always get amounts right and do not penalise people who are trying to do the right thing.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

3. What steps he is taking to improve public understanding of benefits available for people with (a) a hidden disability and (b) other forms of disability.

[Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD)]

5. What steps he has taken to improve public understanding of benefits available for people with (a) a hidden disability and (b) other forms of disability.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Miller)]

As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said earlier, the Government’s welfare reform programme will help to make our benefits system more understandable, less complex and better focused on those who really need help to live an independent life, so restoring trust in benefit provision, which has been so badly eroded in recent years. The Government also provide support for better understanding through Jobcentre Plus and work to support user-led organisations.

[Greg Mulholland]

I thank the Minister for that answer. The Government are right to tackle benefit fraud, but is she aware of the “Bad News for Disabled People” report by the university of Glasgow, which showed that the public dramatically overestimate the level of fraud in disability benefits by as much as 70%, based on inaccurate media reporting? What can the Government do to challenge that?

[Maria Miller]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question on an issue of which many hon. Members are aware. We are very conscious of the language we use when we talk about these issues, because we are clear that it is the system that has trapped people in a spiral of welfare dependency and that there has been a failure to reform benefits such as disability living allowance and to build any sense of reassessment into them. Those are the sorts of things that can create such problems and the Government are tackling them.

[Jo Swinson]

Despite the public’s overestimation of benefit fraud, in our constituency surgeries we see cases of the exact opposite—people who have a severe disability that affects their ability to work but who are found by the initial Atos assessment to be fit for work. Appeals can be stressful and costly, so will the Department implement Professor Harrington’s recommendation and publish data on the quality of Atos assessments and the percentage of successful appeals, so that we can judge for ourselves whether improvements are being made?

[Maria Miller]

We have accepted all of Professor Harrington’s proposals. Let me draw to my hon. Friend’s attention the fact that the number of successful appeals against the work capability assessment are substantially lower than for its predecessor, the personal capability assessment.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

What work have the Minister and her Department undertaken with employers to make them more aware of hidden disabilities and the adaptations that they may need to make in the workplace to enable disabled people to keep or obtain a job?

[Maria Miller]

As the hon. Lady knows, we work on an ongoing basis with employers through a number of forums. In particular, I am aware of the work that an organisation such as BT does to support its employees in such matters. It is by showcasing that sort of good practice that we will get a better understanding more broadly among employers.

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

Given that evidence of public understanding of disability benefits is often hazy, does the Minister with responsibility for disabled people agree with the Secretary of State when he said earlier this month in a comment in a daily newspaper:

“At the moment . . . millions of pounds are paid out in . . . benefits to people who have simply filled out a form”,

thereby giving credence to yet another negative and erroneous story about disabled people? If she does not, what efforts has she made personally to discover who briefed the story, and what action has she or her Secretary of State taken to correct the facts in this instance and to challenge future stories of a similar ilk?

[Maria Miller]

The right hon. Lady will know, from her time working in the Department for Work and Pensions, that there are indeed many people who simply fill in a form and receive a benefit, and that we are not making the right sort of assessment to ensure that that is correct in future. She may also be aware that £600 million is given out each year for disability living allowance, which is an over-assessment of people’s needs.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

4. What steps he has taken to ensure that work contracted by his Department will not be moved offshore.

[Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)]

16. What steps he has taken to ensure that work contracted by his Department will not be moved offshore.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

We have a policy to control contracted work being offshored. Our suppliers are required to seek approval before they offshore any contracted work. Those approvals are predicated on their meeting stringent guidelines. I should also say that, as a team of Ministers, we have indicated very clearly to our suppliers that we will not countenance seeing existing UK employment offshored.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

My right hon. Friend’s comments will be welcome news for many of my constituents, who are employed by his Department in Leeds. Can he tell the House what the future holds for the disabled benefits centre in Leeds?

[Chris Grayling]

As my hon. Friend knows, we are in the process of rationalising our estate, where we have a number of part-empty and under-used buildings. We have not made a formal announcement about the future situation, but I can confirm that it is our intention to continue to process disability benefits in Leeds.

[Karen Lumley]

Following a recent meeting of business leaders in my constituency, we are working hard to try to ensure that contracts stay in Redditch and that we bring new jobs to Redditch. Will the Minister consider Redditch as a serious contender for any new contracts that he wishes to award?

[Chris Grayling]

I commend my hon. Friend for her commitment to her constituency. Clearly, my colleagues and I have listened to the point that she makes, but there is a more important issue behind what she says—that each one of us as Members of Parliament, even including yourself, Mr Speaker, have an important role to play in building links between employers, welfare-to-work organisations and others who can help make sure that the unemployed in this country find an opportunity to get back into work as early as possible.

[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

Last July, during Department for Work and Pensions questions, the Minister said that in his view,

“British-based staff are the best contact centre staff”.—[Official Report, 18 July 2011; Vol. 531, c. 604.]

Will he therefore acknowledge the role played by MPs, workers and the Public and Commercial Services Union in persuading Hewlett Packard to drop its plans to offshore more than 200 DWP jobs, and will he commit to ensuring that his Government’s procurement policies do not permit contractors to jeopardise UK jobs and sensitive public data in this way in future?

[Chris Grayling]

The hon. Lady is right. I personally intervened as Minister to say that that offshoring should not take place. It is important that we do not see Government-controlled employment move offshore. We have a job to try to maximise employment in this country, and I pay tribute to all those involved in that work force for drawing our attention to the issue and the challenge. It is by far the best option to see people investing in the UK. It is particularly gratifying to see the contact centre industry around the UK increasingly reopening centres, recognising that British workers are far better at delivering good customer service than their counterparts in other parts of the world.

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

6. What assessment he has made of the effect of work experience programmes on employment prospects.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

8. What assessment he has made of the effect of work experience programmes on employment prospects.

[Mr David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

9. What assessment he has made of the effect of work experience programmes on employment prospects.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

13. What assessment he has made of the effect of work experience programmes on employment prospects.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

Early indications show that the work experience programme is proving extremely successful. The first figures we published for the period up to August show that more than half the young people starting a work experience placement under the scheme are off benefits within three months. As the scheme is extremely cost-effective, that is welcome news.

[Matthew Hancock]

Will the Minister visit one such successful work experience programme in Haverhill in my constituency, where youth unemployment has fallen by 15% since the programme started? Some 40% of young unemployed people are on the programme and, as with the national average, half of them are going into full-time jobs, even where there were no vacancies.

[Chris Grayling]

I pay tribute to the staff of Jobcentre Plus in my hon. Friend’s constituency for their part in delivering a successful scheme. I will be delighted, the next time I am in Suffolk, to drop in with him to meet and pay tribute to them for what they have done.

[Robert Halfon]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that work experience schemes need to progress to apprenticeships, and will he support the scheme I am working on with the charity New Deal for the Mind, Harlow college and Essex county council, which aims to employ genuine apprentices in Parliament?

[Chris Grayling]

I am very happy to support and pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s efforts. He is a model example of how an individual Member of Parliament can make a real difference by identifying an area where they can transform people’s prospects. His work on apprenticeships is a credit to him and to the House.

[Mr Amess]

As someone who was involved in recruitment for many years before becoming a Member of Parliament, I know that it is certainly better to have work experience on a CV than a gap, so will my right hon. Friend take this opportunity to condemn those people who have described the scheme as akin to modern-day slavery?

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are times when I read things and have to step back in amazement and think, “Some people just don’t get it.” The work experience scheme is making a real difference for young people. I pay tribute to the firms taking part in the scheme, particularly, given recent publicity, our supermarkets, which are large and diverse employers with wide-ranging opportunities. They are playing an important role in giving young people a start in their careers. The scheme is working, and that is enormously down to the work of employers in helping to give young people an opportunity.

[Richard Graham]

I believe, like other colleagues, that work experience is beginning to have a real effect on the employment prospects of the young. I also see from the sister programme, the Work programme, a really encouraging drop in long-term unemployment in my constituency of Gloucester. I understand the reasons for waiting a year to analyse the results, but will the Minister consider publishing data, at least on a preliminary basis, after six months to show the results across the country?

[Chris Grayling]

I hear what my hon. Friend is saying. I am not in the business of burying good news. We are hearing encouraging noises from the early stages of the Work programme. Indeed, one of our providers has said on the record that it is going much better for them than the previous Government’s flexible new deal. I will bring forward statistics on the Work programme as soon as it is practical to do so, but I am under obligations from the Office for National Statistics to produce statistics that are valid and appropriate, which is what I will do.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

I had drawn to my attention today the case of a constituent's grandson who has worked at Debenhams on one of these courses for four days a week, then for three, then for two, then for one, and now it is down to four hours only, for £24 with a bus fare for travelling to and from Derby. Surely that is not benefit plus, but benefit minus. Will he ensure that people placed in that predicament do not lose their benefit?

[Chris Grayling]

From what the hon. Gentleman says, I do not think that he is describing our work experience scheme. If he wants to write to me about the individual case, I will look at whether it is due to something that the Government are doing or something else.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Will the Minister comment on reports that even young people with qualifications are being sent for 13 weeks of shelf stacking? What sort of experience is that giving them?

[Chris Grayling]

I am always very disappointed to hear Members attacking major employers such as our supermarkets. A few months ago I met a man who had been long-term unemployed, who was given a job at one of our major supermarkets and who, within a few months, had graduated to running a department of 20. These are major employers with good opportunities, and we are about giving young people a start in life.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

Youth unemployment in the north, the north-west and my area of north Wales is rising higher and is deeper and longer than in the south. Does the Minister have any assessment of the quality and number of work placements in the north versus those in the south of England?

[Chris Grayling]

I have talked to Jobcentre Plus about the availability of placements, and I am confident that, together with the changes that we announced last Friday, which will double the size of the work experience scheme, we will be able to offer every single young person who needs such a placement the opportunity to embark on one.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

Youth unemployment has now hit 1 million, and the OECD has forecast today that unemployment is set to climb to 9%, as thousands and thousands more people lose their jobs. The Government scrapped the future jobs fund in their very first month, but the new measures that they have announced do not start until April—two years later. Will this morning’s shocking projections finally wake up the complacent and out-of-touch Ministers before us and persuade them to implement our plan for 100,000 jobs, paid for by a tax on bankers’ bonuses?

[Chris Grayling]

The trouble is that we just cannot take the Opposition seriously when we know that they have already announced 10 different ways of spending that money. We as a Government are delivering real action through real schemes that work and are affordable, and that is something that they failed to do. It is worth saying also that Labour is the party under which, back in 2009, more than 1 million young people were not in education, employment or training—despite the fact that Labour Members tell us otherwise.

[Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

7. What steps he is taking to ensure that individuals are able to build up pension pots under automatic enrolment.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

10. What steps he is taking to ensure that individuals are able to build up pension pots under automatic enrolment.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

I am pleased to confirm that we will go ahead with the introduction of auto-enrolment next year as planned, and I can confirm further that all businesses remain in scope. We have, however, decided to extend the reform’s current five-year implementation, so that small businesses will not have to start enrolling their workers until the start of the next Parliament. The revised plans will, nevertheless, still result in more than half of all workers being enrolled before the end of this Parliament. This is a positive programme, and there will be no exemptions.

[Sajid Javid]

This Government are doing a huge amount to help people deal with the challenges of old age. In that context, does my hon. Friend have any plans to change the rules governing short-service pension refunds?

[Steve Webb]

As my hon. Friend points out, certain pension schemes but not others currently allow people to take money out within the first two years, and that is an anomaly. We need to ensure that money put into pension savings stays there, and that is why short-service refunds for defined contribution schemes will not be part of the long-term landscape under automatic enrolment.

[Harriett Baldwin]

Does the Minister agree that auto-enrolment will bring into pension savings for the first time millions of low-paid workers in the private sector, both men and women, and that they can begin to look forward to the same kind of retirement income that we rightly offer our public sector employees?

[Steve Webb]

As my hon. Friend points out, at the moment not only do literally millions of people in the private sector not have a moderate pension; they have no pension at all. Auto-enrolment remains key to our policy goals, and as I just observed, more than half the work force will have been auto-enrolled by the next election.

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

I am disappointed to hear that there will be a delay in the roll-out of auto-enrolment, but I appreciate that the Minister was under a lot of pressure from noises off to bring in some exemptions, so I am pleased that that is not to be. What guarantee can he give to businesses, however? They need an absolute guarantee that the scheme will go ahead on time and to a new timetable, and that there will be no stepping back by the Government.

[Steve Webb]

I am grateful to the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee for welcoming our decision to keep everybody in. In terms of certainty, everybody who was due to be enrolled this side of July 2013 will see no change in their dates, and we will publish early in the new year the revised schedule. I entirely agree that certainty is needed, and I can confirm that there will be no further changes to the timetable.

[Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)]

Auto-enrolment is—or should I say, was?—central to the Pensions Minister’s strategy, so his resorting to bureaucratic language, saying that “all businesses remain in scope,” is not going to reassure anyone. The fact is, as I hope he will confirm, that the schedule has been moved back and millions upon millions of the employees whom he was keen to get saving in a pension scheme will not be auto-enrolled until after 2015. Is that correct?

[Steve Webb]

I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is aware of this, but under his party’s plans the roll-out of employers with one to 50 employees was already scheduled to go into 2016. I can confirm that the majority of the work force will be auto-enrolled during this Parliament. There was already a five-year roll-out for auto-enrolment, so it was already a phased process. Yes, we have changed the schedule, but, as he may be aware, his party changed it twice in a three-month period.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the difficulties and dilemmas involved in deciding what to do about the pension pot, particularly with regard to small businesses, should send a message out there to all those who can look forward to index-linked public sector pensions that they should be grateful?

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend is right that we do not want to see a levelling down in pension provision. We want quality pensions for our public servants, but we want to make sure that many more people in the private sector get quality pension provision as well, and auto-enrolment will help to achieve that.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

11. If he will amend his proposed welfare reforms to minimise the risk of children entering poverty.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

The overhaul of the benefits system through the Welfare Reform Bill will hugely improve the incentives to work. Universal credit will bring in an improvement for children, in that 350,000 children will be lifted out of relative poverty. As the hon. Lady may be aware, we have also made available an extra £300 million for the poorest people who are caring for children.

[Debbie Abrahams]

The Children’s Society’s analysis of the impact of the welfare reforms says that they will push more children into severe poverty and homelessness. Currently, one in four children in my constituency is in severe poverty. Eighteen bishops have called for the Secretary of State to reconsider his position on the reforms—will he listen to them?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I think the hon. Lady is referring to the cap, but I do not agree with her. The cap, which I understand Labour Front Benchers support, is rational and reasonable in that nobody who is out of work should be earning more than average earnings—that is, about £26,000 net. She may deal with constituents who have to travel perhaps an hour into work in the morning and an hour back, who work very hard and who look at those who are out of work and on benefits and find it difficult to accept that they are unable to earn as much.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

With child poverty targets repeatedly missed pre-2010, what role does the Government’s support for child care and the extension of early years provision play in helping families and keeping children out of poverty?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend has hit the issue right on the head. If we focus narrowly on income, we get a perverse result. Through our early years work, through the support provided by the pupil premium in schools, and through the work that we are doing with universal credit, we have been hugely improving future outcomes for parents and their children who currently languish in poverty.

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

As the Secretary of State will know, the Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts that by 2015 there will be 400,000 more children in poverty. Does he agree with us about this, and if so, what is he going to do about it—or does he just accept that it is a necessary evil of the Government’s current policies?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

With respect, we are already doing a lot about it. Of course, people can predict as far ahead as they like, without making big assumptions that nothing ever changes, and they will get the kind of results that they want. The reality for us is that all the work that I described to my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) is vital in changing outcomes for parents and children. Unlike Labour when in government, we do not think that children should be considered separately from their families; we lift families out of poverty and children out of poverty too.

[Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)]

A genuine challenge for us is to move into work those young unemployed people who have not had the role model of a parent getting up and going out to work in the morning. Can my right hon. Friend assure us that we are tackling this cycle of dependency to assist children and young people for the future?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I refer my hon. Friend to the answer given earlier by my right hon. Friend the Minister of State. The Work programme is a huge change for people who have been out of work for a long time. If we couple that with work experience and the opportunities for apprenticeships, we can see that this is a big step forward. Together with the introduction of universal credit, which will ensure that someone is always better off in work than out of work, the whole benefit and welfare system should be changed positively to support those sorts of people.

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

12. What plans he has to publish a strategy on disability.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Miller)]

I will publish a discussion document in December to support debate, and a new disability strategy next year. Our vision is to enable disabled people to fulfil their potential. We will co-produce the strategy with disabled people and their organisations, focusing on the themes of realising aspirations, individual control, and changing attitudes and behaviours.

[Iain Stewart]

Has my hon. Friend assessed how many disabled people the Department will be able to support back into work as a result of the Government’s reforms?

[Maria Miller]

I am sure that the strategy we develop will include an action plan and that work will form an important part of it. The Work programme is already providing important support for disabled people to get into work. The further work that is being done with the Sayce review suggests that an additional 35,000 disabled people could be supported into work if we use the money that is there to support specialist disability employment more effectively.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

Will the review look into the impact of the severe cuts in the public sector and in public sector jobs on the availability of jobs for disabled people?

[Maria Miller]

We of course always consider the availability of jobs for all people, and particularly for disabled people. Remploy’s employment services have been particularly successful in securing employment for disabled people, even over the past year in these difficult economic times.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

14. What steps he is taking to tackle youth unemployment.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

The measures that we announced on Friday build on the support that we have in place. There will be more intensive support for all 18 to 24-year-olds, including through the doubling of the work experience and sector-based work academy schemes. There will also be a wage incentive for any young person under the age of 24 who is placed in long-term employment, usually in the private sector, through the Work programme.

[Nick Smith]

In Blaenau Gwent, there has been a 70% rise in young people who have been on the dole for more than six months. The Government now acknowledge that high long-term youth unemployment is a slow-burning social disaster. How many of their private sector, subsidised work places for young people will be delivered in Wales next year?

[Chris Grayling]

Let us deal head-on with the issue of an increase in long-term youth unemployment. The only reason that the figures for long-term youth unemployment show an increase is that we no longer hide young unemployed people on Government schemes and training allowances, which created a totally misleading figure. The reality is that long-term youth unemployment on a like-for-like basis is now almost identical to what it was two years ago under the previous Administration. Every single young unemployed person in Blaenau Gwent will have access to a work experience placement through our work experience scheme or to the Work programme, through which they will receive a wage subsidy for any employer who takes them on and gives them a long-term job.

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the £25 million that is being made available for 10,000 advanced and higher apprenticeships is welcome not only because it will help to rebalance the economy towards manufacturing, but because it will provide a number of skilled jobs for young people? Is not the challenge now to encourage employers to take up and offer those apprenticeships?

[Chris Grayling]

Absolutely; I completely agree with my hon. Friend. We have regular meetings with employer groups, where I encourage them to take up apprenticeships. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning has met his target for delivering apprenticeships, unlike the previous Government. The Opposition seldom refer to this point, but the increase in the number of apprenticeships far exceeds the number of places that were available through the future jobs fund.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

What impact does the Minister think the youth contract will have in Hull, where in my constituency 58.2 people go after each vacancy? As I understand it, the youth contract will provide only a third of the jobs that the future jobs fund would have provided.

[Chris Grayling]

Of course, the young people of Hull now have access not simply to the guarantee that we will find them a work experience placement and to intensive, personalised support through the Work programme for those who have not found work, but to far more apprenticeships than was ever the case under the previous Government. That package is designed to create long-term employment and not the short-term, artificial placements that were created by the previous Government.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

17. What steps his Department is taking to ensure the new system of universal credit accommodates changes in personal circumstances.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

The design of universal credit will largely be about improving people’s personal circumstances. It will take account of such changes. That is the point of using the real-time information system. Essentially, such information will flow automatically, thus stopping what happens at present. All too often, there is too much of a delay in changing people’s circumstances, which can damage their outcomes, as was the case for one of my hon. Friend’s constituents. That should be brought to an end. At last, we will have a system that reflects people’s needs.

[Mark Pawsey]

The constituent to whom the Secretary of State refers, whose domestic circumstances changed, immediately notified Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, but she tells me that it took seven weeks to reassess her claim for working tax credit and child tax credit. During that period, payments were suspended and my constituent was placed in some hardship. Can the Secretary of State reassure the House that under the new system of universal benefit, such delays will not occur?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

May I say on behalf of the Government that such a delay is unacceptable? My hon. Friend knows that I have already written to him about that. The current system, much improved though it is, still leads to great difficulty because of the complexity of the benefit system that we have inherited. Universal credit will change that and at last give constituents such as his a chance to take a job, change their circumstances and get the money they should have got in the first place.

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

Women’s working lives often have much variation in them, as they sometimes take a few years off to have children. What assessment has my right hon. Friend made of the benefits of universal credit in taking account of such changes, specifically for women?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Universal credit is now widely perceived as being very beneficial to women, particularly to lone parents who struggle a lot. They are in and out of work, and often their hours change. That will be reflected almost immediately in universal credit. I know that many who come out of work temporarily lose some of their housing benefit because it takes so long to reorganise it, and thus are worse off. That should all be brought to an end by universal credit, and it will also improve the support for child care.

[John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)]

18. How much his Department paid in winter fuel allowance in (a) Glasgow North West constituency and (b) Scotland in 2010; and how much it will pay in 2011.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

Winter fuel payment expenditure in 2010-11 was £3.6 million for Glasgow North West and just under £240 million for Scotland. If those shares of total Great Britain expenditure in 2010-11 were maintained in 2011-12, the projected figures would be approximately £2.8 million for the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and £185 million for Scotland.

[John Robertson]

This year, 440 fewer households will receive winter fuel payments in my constituency, and 3,560 fewer in Glasgow as a whole. With the elderly population and housing numbers growing, how can that happen?

[Steve Webb]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, it was the policy of the previous Government to link the age of eligibility for the winter fuel payment to the women’s state pension age. As that increases, the number of pensioners within its scope will fall.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

20. What estimate he has made of the potential cost to the public purse of the removal of the habitual residency test.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

The initial estimates shared with the European Commission showed that the additional annual costs of awarding benefits to economically inactive EU nationals may be as much as £2.5 billion.

[Mr Hollobone]

Will the Minister confirm that this matter is a red line for Her Majesty’s Government which the European Commission shall not be allowed to cross? Will he undertake to lead a coalition of EU countries against these Commission proposals to interfere in the domestic business of quite a few member states in an area where the Commission should not be going?

[Chris Grayling]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. We have had a number of robust discussions with the European Commission about this matter, and I can confirm to the House that we are formally rejecting in the strongest possible manner the Commission’s reasoned opinion against the right to reside condition of the habitual residency test. I am in regular discussions with my counterparts in other European countries, many of whom share the same concern. I regard this as a battle that I do not intend us to lose.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

With all due respect, that sounded like ministerial waffle and a refusal to answer the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone). Surely the answer should just have been yes.

[Chris Grayling]

Indeed, I think the answer very clearly is yes.

[Mr Speaker]

We are most grateful to the Minister, who has brought some additional happiness into the life of the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone).

[Mr Bone]

And Mrs Bone.

[Mr Speaker]

And Mrs Bone as well, as he rightly says.

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

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

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

I am pleased to announce today the publication of the Löfstedt report on health and safety legislation. We have accepted its findings, including the recommendation to move about 1 million self-employed people out of health and safety regulation altogether where their work activity poses no potential risk or harm to others. I believe that the report is good for everybody and will help us put some much-needed common sense back into health and safety.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

At a recent meeting of the Basildon and Thurrock branch of Epilepsy Action, concerns were expressed that the work capability assessment does not fully take account of the debilitating effect that a condition such as epilepsy can have on a person’s ability to work. Can my right hon. Friend assure the House that those conducting the work capability assessment do understand the complexities and intermittent nature of neurological conditions such as epilepsy, and that those are taken into account when making the assessment?

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

I can absolutely give my hon. Friend that assurance. We are expecting further work from Professor Harrington about fluctuating conditions shortly, but I have also extended an invitation to voluntary sector groups that specialise in particular conditions to come into Jobcentre Plus and give briefings and training sessions about those conditions to our decision makers, so that we do everything we can to ensure that we get this right.

[Mr Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

With the OECD forecasting that unemployment is set to spiral to more than 9% in the next year or two, it is clear that the squeeze on working families will only get tighter and tighter. Can the Secretary of State remind the House how much extra it is budgeted will come off tax credits over the next year?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I have to say to the right hon. Gentleman that he needs to wait until the autumn statement to have all those figures set in place—if such a thing does exist.

[Mr Byrne]

I am happy to write to the Secretary of State with his own figures. Budgets laid out by the Chancellor project that more than £3 billion will come off tax credits and child benefit for working people, starting from next April. That squeeze is already serious, and that is why it is unacceptable to propose a further squeeze on tax credits in order to pay for the Secretary of State’s failure to get young people back to work.

On Friday, the Deputy Prime Minister was asked where the money for the new youth contract would come from. He said:

“Well the money clearly comes from the Government”.

He is full of insight. Will the Secretary of State confirm that he has been rolled over by the Deputy Prime Minister and that tax credits will be squeezed to pay for his failure to get young people back to work?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Just in case the right hon. Gentleman has missed the point, I remind him that decisions about tax credits are a matter for the Chancellor. I am surprised that he does not know that, because he was once in the Treasury himself. That reminds me that he is the individual who left a letter saying that there was no money left. Where does he think we were going to get the money from to get our successful programmes under way? The answer is that we have made a great start through the work experience programme, the Work programme and the changes to universal credit. We as a Government are doing more to get people back to work than anything his Government did when they were in power.

[Chris Kelly (Dudley South) (Con)]

T2. What assessment has the Minister made of the potential effect on UK defined benefit pension schemes of the European Union proposal to review the institutions for occupational retirement directive and align it with the solvency II directive? Is not that just a further EU assault on the hard-pressed UK occupational pension sector, and the last thing we need? Will the Minister stand firm against that?

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

We are gravely concerned about these proposals. The UK Government do not accept the need for new solvency arrangements for defined benefit schemes based on solvency II, which would have potentially serious effects for UK defined-benefit pension schemes. We are especially concerned about any proposals that would increase costs for employers at a time when we are looking to keep costs down, or that might affect the vital role pension funds play as investors in the UK. We will oppose these proposals.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

T4. Has the Minister revised his previous estimate that, by 2012, 25,000 single parents will be in work when their income support ends when their youngest child is five years old? Does he not accept that unemployment in my area, Hull, is at a record high, thanks to his Government’s policies?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am always astonished by the Opposition’s defeatist idea that trying to get single parents back into work to support their children is somehow a bad thing. The reality is that the hon. Gentleman’s Government left this country bust, and without any money to do any of the things that he wants to do. They keep spending the same money again and again in their proposals. It is time that they grew up and got on with the real opposition that we expect.

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

T3. The Secretary of State will be aware that it is still possible to study David Beckham, Harry Potter and surfing as part of degree courses in the UK. Following the Government announcement about the youth contract, can he assure me that he is in touch with the Department for Education to ensure that young people are equipped to deal with jobs in the real world?

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is right. It is of paramount importance that our higher and further education systems are as focused as possible on delivering the right skills for young people. The partnership that now exists between the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which is responsible for these areas, and ourselves is unprecedented, and it is making a real difference.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

T5. I was appalled to hear the sort of advice that jobcentre staff had given to a Master’s graduate in Liverpool. She was told to stop claiming her jobseeker’s allowance and, instead, to carry out an unpaid internship. Does the Minister of State think that that is morally correct? If he does not, what will he do about it?

[Chris Grayling]

I obviously cannot comment on that specific case, but what I can say is that anyone who is going through a work experience placement can continue to draw their benefits. That is the big difference that we made. Under the previous Government, somebody who was offered a work experience place was forced to lose their benefits.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

T6. Does my right hon. Friend agree that many people of both sexes, in Gloucester and elsewhere, who are currently without a pension will benefit considerably from the on-time and on-budget auto-enrolment that will arrive next summer? Does he also agree that many more people, especially women, would benefit from the current proposal under consideration for a single-tier state pension?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I absolutely agree. Auto-enrolment is not a negative; it is a positive. The fact that the Government are to plough ahead with it, that there will be no exemptions and that all companies will be brought under its scheme is critically important. I support the proposals of the pensions Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb). Furthermore, the reason that we were left in such a parlous position, with too many people owing money, was that not enough people in Britain had saved; now is the time to start changing that.

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

T7. Last week, the Office for National Statistics revealed that the real value of average median wages has declined by 3.5% this year, with an even bigger fall for the lowest paid. Does the Secretary of State recognise the impact that the child tax credit has in improving the living standards of the low paid, and would it simply not be an attack on the poor to refuse to uprate the child tax credit in line with inflation next April?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I need to remind the hon. Gentleman that whatever our opinions on this, it is a matter for the Chancellor and not the Department for Work and Pensions.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

T8. Over the past 12 months, unemployment in my constituency has fallen by 13%. According to the headline on the front page of the Rugby Advertiser, that is the largest fall in the country. In contrast to the picture painted by the Opposition, there are some good news stories. Does the Minister agree that in dealing with unemployment, this Government are taking the right steps?

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I congratulate all of those who are involved in the labour market in his constituency. This is an important point. All we hear from the Opposition is doom and gloom and that inevitably depresses those who are looking for a job. We should start to talk in a more positive way about the real opportunities that are still out there, even in these difficult times.

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

The Department itself recognises that many people will simply flow through the Government’s Work programme without securing a proper job at the end of it. How many people does the Minister estimate will end up on his mandatory workfare placement scheme after the Work programme? Does he have an estimate of the numbers?

[Chris Grayling]

The whole point about the Work programme is that it is uncapped; we have not set specific targets for it. The community action programme, which was announced a couple of weeks ago, is designed to help those who do not find a role through the Work programme. I would be delighted if it achieves 100% outcomes, but it probably will not. We have been determined to ensure that we do not simply send those who do not find a job in the first two years back home so that they end up sitting on benefits doing nothing. They will be asked to take part in a constructive and positive programme of useful work in our community that will, I hope, build their skills and give them a better opportunity to go back into the process, and to get a job the second time around.

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

There has been a 42% increase in apprenticeships in Thirsk and Malton. There are currently almost 700 vacancies. How can we marry up the apprentices, when they have finished their apprenticeships, with the local vacancies?

[Chris Grayling]

I hope very much that most employers will view taking on an apprentice as a precursor to giving them a permanent job. Nevertheless, we need to ensure that the support we provide through Jobcentre Plus and Work programme providers, as well as the work that we, as Members of Parliament, can do to support the growth of job clubs and enterprise clubs, will make it much more likely that if something goes wrong and an apprenticeship does not last, the skills built up will still lead to a role elsewhere and a longer-term career.

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

There have been several recent cases in Newport in which children with autism have been routinely turned down for the mobility component of disability living allowance only to be successful on appeal—although many are discouraged from appealing. Will the Minister consider this matter, and does she understand that this is precisely the kind of issue that is making many of my constituents extremely fearful of the new assessment for the personal independence payments?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Miller)]

The hon. Lady will be aware that there have been no changes in the assessment or eligibility criteria, so I am not sure why there might be perceived changes in the case she raises. I am obviously happy, however, to pick up on any issues that she wants to raise with me separately.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

Here last month, the Minister with responsibility for disabled people said that she wanted to reflect on the Low review into personal mobility in state-funded residential care before announcing her final decisions. I am glad that the matter has received careful attention since then, but when might she be able to lift this cloud from over disabled care home residents and their families?

[Maria Miller]

I thank my hon. Friend for his assiduous attention to this issue. We are considering very carefully Lord Low’s extremely helpful report and will come forward soon with our final response.

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

A constituent of mine, Abigail McGhee, was engaged to, and living with, the father of her two young children when he sadly died. Her application for widowed parent’s allowance was declined on that basis. Will the Minister reconsider the application of this benefit for people who find themselves in that sad position?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Yes, I will, and if the hon. Gentleman would like to send me the details of that case, I will pay particular attention to it.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

May I thank my right hon. Friend for his Department’s swift adoption of the Löfstedt review’s recommendations today? Does he agree that when introduced they will have the capacity not only to reduce the burden of red tape on organisations, but to improve their understanding of health and safety and therefore its effectiveness?

[Chris Grayling]

I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend. I pay tribute to him and the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller), who took part in the panel working with the TUC, the British Chambers of Commerce, John Armitt, who runs the Olympic Delivery Authority, and Professor Löfstedt himself, for putting together a report that gives a really good blueprint for the future of health and safety regulation that will ease the burden on business without endangering life and limb in the workplace—the core purpose of health and safety laws.

[Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

Following on from that question, will the Minister confirm that there will be no attempt to remove any necessary protections preventing injuries and the causes of ill health in the workplace? Has he agreed with the Treasury that the necessary resources will be made available to his Department to do the very detailed work that Professor Löfstedt recommends?

[Chris Grayling]

I regard good health and safety as of paramount importance. Britain can be proud of having the best record on health and safety in the workplace in Europe, and nothing that the Government do will undermine that. I can confirm that it is my view and that of the Health and Safety Executive that it has the necessary resources to get the job done and to deliver in reality on this very good report.

[George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)]

Has the Minister received representations on the Löfstedt review from employers or trade unions?

[Chris Grayling]

I have been very encouraged by the participation of employer groups and the TUC in the Löfstedt proposals. The fact that we had people from both sides of the employment and political spectrums supporting the report at this morning’s launch was a tribute to the work of everybody involved. It is a sign that we now have a cross-party blueprint for the future of health and safety in this country.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Since last May, an extra 155,000 working households have been forced on to local housing allowance—an increase of 42% on the previous year. Is that because rents have risen or because wages have fallen?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

As the hon. Lady knows, when we entered office we inherited a housing benefits system in a mess and local housing allowance was already spiralling —it has approximately doubled in the last 10 years—so she should look at what happened before as much as at what happens now.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that new policy announcements from his Department should be made to Parliament first?

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. It is unknown for Mr Bone to be unheard. Let us hear him say it again.

[Mr Bone]

Does the Secretary of State agree that new policy announcements from his Department should be made to Parliament first?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The answer to that question is yes.

[Mr Speaker]

I am glad that I asked for the question to be put again—and I am glad I heard the answer. Very satisfying.

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

I was particularly disappointed to hear the reply that the Minister with responsibility for disabled people gave to my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire). The Minister seemed to imply that the only way one could trust a disabled person to tell the truth was in a face-to-face interview. The Government seem hellbent on making every disabled person go through multiple face-to-face interviews to get any kind of benefit. She was disparaging about filling in a form and getting supporting medical evidence. Dame Carol Black has said in her most recent reports that there should be fewer face-to-face interviews for employment and support allowance. What is the Minister’s response to that?

[Maria Miller]

The problem with disability living allowance is that 70% of those currently in receipt of it have it as a lifetime award, and do not have the necessary updates and reassessments to keep track of whether that assessment is right. Having a face-to-face assessment in the first place means that disabled people get the opportunity to talk to a health care professional about their condition and ensure that they receive the right support.

Points of Order

Monday 28th November 2011 Commons Chamber

15:31

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I would like to seek your advice on the Government’s deliberate and selective leaking of tomorrow’s statement, which has now become, in effect, a crisis Budget. So far we have been treated to Government media announcements on youth unemployment, housing, credit easing, infrastructure spending, schools spending, an energy package and a minor adjustment to the Government’s ferocious squeeze on rail commuters. Ministers from the Chancellor on down have made numerous media appearances confirming the leaks. This morning on the “Today” programme the Chief Secretary to the Treasury refused to discuss the bad bits of tomorrow’s statement, and spent the whole time talking about what he thought were the good bits. The ministerial code requires that Parliament should hear important statements first, and there can be few more important than this. Has not the Government’s disgraceful behaviour over the past few days made a laughing stock of the ministerial code, which is now more honoured in the breach than the observance?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House for that point of order. I have been gravely concerned about these matters, and I can tell the hon. Lady and the House that I have had conversations with senior members of the Government on the subject. I would like at this stage to await events. The House will look forward with interest and respect to hearing the statement by the Chancellor tomorrow, but I remain alert to the concerns that she has raised and shall be looking further into the matter.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

I do not want to have a lengthy exchange on this subject—I have given a ruling—so I feel sure that the following point of order, from a Member of Parliament who has served in the House for 28 years and five months without interruption, will, in accordance with precedent, be on a completely different subject.

[Mr Leigh]

My point of order is simply this. Having served in this House for 28 years and five months, I would not like you to think, Mr Speaker, that concern about this matter is restricted simply to Opposition Members. Those of us who love Parliament believe that Parliament should come first.

[Mr Speaker]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for what he has said and the terms in which he has said it.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman has served for well over 30 years in total, so I am sure that he will observe the precedent even more closely.

[Mr Winnick]

I note that you did not mention the exact years and months, Mr Speaker, and I am pleased about that. I wonder whether I might make a helpful suggestion, arising from what my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) has said from the Dispatch Box. In order to save parliamentary time on Tuesday, and in view of all the leaks that have occurred, would it not be helpful when the Chancellor stands up to make his autumn statement for him merely to say, “I refer hon. Members to the press releases that have already been issued over the past weekend”?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I think it would be very sad if we were to reach that situation, but coming from an hon. Member who first came to the House in 1966, I have to say that there is more than a grain of truth and validity in that observation. Members should take account of it.

[Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. On the subject of policy being made in the press and with particular regard to the case of auto-enrolment, before the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions left the Dispatch Box, he suggested that policy should be made in the House. Would a written ministerial statement on the changes to the auto-enrolment schedule be in order?

[Mr Speaker]

The decision as to whether a policy announcement should be the subject of a written or an oral ministerial statement is, in the first instance and without exception, a decision for the Minister. It is not a matter on which the Chair would adjudicate—and certainly not in advance of any such matter having to be decided. We ought to leave it there.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

I am sure that Mr Bone’s point of order is on an entirely unrelated subject.

[Mr Bone]

Unfortunately, it will not now be a point of order; I simply wanted to express my concern about this matter.

[Mr Speaker]

Well, there is much meeting of minds—from the Back Benches at any rate—this afternoon. We are grateful to Members for that.

North Africa and the Near and Middle East

Monday 28th November 2011 Commons Chamber

15:36

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of political developments and security in the Middle East, North Africa, the Sahel and the Horn of Africa.

It is a timely moment for this debate. Next month, as hon. Members know, it will be a year since the death of the fruit seller, Mohammed Bouazizi in Tunisia, which heralded the eruption of mass democracy movements across the middle east and north Africa, bringing the potential for significant advances in human rights and freedom, as well as, of course, risk and uncertainty. Supporting positive change and reducing instability in these areas is one of the highest priorities in British foreign policy, and is therefore an important subject for debate.

I wish to record my gratitude to the men and women of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and those who serve in the regions we are debating today or who support our efforts from London and in international institutions such as the United Nations and NATO. Their work over this last year has been outstanding, and we could not have done without them.

Over the last six months, the Foreign Office has been extremely active in rallying international action over Libya. Over the coming months, we will be pushing forward international policy on Somalia with equal energy, starting with a major conference hosted on 23 February in London by the Prime Minister. I want to concentrate my initial remarks on the horn of Africa and the Sahel, before turning to deal with north Africa and the middle east, which we so often debate and on which I have made many statements.

Tens of thousands of Somalis have died in recent months; a million are internally displaced and facing the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. The country is a scene of great human suffering, but it is also a base for piracy and terrorism, which exacerbate the country’s plight and threaten our own security. The transitional federal Government in Mogadishu need to succeed in making the necessary political progress to begin to stabilise the country.

We need a more effective international approach that addresses the root causes of the crisis. In our view, this requires a new inclusive political process; a coherent strategy to undermine al-Shabaab and tackle piracy; and economic support, humanitarian aid and assistance to the African Union Mission in Somalia—AMISOM.

The aim of the February conference in London will be to build agreement on such a reinforced international approach. We have been laying the groundwork for some time. My right hon. Friend the International Development Secretary visited Mogadishu in August—the first British Minister to set foot there since 1992—and on my visit to Ethiopia and to Kenya in July, I met the Somali Prime Minister and, separately, the President of Somaliland.

We are taking increased action on piracy through the use of naval assets as part of the international forces operating in the gulf of Aden, protecting the transit corridors and the wider Indian ocean; we are working with the shipping industry and are allowing armed guards on UK-flagged ships. We are also providing funding to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime to continue developing prisons and prosecution facilities on the ground in Somalia and in the wider horn of Africa, as well as operating bilateral transfer agreements, which will facilitate the transfer of suspected pirates back to Somalia to serve their sentences.

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

The Foreign Secretary said that he had met members of the transitional Government and the leaders of Somaliland separately. Will he clarify the position of our Government in regard to the long-standing aspiration of people in Somaliland towards some form of self-government?

[Mr Hague]

I met those representatives separately for many reasons, including the fact that one set were in Ethiopia and the other set were in Kenya. Although we understand the wishes and desires of Somaliland, its leaders and its people, we have continued, to date, the policy of previous British Governments of not recognising it as a separate country. We think that the emphasis must be on trying to resolve the problems of Somalia as a whole. They are integrated problems, and we need an inclusive political process as well as the strategy to undermine al-Shabaab and effective action to deal with piracy. That must be our priority, and I do not think it right, at this moment, to change our policy on the recognition of Somaliland.

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

rose—

[Mr Hague]

I imagine that the right hon. Gentleman, who has a long-standing interest in these matters, wants to ask me a question on the same subject.

[Alun Michael]

I should like to develop the theme. I greatly welcome the approach that the Foreign Secretary is taking, and his engagement and that of his Ministers with the issue. Does he agree that Somaliland has earned respect by the way in which it has developed its own system and democratic structures, and the way in which it has been helping to deal with the problems in the south over recent months? Does he also agree that it is necessary to find a way in which these neighbours can be in the same room, with respect being paid to the democratic achievements of Somaliland, rather than their being virtually told that they cannot play a role in the same debates as the transitional federal Government?

[Mr Hague]

Yes, I broadly agree with that. I think that a great deal of progress has been made. We have increased our contact and engagement with Somaliland, and my meeting with the leaders of Somaliland in Addis Ababa was part of that. We will continue to encourage everyone to move in the co-operative direction that the right hon. Gentleman recommends.

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

It is commendable that my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary are organising a conference next year, but can my right hon. Friend confirm that members of a delegation from Hargeisa in Somaliland will be invited in their own right? I think that otherwise the administration in Somaliland will feel that they are in the background, and that all the attention is being focused on the transitional federal Government in Mogadishu.

[Mr Hague]

They have been invited, as I have just been reminded by the Minister for Africa, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham), and their engagement will be very important.

We have committed £128 million in famine relief for Somalia since July, and nearly £4 million this year to support the African Union Mission in Somalia. The United Kingdom already makes a huge contribution to efforts to improve matters there.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

The Foreign Secretary spoke of putting guards on merchant vessels. That was announced at the end of October. Will he tell us what has happened since then, particularly in regard to the establishment of the procedures and protocols and the various rules?

[Mr Hague]

The rules will follow briskly, but of course these things take time to organise. The fact that there has been an announcement does not mean that there will instantly be a guard on every ship; it means that the procedures are in the process of being changed. I have no reason to think that people are dragging their feet, but I will check and write to the right hon. Gentleman, because we will certainly not let them drag their feet.

Successive British Governments have grappled with the problems emanating from Somalia, but we believe that now is the time to seek intensified international action, which I hope the House will welcome.

Regrettably, the situation in Sudan is also deteriorating. I was present when South Sudan became independent in July, when effective international diplomacy helped to ensure a largely peaceful separation from its northern neighbour. Recent events, including the bombing of South Sudan by the Sudanese air force on November 10, have jeopardised the prospect of Sudan and South Sudan co-existing peacefully in a stable region. We urge both sides to exercise restraint and refrain from military activity in each other’s territory, including through support to proxy forces. We are deeply concerned by the lack of humanitarian access in the conflict areas of southern Kordofan and Blue Nile state, and I urge the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement to address this and to negotiate for a lasting peace settlement. The two countries must resolve remaining legacy issues from the comprehensive peace agreement, particularly on oil revenue, citizenship, border demarcation and the status of the disputed region of Abyei.

The House does not often debate the Sahel, but it is a region of growing importance to the UK. I visited Mauritania in October, becoming the first British Minister ever to do so, as a signal that Britain will seek closer engagement with it and the wider region. The Sahel is deeply affected by poverty, insecurity, weak governance and a lack of education and employment opportunities. The revolution in Libya has also had an impact, risking an influx of weaponry from Libya as well as potential new recruits for al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, in the form of former mercenaries.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

During the Foreign Secretary’s visit to Mauritania, did he have any discussions about the Western Sahara and the wish of its people to determine their own future, rather than remain under Moroccan occupation?

[Mr Hague]

I did have discussions on that in Mauritania, as well as on my visits to Morocco and Algeria on the same trip. The hon. Gentleman will be well acquainted with the position of successive British Governments on this matter. We encourage Morocco and the Polisario Front to reach a mutually acceptable and lasting political solution, which provides for the self-determination of the people of the Western Sahara, and we support the work of Ambassador Ross in trying to make progress in that regard. I had plentiful discussions on that long-standing problem with all the Governments in the region.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

When my right hon. Friend was in Mauritania, I hope he had a chance to listen to its concerns about European Union vessels fishing off the Mauritania coast, raping the sea there, and about the EU not financing some of the projects it promised to fund in Mauritania.

[Mr Hague]

My hon. Friend was, I think, the first Member of Parliament to visit Mauritania in a long time, and he is right to bring attention to that issue. On my visit, we were discussing regional security issues however, so we did not get into the detail of the fishing arrangements, but of course we want them to be resolved to the satisfaction of the countries in the region.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

On the Western Sahara, are there any developments at all in respect of the referendum? It was a long time ago when I was shadow Foreign Secretary and went to the Western Sahara and the camps in the Algerian desert, but even then the referendum was regarded as the solution. That was a long time ago, so this is a long time to wait for a democratic vote.

[Mr Hague]

Yes, it is a long time. The problem has been almost identical ever since when the right hon. Gentleman was shadow Foreign Secretary, so this certainly counts as a long-standing problem in world affairs, as I said. The sad news is that there has not been progress on this issue, but there are repeated and continued international efforts to make progress. I referred to the diplomatic work that is going on, and there will be further discussions on this matter over the coming months, but I do not have any better news to pass on than the right hon. Gentleman will remember from the time when he was dealing with this issue in more detail.

I was talking about the influence of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb—AQIM. It is increasing its influence throughout the region. Operating largely from northern Mali, it presents an increased threat to our security. Last Friday, a group of visitors to Timbuktu was kidnapped. I want to stress to British nationals that they should carefully note our travel advice, which advises against all travel to most of Niger, Mauritania and Mali, including Timbuktu. AQIM is known to have established contact with Boko Haram, an Islamic terrorist group operating in Nigeria, contributing to the growing strength and ambition of that group in recent months and extending AQIM’s reach into northern Nigeria. We are stepping up our efforts to counter terrorism in the Sahel region and to support economic and political development. We are co-funding a military and police base on the Mali-Algeria border, as well as emergency planning training in Mali and Niger. We are also working closely with Nigeria to combat the threat of terrorism, following the Prime Minister’s visit in July.

We are also working with France and other European allies to develop an effective EU approach to security and development in the Sahel. Plans are at an early stage for a small, focused and carefully calibrated common security and defence policy mission in the region, focusing on policing, security, infrastructure development and regional training. Funding for this mission would come from the common foreign and security policy part of the EU budget. As we already contribute to that budget, this mission will place no additional resource burden upon us, save for minimal costs associated with the deployment of any British personnel. Once we have an agreed outline of this mission, we will submit it to parliamentary scrutiny. The mission is necessary to safeguard our own national security and to help countries in the region.

Instability in the Sahel could have a profoundly destabilising effect on countries in north Africa and the Gulf that are currently engaged in moves to open up their political and economic systems to different degrees. That was particularly apparent on my visit to Algeria in October. Important steps there to lift broadcast media restrictions and reform the electoral system take place against a backdrop of military confrontation with al-Qaeda. As the House understands, the politics and history of each country in the wider middle east are very different. But the contrasting experiences of those Governments beginning peaceful reform now and of regimes such as those in Syria and Iran that have set their face against reform altogether show that moves towards greater political and economic openness are essential for their long-term security and prosperity, as well as being right in themselves. So we welcome the recent elections in Tunisia, and the efforts under way to form a Government who reflect the will of the Tunisian people.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I am sure that my right hon. Friend is about to discuss last Friday’s general election in Morocco. Will he note that the PJD, a moderate Islamic party—apparently—has emerged as the largest party? Does he share my slight concern at that, because Islamic parties, however moderate they may profess themselves to be, have a tendency to move away from the west, and that would be a great pity in the case of Morocco?

[Mr Hague]

My hon. Friend invites me neatly on to my next paragraph. As he rightly says, last week voters also went to the polls in Morocco to choose a new Government, following the constitution passed in a referendum in July. That is an important part of Morocco’s progress towards greater democratic accountability. We urge Morocco and Tunisia to turn these democratic gains into real reform that meets the long-term aspirations of their people. That is the answer to my hon. Friend’s question; we have advocated democracy in these countries, and where they have turned to democracy and are holding free, fair and respected elections, we must respect the outcome of democratic votes and not try to second-guess the electorates of those countries. The test for us is not their domestic programmes—that is up to these countries—but whether they are able to continue choosing Governments in the future, having further elections and having alternating Governments in the future. Many African countries, for example, Zambia, have recently set a good example in that regard. That is the test. I do not think that we should couple our support for democracy with regular or constant criticism of parties that engage in the democratic process in these countries.

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)]

Is it not worth taking into account that although the Moroccan Islamist party may be the largest single party, it obtained only just over a quarter of the vote and, as in Tunisia, non-Islamist parties in both these elections have emerged with a large majority of the popular vote? That indicates that public opinion is not necessarily going to be dominated by the Islamist point of view.

[Mr Hague]

My right hon. and learned Friend makes a very important point and what he has described has indeed been the pattern so far in Tunisia and Morocco. In addition, we must not prejudge how these parties will develop. Understandably, there is some anxiety about that, but they will find in many countries that they are under pressure increasingly to secularise their policies in order to deal with the practical concerns of their people. We will see over time—but only over time—how they develop.

[Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD)]

On that particular point, does the Foreign Secretary not accept that in Tunisia there were some concerns about whether Ennahda would be able to represent all of Tunisia? In fact, Ennahda was expected not to meet the rule that was brought in requiring 50% women candidates but, in the end, 42 of the 49 women elected to the Tunisian Parliament came from that party.

[Mr Hague]

I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend makes a very important point and that is why we should not dismiss the gains and popularity of such parties or assume that their programmes will necessarily be a retrograde step for those countries. The situation might vary from one country to another and we should avoid generalising.

On the question of people’s long-term aspirations and democratic gains, let me turn at greater length to Bahrain and some of the other countries I have mentioned. Members on both sides will have studied the long-awaited report of the independent commission of inquiry set up by King Hamad of Bahrain. The report confirms shocking and distressing abuses, including the use of excessive and unnecessary force against protestors, deaths in custody as a result of torture, the

“systematic practice of physical and psychological mistreatment”

of detainees, the “deliberate terrorising” of the families of suspects, arbitrary arrests and many other violations of international and Bahraini law. It also points the finger of blame at some protestors who targeted the Bahraini security forces.

The commission has set out clear steps for the Bahraini Government to take, including the establishment of an independent national committee to oversee implementation of its recommendations, an independent committee to hold to account those who broke the law, an independent investigation into deaths caused by the security forces and into allegations of torture and abuse, a permanent new anti-torture organisation that would also oversee human rights training for security forces, the recruitment of Shi’as into the security forces and pardon or acquittal of all those convicted of crimes relating to freedom of expression. The commission called on the Government to publish a timetable for implementation of those and its many other recommendations.

We condemn the behaviour described in the report and call for the implementation of the inquiry’s recommendations in full. We also acknowledge the groundbreaking nature of the commission. This is the first time that any Government in the region have set up an international investigation into allegations of abuse, and we welcome King Hamad’s pledge to use the report as a “catalyst for change” to overcome the country’s divisions. I spoke to the Foreign Minister of Bahrain immediately after the issuing of the report, to urge its implementation and offer British support for that objective. Now is the time for Bahrain’s Government and opposition groups to engage constructively, to promote tolerance and reconciliation and to demonstrate a shared commitment to a peaceful future for Bahrain.

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

Given what the Foreign Secretary has just said about Bahrain, is it appropriate—or was it appropriate, as I do not know what the position is now—to continue to train Bahraini military personnel at British establishments, for the Prime Minister to be photographed on the steps of No. 10 shaking the hand of the Bahraini Crown Prince, or to invite the Bahrainis to a British arms fair? Those human rights abuses have been known for many years.

[Mr Hague]

The abuses the commission talks about have taken place in recent months. I think that it is right—we have considered this carefully at every stage—to have maintained a degree of engagement with Bahrain over recent months. The Prime Minister and I have had meetings with the Crown Prince of Bahrain when he has visited London and I have maintained regular telephone contact with the Foreign Minister of Bahrain. Yes, there are links between our armed forces, and the Royal Navy minesweepers that operate in the Gulf are based in Bahrain. I think that it has been right to continue that engagement while making clear public criticism of what has gone wrong—criticism that I have reiterated today.

Bahrain looks to us for advice and we have repeatedly said that the commission is of enormous importance and that its publication would be of enormous importance and we have urged the Bahrainis to follow the path of treating such a commission seriously and using it as a catalyst for change. Such improvements as we might now see might be partly the product, in some ways, of the engagement of some western countries with the rulers of Bahrain, so it is therefore important to keep that up. In all these countries our Government are ready to support projects to achieve greater political participation, tackle corruption and assist employment. Our Arab Partnership fund, which I announced in February this year, is already supporting 47 projects on political and economic reform in nine countries across the region from Morocco to Iraq. During the visit by His Majesty the King of Jordan to London earlier this month, we agreed to increase our economic co-operation and support for reform in Jordan.

In Egypt, unrest is being fuelled by the fact that the democratic transition is proceeding more slowly than many in the country had hoped, as well as by economic hardship. As a result, last week we saw the largest demonstrations at any time since the revolution. More than 40 people died in violent clashes in Cairo and other cities. We have condemned those deaths and the use of excessive force by the Egyptian security forces. I welcome the fact that, despite these events, parliamentary elections are under way today, and I congratulate the people of Egypt as they go to the polls. Free, fair and credible elections are essential to retaining public confidence and keeping Egypt on track for presidential elections by the end of June 2012. The Egyptian authorities must build trust that there will be a full transition to civilian control, with the military stepping back from power, as well as economic recovery. The new Government being formed should be inclusive and enjoy broad support. I spoke to the Egyptian Foreign Minister on Thursday to convey these messages.

We have to do our utmost to help Egypt and the countries of the Arab world to make a success of more open political systems and economies, and it is overwhelmingly in our interests to do so. This is very apparent in Yemen, which has experienced 10 months of acute violence.

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

May I ask about Egypt before my right hon. Friend moves on? Nobody would wish to offer any succour or comfort to those responsible for the deaths and violence in Tahrir square last week, but is it not a little unwise for some western countries to call for the immediate removal of the military regime at a time when the country is facing economic collapse? Is not the long-term process of democratic elections, which will take three months at least, much more important at the moment?

[Mr Hague]

We have called for power to pass to a civilian Government as rapidly as possible, but also for elections to take place. It is quite right for the presidential election to be brought forward to next June rather than for it to take place in 2013. Those are the sorts of things we have urged on the Egyptian authorities. I have always argued with Egyptian leaders that they need a presidential system with strong democratic accountability, which they did not have before, in a country such as theirs and that they were leaving it too late to elect their President. I think we are giving sensible advice. At the heart of this matter is the fact that the elections should proceed, as my hon. Friend says.

I was just beginning to talk about Yemen. We welcome the fact that on 23 November President Saleh signed the Gulf Co-operation Council agreement at a ceremony attended in Riyadh, which was attended by the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt). This paves the way for the formation of a national unity Government, a Prime Minister nominated by the Opposition, and early presidential elections within 90 days. I congratulate the GCC countries on that agreement. All sides in Yemen must work together to re-establish internal security and tackle its huge economic and humanitarian problems.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Hague]

I give way to a right hon. Gentleman who has a long-standing interest in Yemen.

[Keith Vaz]

May I congratulate and thank the Foreign Secretary and the British Government for the patient diplomatic efforts they have made over the past few months, including the move in the Security Council to try to get the President of Yemen to sign the agreement, which he has now done? Is there absolute confidence that he will stick to that agreement? Given that the Minister of State, Department for International Development, the right hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr Duncan), is present, let me ask whether we can now start to provide the aid that Yemen so desperately needs at this time in its history.

[Mr Hague]

I am very grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s kind remarks. I should particularly like to credit our ambassador in Yemen, John Wilks, who has done fantastic work in very dangerous—literally physically dangerous—circumstances in the past few months. Last year, there were two very serious attempts on the lives of our diplomats in Yemen. They do an extraordinary job in working there and we have kept our embassy functioning at all times. We will now do all we can to support this process and the work of Vice-President Hadi and the transitional Government. I propose to discuss these things with him soon. We have already provided more than £15 million in UK aid this year alone, but DFID has been restricted in what it can do. This is less than the Budget originally provided because of the very difficult security situation on the ground. We can do more in the development sense in Yemen once security has more widely returned.

As to absolute confidence, it would be a very brave Minister—indeed, a foolhardy one—who expressed absolute confidence in what will happen next in Yemen, after what we have been through in recent years. Nevertheless, the signing of the GCC agreement by the President in the presence of so many regional leaders, including His Majesty the King of Saudi Arabia, is a very big step forward. Now we all have to give every assistance to the process being carried out on the timetable that has been set out.

On Libya, the House will welcome the announcement of a transitional Government, headed by Prime Minister al-Kib. The transitional Government will pave the way for elections to a national congress, a new constitution and elections to a Parliament in 18 months’ time. There are positive signs that the Prime Minister seeks a new Libya built on human rights and the rule of law.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend comment on the report issued by the UN Secretary-General, which says that there are up to 7,000 enemies of the state who have disappeared or are being maltreated and tortured in militia-held prisons? Clearly, we cannot have double standards about this. We went to war to protect human rights. We must go on putting maximum pressure on the new Libyan Government.

[Mr Hague]

Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. Members on all sides will be concerned by reports of the abuse of detainees and of other human rights violations. I raised the issue with the new Prime Minister of Libya when I spoke to him 10 days ago. It is important that the Government’s commitment to uphold human rights is translated into visible action, and we look to them to do that. There are positive signs, as I was saying, that the new Government will be built on human rights and the rule of law. The new Government includes five women, two of whom are Ministers heading the Departments for Health and Social Affairs, respectively. Libya has also now resumed its seat on the UN Human Rights Council.

The Government face urgent challenges, in addition to the one that we have just mentioned, to ensure law and order, control weaponry and integrate revolutionary fighters into the security forces or help them to find other employment. The capture of Saif al-Islam was a significant moment which will help to bring the whole Gaddafi era to a close. The Libyan authorities have committed themselves to ensuring that he receives a fair trial and have indicated their preference for a trial in Libya, which is provided for in the Rome statute. We will urge them to co-operate with the International Criminal Court, as indeed they have said they will do.

Libyans are not alone, of course, in wishing to ensure accountability for crimes attributed to the Gaddafi regime. We, too, wish to see the killers of WPC Yvonne Fletcher brought to justice, and the resolution of other issues that have scarred lives and our relations with Libya, including the Lockerbie bombing and Gaddafi’s support for IRA terrorism. There is no expiry date for such crimes, and we will work to support British nationals seeking justice and closure for these terrible episodes.

We will be a strong partner with the new Libya, working to build a better future for Libyans and strong bilateral relations. We will work together in a range of areas including education, migration, trade and investment and security co-operation. It will take time to cement Libya’s transition from 42 years of dictatorial rule, but the House and our country can be proud of Britain’s role in saving lives and helping to bring about this historic change.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Will my right hon. Friend give me an assurance that his Department is doing everything possible to lobby the Government of Niger to hand over the remaining Gaddafi loyalists who have sought sanctuary in that country?

[Mr Hague]

We have done that. The Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire, in particular has been in direct contact with Ministers in Niger, and we have reminded them and other countries in the region of their international responsibilities, which they have assured us they will live up to.

The progress that Libya is making stands in stark contrast to the repression in Syria. The toll of more than 3,500 lost lives since March this year is truly appalling. The UN commission of inquiry report issued today highlights the shocking actions carried out by the Assad regime against its own civilian population, including summary executions, arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, torture, sexual violence and the violation of children’s rights. I welcome yesterday’s unprecedented decision by the Arab League to impose sanctions on Syria and seek UN support to address the situation. The decision by Russia and China to block Security Council action on 4 October was utterly wrong and, in my view, has been confirmed as misguided by everything that has happened in Syria subsequently.

[Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

What representations are the Foreign Secretary and the Government making to the Chinese and Russian Governments to ensure that they adopt a stronger position on sanctions?

[Mr Hague]

We have discussed that at some length, as the hon. Gentleman can imagine. The Prime Minister and I discussed it with Russian leaders, including President Medvedev, on our visit to Moscow a couple of months ago. We are in constant contact about it at the UN Security Council, as are our representatives there. I continue to believe that it would be right for the Security Council to address the issue and we will make further attempts to do so. Of course, passing any resolution will require a different attitude from Moscow.

[Mike Gapes]

rose—

[Mr Hague]

I had better stop giving way to Members a second time, but I will do so once more.

[Mike Gapes]

The Foreign Secretary referred to the welcome decision by the Arab League, but I understand that at least two important neighbours of Syria— Lebanon and Iraq—have said that they will not impose sanctions. Is that because of the influence of Iran, through Hezbollah, and Iraqi political parties, and does he feel that Iran could play a very negative role in the process?

[Mr Hague]

I will move on to Iran shortly, but I absolutely feel that it plays a negative role in the process and has assisted the Syrian authorities in various ways to try to repress the Syrian population. It would certainly not be surprising if Iran was using its influence on some Arab countries to reduce the impact of any sanctions on Syria. Nevertheless, we should recognise that what the Arab League is doing is unprecedented. The vast majority of its members not only voted for it, but are now preparing to implement meaningful sanctions on a fellow member and colleague. That shows how seriously the Arab world takes the situation in Syria, which will have an impact on the Assad regime. Our Government’s goal is to give maximum support to Arab League efforts to persuade the President of Syria to end the violence while using every lever at our disposal to bring economic and diplomatic pressure to bear. We have supported successive rounds of EU sanctions that have banned the import of Syrian oil and targeted individuals responsible for the violence with asset freezes and travel bans. We are pressing ahead with plans for further sanctions on Syria at the EU Foreign Affairs Council later this week.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

Will the Foreign Secretary give way?

[Mr Hague]

I had better stop giving way so many times, but I will give way to my hon. Friend.

[Rehman Chishti]

The Foreign Secretary will be aware of recent reports in Turkish national newspapers that the Turkish Government are looking at creating a buffer zone within Syria for the protection of civilians. Is that something the United Kingdom will support?

[Mr Hague]

As my hon. Friend can imagine, during the state visit of the President of Turkey last week the Turkish Foreign Minister and I had extensive discussions about Syria. I do not believe that there is any imminent plan to create such a zone or take action within Syrian territory, which would obviously be a major step for any country. I think that the way forward is to intensify international pressure and support the Arab League. We co-sponsored last week’s UN General Assembly resolution condemning Syria’s human rights record, which was passed by a large majority. We will continue to approach the matter in this way.

I have also held talks with representatives of a number of Syria’s opposition groups, including the chairman of the largest body, the Syrian national council. My intention in doing so was to gain further insights into the situation on the ground and to impress upon them how important it is that they unite around a common platform, as called for by the Arab League. At a time of crisis for their country, they should put aside their differences and show the people of Syria that there is a clear alternative to the current regime.

The current lack of a united opposition is one of the many differences between the situation in Syria and that which we faced in Libya. The obstacles to democratic transition are different in each country, and our support for Arab League efforts is the best way forward, but President Assad should not for an instant consider that there is a way back for him and his regime, which has utterly discredited itself in the eyes of most of its people and the vast majority of the world. We will not relent in our efforts to support the right of the Syrian people to choose a different future.

We have long advised against all travel to Syria, and we advise British nationals in Syria to leave by commercial means while such means are still available. Those who choose to remain in Syria or to visit against our advice should be aware that it is highly unlikely that the British embassy would be able to provide a normal consular service in the event of a further breakdown in law and order. Evacuation options would be limited or non-existent, because of likely communication and travel restrictions.

We are also intensifying our efforts to respond to the challenge posed by Iran's nuclear programme. Following the unequivocal report by the International Atomic Energy Agency on 18 November, which pointed to the military dimensions of Iran's nuclear programme, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor instructed the UK financial sector on 21 November to sever all links with Iranian banks. The United States and Canada have taken similar steps. In the coming days, European Union partners will expand sanctions against the nuclear programme. We want Iran to return to the negotiating table, and in the meantime it should be left in no doubt about the resolve of the international community.

Members will be aware that yesterday the Iranian Parliament voted to downgrade relations with the United Kingdom. That is regrettable and unwarranted. It will do nothing to repair Iran’s international reputation, and to respond in that manner to pressure from the international community to engage is entirely counter-productive and yet another sign of Iran’s continued unwillingness to enter into dialogue. If the Iranian Government confirm their intention to act on that vote, we shall respond robustly in consultation with our international partners.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

The action that could be taken against the British ambassador is totally wrong and should indeed be condemned, as it will be, I am sure, by the whole House, but does the Foreign Secretary accept that the concern remains that whatever the justification—and the action being taken against the regime through sanctions and the rest is absolutely right—military action could be encouraged by Israel? I certainly hope that it will be made clear that, whatever the position, military action will not be approved in any way by the United States—and certainly not by this country.

[Mr Hague]

The position is the one that I have made clear many times before: we are not calling for military action. Our approach is a twin-track approach of negotiations and legitimate peaceful pressure on Iran. We have always said, as previous Governments in this country and other Governments throughout Europe have said, that no option is taken off the table for the future, but we are not advocating military action, and, as I say, our approach is the twin-track approach that I have set out.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary, who is being very generous in giving way. There is no doubt in my mind that the Iranian regime is one of the greatest threats to peace in the middle east, if not the world, but has the Foreign Secretary assessed or considered whether that regime might have drawn the wrong lessons from the change of regime in Libya, whereby the Libyans got rid of some of their weapons of mass destruction and tried to negotiate their way back into the world community? Does he think that Ahmadinejad has drawn the wrong lessons from that?

[Mr Hague]

It is hard to know, of course, what lessons the Iranians have drawn from that, but we certainly have not detected any change in Iranian policy—before or after the events in Libya. As the hon. Gentleman says, however, such a lesson would be the wrong one to draw. The right lesson to draw from Libya is that regimes that oppress their population over a long period eventually find that a vast proportion of that population is against them and wants to change the regime. That is something the Iranians and regimes in several others countries should bear in mind; that is the right lesson to draw.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Will the Foreign Secretary give way?

[Mr Hague]

If the House will forgive me, I will not give way to hon. Members to whom I have given way before, because I will soon have been speaking for three quarters of an hour and more, and I want to deal with one final and very important subject, the subject of my statement on 9 November, which remains a central concern in the middle east, namely the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I repeat today our call for negotiations on a two-state solution, without delay and without preconditions, based on the timetable set out in the Quartet statement of 23 September. In our view, the parameters for a Palestinian state are those affirmed by the European Union as a whole—borders based on 1967 lines, with equivalent land swaps; a just, fair and realistic solution for refugees; and agreement on Jerusalem as the future capital of both states. The Quartet met both parties separately on 14 November and will next meet on 16 December. We urge both parties to engage fully with the Quartet process and to fulfil their commitment to present proposals on borders and security by 26 January.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Foreign Secretary make it crystal clear that both sides—Israelis and Palestinians—are required to step up to the process? Will he say more about what pressure he is able to put on the Palestinian authorities to come to the table?

[Mr Hague]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that this requires the involvement of both sides. As I have often argued—I said it in my statement on 9 November—we need to look to Israel to make a more decisive offer than any it has been prepared to make in the recent past. That is an indispensable ingredient of any successful negotiation that could take place. However, it is also important for Palestinians to be ready to engage in the negotiations and not to set preconditions which make such negotiations impossible in the first place. There is a responsibility on both sides. It is a slightly different responsibility in each case, but it amounts to being ready to negotiate a two-state solution, which is otherwise slipping away from us.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Hague]

I will take three more interventions, and then I must conclude my remarks.

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

Will the Secretary of State confirm one thing and give his views on another? In relation to the Quartet’s call for proposals, will he confirm that the Palestinians have put forward proposals but Israel has so far failed to do so? Will he give his views—perhaps he is going to do this in his speech anyway—on the unity talks that are taking place between Mahmoud Abbas and Khaled Mashal? Does he agree that the important thing is to do everything possible to ensure that Hamas is brought into the peace process instead of trying to seek excuses to keep it outside the process?

[Mr Hague]

I am not aware that either side has yet presented proposals that meet the Quartet’s requirements of 26 January on borders and security to that level of detail. We look to Hamas to change its own behaviour; that is the way for it to bring itself into a peace process. We have looked to Palestinian reconciliation before, and we have been on the brink of it before, and now there is new discussion of that. It is important for a Palestinian authority that is the basis of reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah to include independent figures, to be committed to non-violence, to be committed to a two-state solution, and to accept previous agreements of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. That is how we will judge such an authority.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

rose—

[Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Hague]

I will give way twice more, as I said, and then I will conclude my speech.

[Ms Buck]

Of course we all hope that there will be a triumph of hope over experience, with swifter action on this terrible situation. In the meantime, what is the Foreign Secretary’s estimate of the catastrophic situation in Gaza? Is he continuing to press at all times to ensure that Gaza’s civilian population have some relief from the predicament in which they have been trapped for so many years?

[Mr Hague]

Yes, absolutely. As the hon. Lady knows, we have a long-standing position on this. We look to Israel to permit the further opening of Gaza so that all Palestinian people can see a pathway to a better future, living side by side with a secure Israel. It is vital that Israel takes that action. We also call on Israel to reverse its decision to withhold tax revenues from the Palestinian Authority. In addition, we have condemned, and I think the whole House is united in condemning, settlement activity that is wrong, illegal and deeply counter-productive. We are very clear about that.

[Nick Boles]

I apologise in advance if I am becoming somewhat repetitive on this subject, but did the Foreign Secretary see the piece in The Times by Tzipi Livni shortly after his last statement? I believe that most people in this House, of all points of view, would consider her to be a proper partner for peace. She made the point, which I have tried to make, that until we deal with the threat posed by Iran and specifically by the Iranian regime, the chance of much progress in any kind of peace process between Israel and Palestine is very slim.

[Mr Hague]

Apologising for being repetitive is a novel approach in this House which no one has ever adopted before. My hon. Friend need not apologise, because this is an important consideration. I would state the point the other way around. I had a very good discussion with Mrs Livni when she was here in October and we agreed on many points. I think that the multiplicity of threats to Israel and its growing international isolation underline the need for progress on a two-state solution and for it to make a more decisive offer to the Palestinians if negotiations take place. I see it that way around, as I think would most in the House.

In summary, our approach in the coming months will be to continue to expand our diplomatic activity in the middle east, north Africa, the Sahel and the horn of Africa; to show leadership in addressing pervasive challenges, such as the crisis in Somalia and terrorism in the Maghreb; to provide tangible support to the democratic transitions in countries from Tunisia to Yemen; to stand by the people of Syria; to meet the challenge of Iranian proliferation; and to support a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In all those areas, British policy benefits from a great deal of international support, from strong international alliances and from strong bipartisan support in this House for our objectives, which this Government will always seek to strengthen.

16:26

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

I welcome the opportunity for the House to debate the Arab spring, the horn of Africa and the Sahel this afternoon. I begin by echoing the warm words of the Foreign Secretary for the diplomats and aid workers of the United Kingdom, who do outstanding work for our country. There is complete agreement across the House on efforts to tackle security in the Sahel and, in particular, to address al-Qaeda in the Maghreb. It is right to begin this debate by recognising that, at least in our objectives, there is a measure of cross-party consensus on a number of the points that the Foreign Secretary has addressed.

It is many months since we have had a full debate on the middle east and north Africa, albeit that we have had a number of statements in the intervening months. In that time, there have been many positives and some worrying developments in the region. In Tunisia and Libya, steady progress is being made. In Egypt, historic elections mark a period of great change. The situation in Syria, however, is defined by a dispiriting lack of progress and a continuation, indeed escalation, of violence and oppression. In Yemen, progress remains slow, albeit that agreement has now been reached, as the Foreign Secretary described. In Iran, the situation is evolving rapidly, with developments increasing the already high tensions in the region. Regrettably, progress on the peace process remains sadly stalled.

I will first address the seismic changes that we have witnessed this year, which have come to be known as the Arab spring. We can already see certain patterns emerging. As has been stated, Islamic parties such as the Justice and Development party in Morocco, Ennahda in Tunisia, and the Freedom and Justice party, the party of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, are proving to be politically experienced, well financed, disciplined and well placed for electoral progress. It is also clear that the longer the violence continues in countries from Syria to Egypt, the less chance there is that a stable democratic order will emerge quickly, and the more likely it is, in a country such as Syria, that we could see a descent into civil war. It is hard to overstate, therefore, the perils as well as the possibilities of the current moment.

Egypt is the largest and strategically most significant country that has seen its Government overthrown in recent months. As the historic leader of the Arab world, what happens there, perhaps more than in any other country in the region, will shape future generations’ views of this period of change across the Arab world. Today, as we speak, millions of Egyptian voters are going to the polls after a long and hard-won struggle for democracy, yet the deeply troubling resurgence of violence that we have witnessed in these past days, and indeed the reoccupation of Tahrir square by the protestors, demonstrate the continuing fragility of the gains already made and the continuing anxiety of many about the evidence that the pre-Mubarak power structures have retained their authority in post-Mubarak Egypt.

Civilian control of the military is one of the cornerstones of democracy, and after eight months of military rule the Egyptian military face a fateful choice. The so-called al-Selmy proposal for constitutional reform proposed earlier this month by the Egyptian Deputy Prime Minister, which sought to exempt the Egyptian military from proper civilian scrutiny, has now been vocally and visibly rejected by the millions across Egypt who have taken to the streets in recent days.

In light of those recent developments, will the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), confirm when he winds up the debate that, during the Foreign Secretary’s recent visit to Egypt, the Foreign Secretary was satisfied by the assurances that he received from the Egyptian interim Government on the key issue of civilian control? Did they appreciate fully that attempts to preserve the military’s past privileges and powers would damage the very country that they took an oath to protect? Given the Foreign Secretary’s advocacy this very afternoon of free, fair and credible elections in Egypt, what representations have the British Government made about the United Nations being denied access to election planners in Cairo and about the retention of a system of quotas in Parliament, which has been used to manipulate election results in Egypt since the presidency of Colonel Nasser? Of course, I welcome the fact that so far, the ceasefire between protestors and the police brokered last Thursday remains in place, but so too, if we are honest, do the fundamental political differences that began the conflict.

The road from popular uprising to stable democratic governance is of course hazardous. In the absence of a clearer democratic pathway forward or bold, decisive economic policies, the Egyptian economy shrank by 4.2% overall in just the first quarter of this year compared with a year before. With unemployment now running at about 12%, the economic risks confronting Egypt are real and dangerous. Democratic political reform becomes a much more onerous, indeed difficult, task when it occurs against the backdrop of economic decline. I therefore believe that the Government have to do more to convince all of us in the House that multilateral organisations, critically including the European Union as well as the multinational financing organisations, are taking all possible steps to assist the Egyptian economy in this difficult period of transition. Perhaps the Under-Secretary could set out the practical steps that the British Government are urging upon those institutions.

I share the concerns expressed by the Foreign Secretary about the recent developments on the ground in Syria. As the UN commission of inquiry report issued earlier today states, and with recent UN estimates putting the death toll at a horrific 3,500, it is clear that Assad has lost any legitimacy and must step aside, but how can the international community act to isolate further the Assad regime at this time? First, we must ensure that pressure from the Arab League and regional powers remains coherent and consistent. The Opposition welcome, as did the Foreign Secretary, the recent diplomatic steps taken by the Arab League, including steps taken this weekend to impose further sanctions on the regime. However, will the Under-Secretary give his assessment of the impact that he expects that pressure to have, given that despite the steps already taken the violence has continued unabated and the death toll has continued to rise?

Secondly, can the Government say any more about what discussions they are having with European counterparts about the possibility of imposing further economic and diplomatic sanctions on Syria through the European Union? Do the Government share my view that, in light of the welcome and significant steps taken by the Arab League, the EU should now be prepared to go further than the sanctions announced as recently as September?

Thirdly, the Opposition welcome the Government’s involvement in passing the unequivocal statement at the United Nations condemning the recent violence in Syria, but given the stated opposition of China and Russia to taking further diplomatic steps against Syria, which has already been the subject of some debate this afternoon, will the Under-Secretary tell the House whether the Foreign Secretary raised the issue during his most recent discussions with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, and particularly what further discussions are scheduled to press the Russians to change their position on Syria?

Finally on Syria, I wish to address the role that Turkey can potentially play in securing an end to the violence, an omission that I found curious in the Foreign Secretary’s remarks. Last week, along with the Foreign Secretary, I met the Turkish Foreign Minister during the state visit to London of the Turkish President. Let me commend publicly the statements that Turkey has made, making it clear that it regards the Assad regime as now having passed the point of no return. But there should be no doubt, as the Turkish Government have made clear, that the longer this crisis endures, the greater are the prospects of ethnic, religious and sectarian fault lines re-emerging in Syria in ways that could make it harder still to reach a swift and peaceful resolution to the conflict. Can the Under-Secretary therefore share with the House some of his thoughts about what further action could be taken, given Turkey’s significant role in the region and its strong commitment to try to see a resolution to the crisis presently affecting Syria?

We welcome the publication—albeit delayed—of the report of the Bahrain independent commission on human rights. Notwithstanding the remarks by the Foreign Secretary, I regret that—contrary to the undertaking that he previously gave the House—the Government have failed to provide a comprehensive written ministerial statement setting out their views on that report. Therefore, I welcome the fact that he confirmed today that the Government are giving their immediate backing to recommendations in the report, not least the call for any protestors accused of a crime to be tried in civilian courts and not special military courts that operate outwith the normal legal system. Therefore, I ask the Under-Secretary to update the House, when he winds up, specifically about the retrials of 20 medics detained during the recent protests. Has he received assurances from the Bahraini authorities that they will meet the necessary international standards of free and fair trials and, if not, what steps are the Government taking to seek to ensure that that happens? We also welcome the report’s conclusion that there is no significant evidence of Iranian involvement in the recent violence, but I suggest that that makes the task of national reconciliation in Bahrain all the more important and pressing. Perhaps the Under-Secretary could be more forthcoming about what steps the Government will take to encourage such critical national reconciliation, given the continued suggestions of violence within the country and Britain’s historically strong links with Bahrain, which the Foreign Secretary described this afternoon.

Ten months after the mass uprising that swept Ben Ali from power, Tunisia has taken a vital step this month in its transition from autocracy to democracy. The country’s constituent assembly held its opening session this week, following the first ever free elections last month, which saw more than 90% of those registered turning out to vote. We therefore urge the Government to continue to monitor the constitutional reform process in Tunisia closely, and to do all that they can to support the democratic transformation thankfully already under way. Only last week, thousands gathered in the streets of Tunis to call on the newly elected legislature to ensure that the new constitution reflected the rights and freedoms that they have for so long sought. Can the Under-Secretary be more specific on what steps are being taken, through the work of the British embassy in Tunis, the Arab partnership fund and the European Union’s neighbourhood fund, to support the democratic transition under way?

In Libya also, the political leaders have begun the process of drawing up a constitution and it is vital that in the months ahead that process is recognised to be fair and transparent. I welcome the swearing in of Libya’s transitional Government, which represents a vital next step in the country’s roadmap to elections next year. The decision by the national transitional council in Libya to work with the International Criminal Court and the United Nations in investigating alleged crimes committed by Muammar Gaddafi and his recently captured son is also welcome. We urge the Government to continue to offer their full support to that process.

It is, however, a matter of regret to hon. Members on both sides of the House that the recent tide of change in the region has not yet led to progress on one of the most intractable conflicts that continues to define the lives of so many in the region—the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Across the House, I believe that there is strong consensus that we therefore now need the renewed efforts and energies of which the Foreign Secretary spoke to be invested in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Since we last debated the issue in the House, too little progress has been made on the ground—millions of Israeli civilians are still living in fear of the deadly barrage of rocket attacks from Gaza, while settlement building on Palestinian land has continued unabated in clear violation of international law. For real and urgent progress to be achieved, both parties must be encouraged to come back to the negotiating table.

The international community, as well as a majority of Israelis and Palestinians, share a common view of the principles on which a final agreement will be based. The Foreign Secretary rehearsed them again this afternoon—land swaps around the 1967 borders, Jerusalem as a shared capital and a fair settlement for refugees. However, despite that apparent consensus, progress seems to have stalled and efforts to reinvigorate it remain all too weak. We agree with the Government that there is no alternative to a negotiated peace, and we will support them in their efforts to facilitate a negotiated agreement. Given the present deadlock, will the Under-Secretary tell us what specific steps the Government are taking to re-establish the peace process, and will he offer the House his view as to how the present logjam can be broken?

Let me turn now to Iran, on which there is a broad and wide consensus in this House. An urgent and pressing issue in the region is the apparent ambition of the Iranian regime to acquire nuclear weapons. Based on the threats of the Iranian President himself, we know that, if Iran were to acquire a nuclear weapon, it would pose a grave threat to its immediate neighbours as well as to the stability of the region and the security of the international community as a whole.

Members across the House will have been shocked by the scenes of anger that were directed towards the United Kingdom in a recent session of the Iranian Parliament. Chants of “Death to Britain” were just the latest reminder of the violence and brutality that characterise too much of the Iranian regime. In light of those recent developments, will the Under-Secretary give an assessment of how the downgrading of diplomatic ties is likely to impact on the UK’s ability to take what diplomatic steps it can to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and how the UK strategy on that issue can be advanced notwithstanding these actions by the Tehran regime?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

As my right hon. Friend knows, I am not in favour of anyone anywhere having nuclear weapons. He will also be aware that Iran is a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and that last year’s review conference called for a middle east nuclear-free zone. Such a zone would obviously include Israel, which is not a signatory to the NPT. Does he not think that, at this delicate time, it is more important than ever rapidly to engage with all shades of opinion in Iran to try to head off a potentially catastrophic descent into a military attack on Iran, which clearly some people are planning to do?

[Mr Alexander]

I do not know whether this will encourage or dispirit my hon. Friend, but I can do little better than to echo the words of the Foreign Secretary on the matter. We want that twin-track approach. It is therefore important and necessary that there should be engagement with the Tehran regime. The most recent International Energy Agency report issued a stark warning about the nuclear programme. In all parts of the House, we should be mindful of the grave risks that the Tehran regime is now running. We have already welcomed the steps that were taken last week by the Government to impose new sanctions against Iran, which will cut off all financial ties with Iranian banks.

When the Under-Secretary winds up, will he tell us whether the Government will consider taking further action under the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008, which could add further pressure on the Iranian Government? Will he also give us his assessment of the effect of the present EU sanctions on Iran’s critical petrochemical, oil and gas industries? We must continue to search for those peaceful forms of pressure to persuade the Iranian regime to think again. In light of the most recent IEA report, it seems that UN action should be stronger. Will the Under-Secretary give us his assessment of what prospects there are for further action at UN level, given the stated position of both the Chinese and the Russian Governments, and also assure the House that in any recent and further meetings with those Governments, the issue of a nuclear-armed Iran will be high on the Government’s agenda?

Let me turn briefly to events in Somalia, where a tragic food crisis has emerged in recent months. I welcome news that a conference is to be held in London in February, not least given the range of issues that now demand the attention of the British Government and the international community, which include the food crisis and the security challenges, of which the Foreign Secretary spoke.

The first famine of the 21st century was declared in Somalia in July. The lack of rain in the region is due to be the worst in 60 years and the UN is warning that, as a result, more than 1 million people face imminent starvation. Against that backdrop of human tragedy, we are gravely concerned by reports emerging this week that the al-Shabaab fighters have closed down several aid agencies working in Somalia. The stranglehold of al-Shabaab on the region is having a wholly negative impact on the prospects for peace across the region. Given that, will the Government provide an assessment of the progress made in establishing the authority of the Somali Government across the entire country, particularly in areas where militants are making it almost impossible—sometimes wholly impossible—for aid agencies and others to access vital life-saving support from international aid agencies?

In conclusion, as already evident, there is broad agreement across the House on the steps that need to be taken in response to the extraordinary wave of change that has come to be known as the Arab spring. It is already clear that democratic transformation will not unfold uniformly across countries as vast and divergent as Egypt, Libya and Syria, but the consistency of the demands made by the protesters across these borders is testament to the enduring values for which they have been struggling. It is therefore incumbent on the Government to act in the months ahead in ways consistent with the scale of the opportunities and the scale of the risks confronting the middle east and north Africa.

16:45

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)]

I begin by apologising for the fact that I will not be able to hear the winding-up speeches, but I look forward to reading them.

I agreed with the shadow Foreign Secretary’s observation that patterns are emerging in the Arab spring, and I wish to draw attention to one pattern that has not given risen to much comment but which is very significant. Although turmoil has affected every country in the Arab world from Morocco to the Gulf, it is significant that the greatest turmoil and the revolutions have taken place and dictators have fallen in the republics, whereas the monarchies, with the exception of Bahrain, despite experiencing significant disturbances, have not seen such substantial violence or attempts to overthrow the system.

It is worth asking why that might be. It is over-simplistic and incorrect simply to say, “It is to do with those countries that have oil and those that do not”, because clearly Morocco and Jordan have minimal amounts of oil while Libya has a great deal. I think that it is about legitimacy. I am not suggesting that there is antipathy towards republicanism as such in the republics of the Arab world or that there is a love for monarchy, but these are dictators who have acted cruelly, who achieved power by force—or, in the case of Assad, whose father took power by force—who have maintained it by the cruellest methods of despotism and who therefore have not earned their people’s respect.

Admittedly, the monarchies have not been democracies but authoritarian states, some of which have exercised their power in a way that we and many of their own people would consider unacceptable, but nevertheless in the eyes of a significant proportion of their own people they still have that legitimacy without which a modern Government cannot expect to survive.

[Mike Gapes]

I agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman. Does he also accept that certainly in Jordan and Morocco there have been progressive improvements towards democracy—too slow perhaps and possibly temporary but nevertheless a reform process—which has not been the case in some of the other countries?

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

I was coming to that point. The hon. Gentleman is correct. There is something else that Jordan and Morocco have in common: both the King of Jordan and the King of Morocco claim descent from the Prophet, and many of their people accept the legitimacy of that claim. Furthermore, the King of Saudi Arabia does not call himself “King of Saudi Arabia” but “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques”—Mecca and Medina—to emphasise, as he would argue, his spiritual not simply secular role. But the hon. Gentleman is correct: the other phenomenon in many of these monarchies is that they have been prepared, however hesitantly, to begin the process of reform, which might help them to deal with their long-term problem.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I am pleased that my right hon. and learned Friend is raising this issue. I would add that there are many people in Libya who wish for a restoration of their constitutional monarchy and very much regret that the national transitional council is proposing a presidential system without any plebiscite to find out what the people wish.

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

As it happens, I have met the Crown Prince of Libya in the past few months. It is, however, up to the Libyan people. They were pretty good at getting rid of Gaddafi, and if they want a restoration of the monarchy, it should not be too difficult for them to insist at least on a plebiscite so that the Libyans can decide.

I raise this question not simply to praise the monarchies. In the longer term, they face exactly the problem that the north African countries and Syria face now. They do, however, have a window of opportunity. Their peoples are saying, “We, too, want more liberal, accountable government and the rule of law, just as the rest of the world has increasingly had it. Because we accept your legitimacy and because we acknowledge that you are introducing reform, however tentatively, we are prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt for the time being.” However, I predict that if, in five to 10 years from now, not much real progress is made—if the kings, emirs and sheiks remain autocratic rulers in all but name—then revolution will come to those countries as well.

The crucial country is Saudi Arabia, where even that tentative process of genuine parliamentary reform has not even begun yet—it will always be slower for all the reasons that the House is familiar with. Saudi Arabia needs to embark on that process. Prince Nayef—a man who does not have the liberal inclinations of King Abdullah—has been chosen as the new crown prince, although whether he will be more pragmatic when he one day becomes a monarch remains to be seen. However, Saudi Arabia needs to realise that it cannot simply be immune from this extraordinary revolutionary fervour, which has affected Saudis as well as those in other Arab countries.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that there have been demonstrations criticising the monarchy in Saudi Arabia—which have been brutally suppressed—that the army has been sent into Bahrain and that there is almost unparalleled control of the media in Saudi Arabia, even compared with the previous regimes all over the region?

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

The hon. Gentleman is right that even in the monarchies there are human rights problems, including in the United Arab Emirates in the past few days. Ministers have resigned from the Kuwaiti Government because of protests over various developments there. In Saudi Arabia, it is more a protest of the Shi’a minority. They are big minority—20% of the population—but they can never aspire to power, and if the Saudi Government have sense, they will try to achieve a policy of reconciliation with them.

I want to turn to a second point—one that came up briefly in the earlier exchanges—about the role of Islamist parties in the region. Like most people in the United Kingdom or the west generally, one feels more comfortable if secular parties win elections; however, we should not get too over-exercised by the fact that parties that call themselves Islamist are doing rather well in a number of countries in free elections. The first point, which is perhaps the most important, is that, from the point of view of al-Qaeda, what is happening with Islamist parties in those countries is a disaster. The whole point of al-Qaeda is to reject a parliamentary route to power, to reject the sharing of power and to insist that only by revolution combined with terrorism can the Islamist ideal be achieved.

What we are seeing, not just in Tunisia and Morocco, but with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt too, is a recognition—for a number of reasons and motives—that, at the very least, power will need to be shared. There is a public declaration of a commitment to multi-party democracy and the rule of law. Of course there will be people in those parties who do not share those values, but so far the evidence supports the view that those declarations are what those parties are about. As I mentioned when I intervened earlier, opinion surveys in Egypt suggest that elections in Egypt are likely to be similar to the two elections so far. The Muslim Brotherhood will do well—it will probably be the largest party—but all the evidence so far, including independent surveys of opinion, suggests that it will not form a majority by itself. It, too, will have to share power, which is crucial.

Earlier I mentioned another factor in relation to Egypt which seems not to have been commented on, but which is significant. If the House accepts that the most important reason, apart from a general desire for the rule of law and freedom, for the revolutions in Egypt and elsewhere was a demand for economic progress—those countries are economically stagnated, having fallen woefully behind Brazil, south-east Asia and countries of the far east in their economic development—that means that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt faces a particular problem. Anyone ruling Libya will have vast amounts of oil wealth and will be able to afford to act in an extreme way—if that is the way they want to go—because they do not need the co-operation of the rest of the world. The Muslim Brotherhood knows perfectly well that if it were to acquire power in Egypt and then use it as though it had the right to impose an Islamist system on a population that did not want it, that would immediately destroy any possibility of overseas investment in Egypt. Who would invest in Egypt if it seemed to be going the way of Iran? The people of Egypt would never forgive an Egyptian Government who destroyed the prospect of economic growth by pursuing a theocratic agenda. I believe that the Muslim Brotherhood understands that perfectly well and that the first priority of any Egyptian Government has to be to reassure the outside world that Egypt will be an attractive place to come as a tourist and to invest in its resources, in order to help build the economy.

[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

Does my right hon. and learned Friend accept that as a consequence of the 25 January revolution and the uncertainty, Egypt has seen enormous capital flight, so much of the risk and the economic disaster that he outlines has already happened?

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

Yes, of course, that has happened over the past few months, but it could be reversed if there were a prospect of stability and progress. The tragedy of Iraq is that the Iraq war went on long after the military conflict, with the whole economy destroyed as a consequence. It is only now that Iraqi oil production has got back to its original level. Libyan oil production should be back in a year or 18 months or so—perhaps even earlier. Tourism will return to Egypt when there is stability, but not without it. Any party that destroys that prospect will not be thanked.

Let me turn briefly to two other issues. The first is Syria. There are serious limits to what can be achieved by the outside world in relation to Syria. I pay tribute to the people of Syria who I never expected for a moment would be able to survive eight months of this appalling treatment by their own Government. I assumed wrongly that it would be like the tragedy of Iran and that when the Government used the police, the security forces, the prisons and the torture chambers, the Syrian opposition would, within months, have been pushed under ground, though not destroyed. That has not happened as it did in Iran. The Assad regime is doomed; the question is how we can assist that process.

I welcome the fact that the Government have already opened up contacts with the Syrian opposition. That is highly to be encouraged. I make just one additional point. It seems to me that, although for all the reasons that are increasingly understood, there cannot be a military dimension to the help we give the country, what the Syrian opposition need most is for their morale to be boosted and for them to be able to demonstrate to the people of Syria that they are increasingly winning, not losing, this conflict. That is the significance of the Arab League’s decision and the imposition of economic sanctions. That is how the United Kingdom, the European Union and the United States can make an impact—by demonstrating solidarity with those in Syria who are seeking change.

The final area on which I want to comment is, of course, Iran. There has to be very serious doubt as to whether the current policy of economic sanctions has any prospect of working. However much they are extended, there is no evidence that the Iranian Government are terribly interested in dialogue or even in a carrot-and-stick policy.

One problem—we have heard about it elsewhere— is the attitude of Russia and China. The question is whether there is any way in which the Russian and Chinese Governments can be persuaded to change their position. Russia is acting in an utterly illogical way, even given its own national interest. It is difficult to understand why Russia, with a large Muslim minority of its own and considerable destabilisation in the Caucasus, should acquiesce in the growth of nuclear weapon capability in Iran. If one looks for a Machiavellian explanation, there is a very simple one. The Machiavellian explanation for Russia’s opposition to what is happening with Iran is that it does not want sanctions to work and hopes that the Israelis or the Americans or both will use the military option. That would have the dual benefit of destroying or damaging Iran’s nuclear capability, without Russia having to share the responsibility and thus benefiting both ways from the consequent developments. That is a Machiavellian explanation. I hope it is not true, but I am not yet convinced because I cannot think of any other reason why Moscow should behave as it is.

If there is to be any prospect of economic sanctions working, the only opportunity I can see for success takes us back to the Arab League. As the Foreign Secretary has remarked, the Arab League has already acted in an unprecedented way—first with Libya, when it called for the international action to be taken. As a consequence, Russia and China, which would otherwise have vetoed the international action, came round to allowing the resolution to be passed. Secondly, the Arab League has acted impressively in the case of Syria.

In respect of Iran, however, there is an extraordinary silence. Were it not for WikiLeaks, we would not have been made aware of any public comments showing not just the distaste of Arab countries, but their absolute horror at the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon as a result of the geopolitical impact it would have on the region as a whole and on account of their perception of their own security. The situation is extraordinary. As any of us who meet Arab Ministers, Governments or leaders privately will be aware, this is at the top of their agenda: what is the west going to do to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon?

It was thanks to WikiLeaks that King Abdullah was quoted as saying that the head of the serpent must be cut off—a clear endorsement of the kind of military action by which some Members do not seem to be too enthused. The question is, why can the Arab leaders not express their views publicly? If they did, they would put a great deal more pressure on Russia and China. Those who put that question to them, as I have, are normally told, “We must have equivalence between Iran and Israel. We cannot just call for sanctions against Iran, because Israel has a nuclear weapon, and unless Israel responds as well, it would not be acceptable.”

I must say that I find that a pretty pathetic and unconvincing argument. Israel has had nuclear weapons, rightly or wrongly, for probably some 30 years. Of course the Arabs do not like it—they hate it—but they are not frightened of Israel’s nuclear weapons. If they were, they would have moved towards acquiring nuclear weapons themselves some 30 years ago, but they have not made the slightest effort to do so. They know that, while Israel is a threat in other respects, it possesses its nuclear weapons—rightly or wrongly—essentially in order to protect its very existence as a state should it be subjected to unassailable odds in some conventional conflict.

The Arabs have learnt to live with that, but they do not find it acceptable in the case of Iran. They know that this is all about Iranian nationalism. The Shah, as well as the ayatollahs, was interested in acquiring nuclear weapons, although he did not do much to achieve it. Iran’s traditional enemy is not Israel, but the Arab states themselves. If the Arab states are deeply disturbed by this prospect—if they believe, privately if not publicly, that it is a much greater threat to their security than Israel’s nuclear weapons have ever been or are ever likely to be—they must be as bold in respect of Iran, through the Arab League and individually, as they have so splendidly been in respect of both Syria and Libya.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran would be horrific for the Russians and possibly the Chinese as well? According to indications that I have received from contacts in Russia, the Russians are pretty horrified by the idea.

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

All of them ought to be horrified by it. China itself has a Muslim extremist minority on its western borders, in Xinjiang, and it is very much affected by what happens in central Asia. None of these countries wants nuclear weapons—we understand that—and we are not, or should not be, necessarily asking them to support military intervention. We are talking about a peaceful alternative to resolve the single most important problem that currently exists in the middle east, apart from the Israel-Palestine issue. That is the basis on which we should act.

I remain very heartened by what is happening in the Arab spring. It will be three steps forward and, occasionally, one step back, and some countries will not prosper as well as others, but the results in Tunisia—the first country of the revolution, and the country that has gone furthest—are very impressive so far. We shall need to see how the Egyptian elections proceed, but Syria is the key. When—not if—the Syrian regime falls, we shall see a situation that has become absolutely irreversible in the middle east. That will not only help the people of those countries, but will mean that for the first time in its history Israel will be surrounded by countries that, to a greater extent than ever before, respect and understand the rule of law, democratic values and accountable government, which should not harm but help prospects for the long-term relationship between Israel and its Arab neighbours.

17:04

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

I welcome this debate on the middle east, an area in which many countries continue to undergo political upheavals following decades of authoritarian rule for the benefit of those in power and at the expense of the ordinary citizen.

Much attention has, of course, been directed towards Egypt, where the struggle for democracy, accountability and transparency appears, unfortunately, to be far from over. Like many others, I hope that the military will be persuaded to give way soon to a fairly elected civilian Government. However, I shall focus on two other states in the region, which have been mentioned often this afternoon, and where the legitimacy of the Government in power has been challenged. Those Governments now have to decide whether they will undertake reform of their own volition, or precipitate greater instability, and create mistrust and suffering among their own citizens. Those two countries are, of course, Bahrain and Syria.

As has been widely reported, there was widespread protest and serious unrest in Bahrain between February and March of this year. On 15 March, after political negotiations between the Government of Bahrain and the opposition had broken down, the Government declared a three-month state of national safety, which was lifted on 1 June. Gulf Co-operation Council forces were also deployed in the country from about that time. There was a serious and heavy-handed Government crackdown on those believed to have been directing the protests, as well as on leading opposition figures.

These recent events must be put into context. Although there have been attempts by the Government of Bahrain to reform and to address human rights concerns in the recent past, particularly since the ascension to power of the current monarch, reports by well-known international human rights organisations have highlighted the use of torture by the security apparatus, impunity, unfair trials, arbitrary arrests and restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly as ongoing and serious problems not just this year, but for many years.

Amnesty International’s background report on the situation in Bahrain in 2010 stated:

“During 2010, sporadic protests took place in predominantly Shi’a villages against alleged government discrimination in relation to housing and employment opportunities. In some cases, protesters blocked highways with burning tyres and threw home-made petrol bombs at the police and security forces. Hundreds of people were arrested”—

I reiterate that this is a report on the situation in 2010, not 2011—

“particularly in August and September, in connection with protests and riots, including many leading opposition figures, most from the Shi’a majority community. Many were allegedly arrested without warrants and held incommunicado for up to two weeks after arrest.”

On the situation in 2009, Amnesty International said:

“The authorities failed adequately to investigate allegations of torture and other ill-treatment of detainees. Government critics were briefly detained and several websites were closed down. One person was executed. The government indicated it would decriminalize certain publishing offences, reduce legal discrimination against women and introduce other reforms.”

Political analysts have highlighted long-standing demands in the country for political, constitutional and socio-economic reform. In particular, calls have been made for an elected Prime Minister, an accountable Government and a fully empowered and democratically elected legislature. Previous attempts by the Government of Bahrain to address these demands have not been viewed as very successful by opposition leaders, and resulted in a lack of trust in the Government’s willingness to implement genuine and meaningful political and socio-economic reform. The protests earlier this year must be seen against this backdrop of long-standing violations and grievances.

The Bahrain independent commission of inquiry—BICI—was set up by the Government of Bahrain to investigate and report on the allegations and events of 2011, and to make such recommendations as it deemed necessary. I, of course, welcome the King’s initiative to set up this commission and to allow for the full publication of the report’s 500 pages. It presents a detailed and balanced account of events surrounding the Bahraini protest movement, the context in which it occurred and the response by Government agents. Its findings set out in considerable detail the manifestly repressive nature of the Government’s crackdown on protesters and opposition leaders.

The report states that the security forces

“in many situations violated the principles of necessity and proportionality, which are the generally applicable legal principles in matters relating to the use of force by law enforcement officials. This is evident in both the choice of weapons that were used by these forces during confrontations with civilians and the manner in which these weapons were used.”

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

What does the right hon. Lady say to the accusation that I have heard from some people in the region that Iran was very much involved in fomenting the unrest in Bahrain?

[Ann Clwyd]

If the hon. Gentleman is a little patient, I shall come to that point in a moment.

The report also states:

“A large number of individuals were prosecuted before the National Safety Courts”.

It went on to say:

“Numerous violations of due process rights were recorded…it appears that the Military Attorney General chose to rely on those statutory provisions that were the least favourable to the arrested persons and to the defendants appearing before the National Safety Courts.”

It continued:

“The manner in which the security and judicial agencies of the GoB”—

Government of Bahrain—

“interpreted the National Safety Decree also opened the door for the perpetration of grave violations of human rights, including the arbitrary deprivation of life, torture and arbitrary detention.”

The report also details that many of the detainees were subjected to torture and other forms of physical and psychological abuse while in custody, and it lists the methods as follows:

“blindfolding; handcuffing; enforced standing for prolonged periods; beating; punching; hitting the detainee with rubber hoses (including on the soles of the detainee‘s feet), cables, whips, metal, wooden planks or other objects; electrocution; sleep-deprivation; exposure to extreme temperatures; verbal abuse; threats of rape…and insulting the detainee‘s religious sect”.

Those subject to this were predominantly Shi’a.

Many of those held by the authorities claim that they were forced to sign confessions or admit to committing crimes. It is especially pertinent that the report notes on more than one occasion that the actions of the authorities were “systematic”. I emphasise that word, as it shows that these violations were not the fault of a few bad apples or rogue elements; the security personnel in Bahrain were carrying out actions that were expected of them and that were implicitly, if not explicitly, condoned by superiors and other branches of the Government.

With at least 35 deaths, thousands arrested, 4,500 employees dismissed for their support of the protests, more than 500 students expelled and 30 religious sites demolished, it is simply not credible that such a vast crackdown could have taken place at the initiative of the lower ranks of the Bahraini Government alone. The report categorically states:

“In many cases, the security services of the GoB resorted to the use of unnecessary and excessive force, terror-inspiring behaviour and unnecessary damage to property. The fact that a systematic pattern of behaviour existed indicates that this is how these security forces were trained and were expected to behave.”

It goes on to say that there is

“a culture of impunity, whereby security officials have few incentives to avoid mistreatment of prisoners or to take action to prevent mistreatment by other officials.”

Some months ago, before the summer recess, I, on behalf of the all-party group on human rights, and Lord Avebury, the vice-chair, went to see the ambassador of Bahrain at the embassy in London. He was Mr al-Khalifa, a member of the royal family, and Eric Avebury, in particular, had detailed knowledge of the complaints made by some of the medical personnel—he knew some of the doctors personally. He was very specific when we put those accusations to the then ambassador, who said that he knew nothing about it but that he would come back to us with a detailed explanation of all the allegations. We heard not one word from the ambassador and surprisingly—or perhaps not—two weeks later, he was gone from the embassy, never to return. He was replaced by another ambassador, who did not give us any more information.

I remain concerned about the trials of doctors and nurses in military courts and the harsh sentences handed down. Although the King subsequently intervened and most of the health workers are now under house arrest awaiting trial in civil courts, the report’s findings on the brutal manner in which people were arrested and detained prompts the question of whether any subsequent trials can be fair and whether there is any justification for those people being held at all.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I compliment my right hon. Friend on her meeting with the ambassador and the efforts that she and Lord Avebury have made. Does she agree with me, however, that the current process in Bahrain is pretty awful but not particularly new and that it goes back to the suspension of the constitution a couple of decades ago and the continual denial of rights of free expression ever since? This is a merely a descent into that and much of the surveillance of the opposition is done using equipment supplied by Britain.

[Ann Clwyd]

I thank my hon. Friend for making those points, which I attempted to make to the Foreign Secretary earlier. It is inappropriate: if we are still selling arms to the Bahrainis or training Bahraini military personnel in this country, that should not be done in the light of human rights abuses going back not just to the beginning of this year but to earlier years, too.

If the Government of Bahrain are to retain their legitimacy domestically and their credibility internationally, given what the BICI has established as the systematic nature of the serious human rights violations by Government officials, they must ensure that accountability for those violations goes right to the top. If I have one criticism of the report, it is that I feel it could have gone further, with a more precise allocation of responsibility for specific violations, stating who ordered what and when. The Government of Bahrain will, we hope, do that now.

We should make no mistake: Bahrain is at a crucial crossroads and can redeem itself in the eyes of its citizens and the international community by ensuring that, first, the rule of law and then wider democratic reforms prevail; by putting responsible officials, including those at the top of the chain of command, such as Government Ministers and senior military leaders, on trial; by engaging meaningfully with the Opposition; and by implementing the recommendations of the BICI report in good faith. Alternatively, it can bury its head in the sand and set the stage for further and more pronounced instability in the future.

Perpetuating the myth that Iran was responsible for the unrest is, in my view, not only unhelpful but dangerous. I am no apologist for the Iranian regime—I am only too well aware of the terrible human rights violations perpetuated on a daily basis on its own people and of the profoundly destabilising effects of its foreign policy—but it is important to note the report’s findings in this regard. It said:

“The evidence presented to the Commission…does not establish a discernible link between specific incidents that occurred in Bahrain during February/March 2011 and the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

It is critical that leaders in Bahrain take responsibility for their own failings and acknowledge legitimate grievances rather than dismissing them as nothing more than “foreign agitation”.

The Bahraini King has said that he is determined to ensure that the report’s insights will act as a “catalyst for positive change”, and has since issued a decree to form a national commission with powers as advised in the report. However, the King still seems reluctant to face up to the enormity of the task ahead, given his carefully worded statement on receiving the report last Wednesday in which he referred to

“the unprecedented challenges faced by our authorities as they confronted relentless provocation, from hostile sources both inside and outside the country,”

and to

“instances of excessive force and of the mistreatment of persons placed under arrest.”

I trust that the UK Government will, as I think the Foreign Secretary has indicated that we will, as a friend of the Bahraini Government, encourage and persuade them to do what is right in the longer term, however difficult that is in the short term, for the people of Bahrain, the region and the wider international community.

The following words from the BICI report sum up what I want to say on Bahrain:

“During the beginning of the events in Bahrain, as during the past decades, the demand was for reforms, not for regime change. This was the same in the early stages of the demonstrations and protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Yemen. But as experience shows, when demands for reforms are rebuffed, the demands become for regime change. In the end, the society becomes both polarised and radicalised. This situation leaves little room for a centre that could bring together people from all ethnic and sectarian groups and from all social and economic strata to work for reforms based on well established principles and processes of democracy, good governance and respect for internationally protected human rights.”

Turning briefly to Syria, as both Front-Bench spokesmen have said, it presents a more precarious and volatile situation, with catastrophe looming for Syria, the region and the international community if the Ba’athist regime under the current President, Bashar Assad, does not renounce its long-established methods of brutality and authoritarianism. At least 3,500 people, not including members of the security forces and the army, have already been killed. The Syrian Government have been violating the rights of their citizens for many years and Syria has long been a police state. Emergency rule was imposed in 1963 and has remained in effect ever since.

The abuses now being committed in Syria are extremely serious and widespread. As has been recently documented by Human Rights Watch:

“Torture of detainees is rampant. Twenty-five former detainees from Homs were among those interviewed by Human Rights Watch. They all reported being subjected to various forms of torture. Human Rights Watch has independently documented 17 deaths in custody in Homs, at least 12 of which were clearly from torture. Data collected by local activists suggest even higher figures. They say that at least 40 people detained in Homs governorate died in custody between April and August. Former detainees report security forces’ use of heated metal rods to burn various parts of their bodies, the use of electric shocks, the use of stress positions for hours or even days at a time, and the use of improvised devices, such as car tyres…to force detainees into positions that make it easier to beat them on sensitive parts of the body, like the soles of the feet and head.”

Human Rights Watch has stated that the systematic nature of abuses against civilians in Homs by Syrian Government forces indicate that crimes against humanity have been committed. Syrian Government officials right up to the top will have to be held accountable for these despicable crimes.

I applaud the suspension of Syria from the Arab League and the Arab League members that agreed to impose sanctions on Syria this weekend in their attempt to ramp up the pressure on the Syrian Government to comply with an Arab League peace plan, which they had supposedly accepted. The Arab League’s initiatives come in the wake of sanctions imposed by the US and the EU. It is time now for the international community and particularly the UN Security Council to do more to bring the Syrian Government to their senses, to get them to end the violent crackdown immediately and to allow for the immediate deployment of monitors on the ground.

Of course, there are no easy solutions. I do not underestimate the challenge of getting the current Syrian Government to stop their brutal campaign of repression, and of avoiding civil war. Military intervention by outsiders may also be counter-productive. I fear it may now be a case of too little, too late, with the international community having done almost nothing over the years to encourage the Syrian Government to change their ways, but we cannot abdicate our responsibility now. We cannot continue to leave the many brave Syrians at the mercy of a Government who have never had any regard for them.

17:26

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

As chairman of the all-party group on Libya, I have campaigned for many years on that country, particularly with regard to human rights there. I was invited to visit Benghazi this week by the national transitional council, but I politely declined that invitation because I am very concerned that the people of Libya have not been consulted about the sort of constitutional make-up their country should have.

If we bear in mind the 42 years of brutal tyrannical oppression that Libya went through, it is not unreasonable for the authorities to ask the people of Libya for their opinion as to how their country should be formed and what constitution they should have. The NTC has decided that there will be a presidential type of system, yet many friends of mine in Libya talk of growing public demonstrations throughout that country in support of Crown Prince Muhammad, the exiled crown prince of Libya who has lived in London since Colonel Gaddafi expelled him and his father.

I declare an interest. I have got to know Crown Prince Muhammad very well over a certain period of time. He is a close personal friend of mine. I believe him to be a man of great integrity and honour. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) indicated, many of the monarchies throughout the Arab world have not had the levels of instability that other Arab countries have had. The monarch is very important in this regard.

We must not forget that 30,000 people died in Libya—some estimates put the figure as high as 35,000 or 40,000—to liberate their country from the despot.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My hon. Friend raises the issue of the Libyan monarchy. How likely is it, in his opinion, that the institution of monarchy will be resurrected in Libya? He refers to his friends, but does he really think that is a plausible outcome?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Only two countries in the world have gone back to having a monarchy—I am sure that my hon. Friend knows which. One is Spain, as you rightly mouthed just now, Mr Deputy Speaker, and the other is Cambodia, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys) indicates.

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

What about Great Britain?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I meant foreign countries. Spain and Cambodia are the two I was told about. To answer my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng), it is not necessarily probable that the Libyan people would vote for a constitutional monarch—it is a possibility, but not a probability—but none the less they should be consulted, rather than the national transitional council stating unilaterally that there should be a presidential system.

I move on now to the trial of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. I would never dream of defending Gaddafi or any of his family, sycophants or supporters, but I think it is very important that this man gets a fair trial. Some of the Sunday newspapers have reported that people were saying that, if he was not found guilty and hanged, they would leave the country. Our newspapers must do everything possible not to prejudice the trial, because no matter what the individual may be guilty of, it is extremely important that he is given a fair trial. I very much hope that the Libyan authorities—I make this point to the Minister—will allow International Criminal Court lawyers to be present throughout the trial.

I was glad to hear from the Foreign Secretary that the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), has raised with Niger the importance of its acquiescing in international standards and handing over remnants of the Gaddafi regime and family members who have sought sanctuary in that country, as they have done in Algeria.

[Bob Stewart]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I will in a moment.

I will move on to the rendition of Libyan citizens to Libya when Gaddafi was in power. The shadow Foreign Secretary did not mention Libya once in this whole conversation, and one wonders why. Of course, I fought vehemently against the previous Government’s amazing cosying up to Colonel Gaddafi. I think that they must be embarrassed about the extraordinary rapprochement that Mr Blair and his successor had with that brutal despot—so much for Robin Cook’s ethical foreign policy, which was so loudly trumpeted when Labour took office in 1997. I have listened to senior Labour figures stand on the Government side of the House and say that they knew nothing about the rendition of those people to Gaddafi’s Libya. I found that absolutely extraordinary. They say that the previous Labour Government knew nothing about sending those people back, ultimately to be tortured or done away with by Gaddafi, so they must be claiming that our security forces, off their own bat, unilaterally decided to engage with Libyan security forces and were responsible for sending those people to Libya without Government approval. I simply do not believe that. If it were true, I would be extremely concerned that our security forces had done such a thing. That is why I am calling for an investigation. I do not want it brushed under the carpet.

[Bob Stewart]

My hon. Friend has moved on from what I was going to say, which is that the International Criminal Court is responsible for trying people only when it would not be possible in their own country. I have given evidence in several ICC trials and am delighted that Saif al-Islam Gaddafi will be tried in Libya. I am happy for ICC lawyers to witness it, but they should not run it.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I agree; I said merely that I hoped ICC lawyers would be able to observe the proceedings.

I have received disturbing evidence about the equipment that some of our European partners sold to the Gaddafi regime. I will not go into too many details, but it helped Colonel Gaddafi to eavesdrop on his citizens and on citizens of this country. That is something that will come out in the coming days and weeks, but I should be interested to find out from the Minister everything that was exported to Gaddafi over those 13 years and might have assisted him in oppressing his own people. Mr Blair told us that the great rapprochement and engagement in the tent in the desert were to ensure that that man gave up his weapons of mass destruction, but from recent newspaper articles we see that vast stocks of chemical weapons have been found in Libya, so Colonel Gaddafi was really just playing a game of cat and mouse with the previous Government.

I very much hope to see progress on Lockerbie now. We all know that Mr Megrahi is not solely culpable of the worst terrorist atrocity on UK soil since the second world war, so I very much hope that the Minister and the Foreign Office will do everything possible to ensure that the Libyan authorities comply fully in helping us to get to the bottom of that case—and the case of PC Yvonne Fletcher.

I turn now to Mauritania. I alluded to the fact that on a recent visit to the country, as well as meeting politicians I spent a little time standing on the coast, watching the fishermen bring in their fish. It was quite extraordinarily difficult for them to drag—literally drag—their small boats on to the sand to get their catch.

The European Union and, in particular, Spanish vessels are pillaging the waters off the coast of Mauritania, sucking out all the fish and impoverishing the lives of local fishermen. Many promises that the EU made as a result of the agreement to which I referred earlier have not been fulfilled. One was that a pier or jetty would be built near Nouakchott for the local fishermen, but that has still not been put in place, 10 years on. I raise the issue with the Minister, as I very much hope that he will use his good offices to find out what the European Union’s promise of assistance was to the local fishermen, and that he will do everything he possibly can to help them.

My trip to Mauritania was the first by a British Member of Parliament since one by the Father of the House in 1960, and the Mauritanians were so amazed by this that they laid out the red carpet. I had more than two hours with the President—[Laughter.] My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) laughs but this is a serious matter, because the people there feel neglected by the United Kingdom and wish to engage far more with us. The problem is that Governments of various political colours have neglected the whole of Francophone north Africa over the decades, and that has led to a lack of engagement in terms of trade and co-operation. Luckily, I studied French—that was my degree—at university, so I could converse quite happily with the Mauritanians in French and had to translate for the rest of my delegation, but we need more engagement.

On my other visit, to Tunisia, I found when I met representatives of its chambers of commerce that only 52 British companies trade there, in contrast with 1,700 French companies—52 to 1,700. There are very similar statistics regarding Morocco. I have met Lord Green, the new Minister for Trade and Investment, who does an excellent job, but I very much hope that somebody who is a fluent French speaker will be appointed to lead a massive export drive to the Francophone countries.

[Rory Stewart]

Would my hon. Friend perhaps consider himself for that job?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I am far too junior and inexperienced, but I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s comment.

I feel passionately about Saudi Arabia. As chairman of the all-party group on Saudi Arabia, I am pleased to inform the House that next month I will lead the largest ever parliamentary delegation to the kingdom, with 16 Members of Parliament, including many Labour MPs, as well as Conservatives. I am looking forward to that trip immensely. I have been battling against extraordinary ignorance about and prejudice against Saudi Arabia for many years, and that includes ignorance and prejudice from British Members of Parliament.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I am very pleased that the hon. Gentleman is going to Saudi Arabia with a substantial delegation. I hope that it will involve a substantial number of women Members of this House and that it will be able to meet women’s organisations in Saudi Arabia.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to hear that there are more women going on the trip than men, which is a specific wish of mine. [Interruption] No, not for that reason. We will certainly be meeting various organisations that deal with women’s rights in the kingdom. I will send the hon. Gentleman a copy of the report after the visit, if he wishes.

There is tremendous anger and hostility towards Saudi Arabia in this country. On one occasion I was sitting in the Smoking Room waiting for a vote, and I asked 15 Tory MPs what their views were on Saudi Arabia, and every single one made very hostile statements about the country. That really upset me, and I did not understand it. I think we have a Guardian-reading liberal elite who want to denigrate Saudi Arabia at every opportunity. The BBC, with its left-wing bias and determination not to report anything positive from Saudi Arabia, also contributes to the extraordinary drip, drip effect of negative press that it gets in this country.

Of course there are huge problems in Saudi Arabia, and of course there are things that we in the United Kingdom disagree with and want changing, but there has been progress, slow though it is. It is extremely important that people like me and others who are interested in Saudi Arabia engage with the country and, specifically, with people who are trying to reform it, who are democrats, and who are passionate about making sure that it improves its human rights.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

Is my hon. Friend conscious of any attempts on the part of the Saudi Government to reform, if only at their own pace, and to bring in a more liberal regime, which we all hope for?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Yes, and we will be discussing that with them.

A delegation of members of the Shura Council recently visited us and spent a whole week here trying to find out how our Parliament works, how our Select Committees work, and how we hold Ministers to account. They talked to me about their desire for reform within the Shura Council and their determination that there should be elections to that body instead of its members being appointed by the King. Because they are very interested in learning from our experience of democracy, they insisted on spending the day with me in my constituency and finding out how the Member of Parliament is held to account by his constituents, how he interacts with the local council, and so on.

The Minister will know that the Foreign Secretary has described Saudi Arabia as a strategic ally of the United Kingdom and that our relations will be cemented and even further prioritised. I hope that he will confirm that.

The Prime Minister and the European Union talked about a Marshall aid package for Tunisia and Egypt following the revolutions in those countries. I have not heard much subsequently about that huge plan, which apparently involved up to €1 billion. I hope that it will be extended to Libya. I would like to hear what progress there is on that. I hope that some of the money will be used to facilitate British companies in trading with the region.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr Gale) is the chairman of the all-party group on Tunisia. He cannot be here, so he asked me to raise the importance of tourism to these countries. I hope that the Minister will agree that we should encourage citizens to visit Tunisia at the earliest opportunity, because it depends so much on tourism.

I will finish by saying that on Wednesday I will be hosting a reception in the House of Commons for the fifth birthday of al-Jazeera English. It is a broadcaster of immense pedigree. I trust al-Jazeera far more than the BBC, regrettably, for impartiality and objective broadcasting. More than 160 people are coming to the event. Because of the strike, I will be pouring the tea and serving the cake myself as we cannot get any catering staff to do so. Hon. Members are very welcome to join us on the Terrace on Wednesday.

Lieutenant Colonel Chris Parker, who came to see me, said that when he was chief of staff in Basra, they were watching al-Jazeera on television and it was the only broadcaster that was broadcasting from Basra. They saw a report on al-Jazeera which said that some of the British shelling was hitting civilians in a residential area. As a result of watching that broadcast, the artillery was stopped and innocent civilian lives were saved. We have a lot to thank al-Jazeera for.

I shall leave it at that.

17:47

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

I do not know how to follow the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), who is a west midlands colleague of mine.

I welcome this debate and in particular the way in which the Foreign Secretary opened it. Even though I have some differences with the Government on their non-vote on Palestinian recognition, as was clear from the last statement on the middle east, I have been impressed by the willingness of the Minister and the Foreign Secretary to engage on that issue and to provide regular briefings. I am sure that that is welcomed by hon. Members on both sides of the House.

There was a very interesting speech by the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), which I will comment on in a minute. I am not sure that I entirely followed his analysis on Iran, but he made some telling points on a number of other areas. My right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) made some important points that we should all heed on Bahrain and Syria.

I would like to say a few words on Syria. All of us, particularly those with a keen interest in the middle east, have been appalled by the level of repression and violence by the Assad regime. As the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington said, the Syrian people have showed incredible bravery and fortitude in standing up to that in the most appalling of circumstances. He was right—this has been said in the messages that I have been getting as well—that one of the most important things that we can do is to show the Syrian people that they are not an afterthought, but that we are with them. It is important that we help to keep their morale up. He was absolutely right that that is one of the important points about the Arab League initiative. I hope that the sanctions bite and are effective, but my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley is correct that we need to think beyond those sanctions as well. The statement that they have made is that the situation is a concern not simply to the outside world but to the Arab world itself, and that the Arab world will not stand for what is going on in Syria.

In Egypt, as we have heard, the polls are open for a general election, which I am sure we all welcome. However, we have to bear it in mind that there are parties that are boycotting the election because of the context in which it is taking place, and that people are still in Tahrir square voicing disquiet about how those elections could turn out. If the Muslim Brotherhood wins or gets the largest single number of votes, as seems likely, it will be really important that it carries through what it has said about recognising that democracy in Egypt has to be for all shades of opinion, secular as well as Islamist. That will need to be reflected in the future constitutional settlement.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend comment on the case of the 26-year-old Egyptian blogger Maikel Nabil, who is now in his third month of a hunger strike? He was one of the first bloggers and the first Egyptians to say that the army and bits of the Muslim Brotherhood may be coming together. It is the army that is sending thousands of Egyptians to prison, with military courts and 93% conviction rates. That young man may die and be sacrificed as a martyr to the fact that the Egyptian army will not accept the will of the Egyptian people.

[Richard Burden]

My right hon. Friend draws attention to a very brave individual, who is one of many in Tahrir square and beyond. Everyone recognised when the Mubarak regime fell that there were close ties between that regime and the military. Nevertheless, the military were also seen as a national force who were not moving against the people. That is one of the tragedies about what has been happening in Egypt. The fact that things have not moved as people in Tahrir square and beyond wanted them to is a source of profound regret, and that is what is being said in Tahrir square today. I hope that not only the Muslim Brotherhood but, as he says, the military themselves take that on board in the context of the elections. The military in Egypt can be a force for national unity, but they have to change their approach from the one they have adopted in recent weeks and months.

The Muslim Brotherhood is clearly an influential force in Egypt, and in other parts of the Arab world in north Africa and the middle east. Political Islam is a potent force there, and again, the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington made an important point about that. If Members look for political symmetry between my views and those of the Muslim Brotherhood, they will have great difficulty in finding any points of contact. However, he was right to suggest that success for groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood are a disaster for groups such as al-Qaeda and the Salafist tradition of political Islam. We must bear that in mind, and it is why the Government are correct to look to open up engagement with political Islamist forces, whether in north Africa or elsewhere.

We recognise that such engagement is necessary in north Africa, for instance in Egypt and Tunisia, and perhaps—who knows?—in creating a dialogue in Jordan. As chair of the all-party group on Jordan, I welcome the visit of King Abdullah to the House the other week, which showed that there is a chance for greater engagement as Jordan continues its reform programme. That sends a clear message that involvement by the UK in the formation of political parties in Jordan is to be welcomed as it moves towards reform. I hope that the Minister will say something about what more we can do on that. However, if we see that engagement with political Islam is important in all those places, we cannot suddenly put the shutters up as a matter of principle if the country involved is Palestine, because the bit of the Muslim brotherhood involved is called Hamas rather than the Muslim Brotherhood.

At the moment, there is a chance of a different way forward in relation to Israel and Palestine. Talks have been taking place in Cairo between Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah and Khaled Mashal of Hamas about a possible reconciliation between those two parties. Anybody who knows about Palestine knows that both Hamas and Fatah, and both political Islam and secular organisations, are part of the reality of Palestinian politics. If we are to get to the stage of a two-state solution and enduring peace between Israel and the Palestinians, as I am sure the whole House wants, the peace deal has to reach out to both those traditions. It has to include political Islam as well as secular forces.

In the same way, we could not say that the only people we wanted to talk to in Israel were those who would generally be regarded as being in the peace camp. We have to recognise that the reality of Israeli politics also includes people such as Mr Lieberman, whose views are hardly the most progressive in the world—some would say that they are racist. It includes groups such as Yisrael Beiteinu and Likud. If we accept that in relation to engagement with Israel, we have to do so in relation to Palestine as well.

That gives a choice in relation to the reconciliation talks. There have been fairly clear signals coming out of those talks, as there have been from Hamas not for months but for years, about its involvement or acquiescence in a peace settlement. We would be totally foolish to ignore those signals. Yet somehow, the international community has got itself into a position of trying to put preconditions on the involvement of Hamas in talks. That was why I asked the Foreign Secretary a question about the matter earlier. In practice, those preconditions seem to have been designed not to encourage Hamas to come into peace talks but to find ways of keeping it out. Hurdles have been erected so that we can work out whether Hamas has jumped high enough, rather than our understanding what it means and responding when it offers truces and unilaterally declares hudnas. The term “hudna” has huge importance in Islam.

If we want to see peace between Israel and Palestine, a more subtle approach is important, and we cannot have that unless we are prepared to discuss matters and have dialogue. I think most diplomats would understand that dialogue and discussion do not necessarily mean the same as negotiations—negotiations can come later—but are an important start to the process by which negotiations can happen.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I compliment my hon. Friend on the huge amount of work that he has done for many years on the issues facing the Palestinian people. Does he agree that there is an element of double standards here? Israel, the Quartet, the UN and the west in general all have discussions with Hamas and its representatives at times and negotiate with it, hence the release of Corporal Shalit in exchange for a large number of Palestinian prisoners. Is it not time to move on so that there are proper talks and proper recognition instead of the current rather unfortunate stand-off, which has lasted too long?

[Richard Burden]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Shalit prisoner swap is a recent example, and there was engagement with Hamas in relation to the release of Alan Johnston, the British journalist, a while ago. It is true that there are double standards, and if there is one thing that really gets to ordinary Palestinians and people throughout the Arab world, and to an awful lot of people beyond, it is the fact that, when it comes to Israel and Palestine, we suddenly adopt a different set of standards from those that we would see as absolutely incontrovertible anywhere else. That undermines our credibility and influence in that part of the world, and it undermines the peace process rather than taking it forward.

These are not theoretical questions. We have heard, just in the past few days, that simply because Hamas and Fatah are talking together, which might lead to reconciliation, Israel has threatened to cut off water and electricity supplies to Gaza—collective punishment of an entire population because their political leaders are talking together. Now, we either say something about that or we do not. We either take a firm stand on that or we do not. I know which side of the fence I am on.

That point does not just apply to dealing with political Islam. It was not long ago that any time anyone urged dialogue or engagement with Hamas, the call came from Israel that that would be beyond the pale and was impossible because they were terrorists. However, if it was just those nice people from Fatah or the PLO, such as Abu Mazen—Mahmoud Abbas—we could deal with them. But what has been the crime that Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah and the secular organisations have committed recently? Their crime has been to go to the United Nations and say, “Just give us the same rights as you have given Israel for 63 years.” From the reaction of Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel and, sadly, the United States—and, even more sadly, of some people in this Chamber—it might be thought that those organisations had somehow declared war on Israel. The approach to the United Nations was described as “a unilateral move”. I cannot think of an organisation that is more multilateral than the United Nations.

[Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have listened carefully to the comments that my hon. Friend has made about Hamas’s involvement in the peace process. Does he maintain his position in the light of a statement made by a senior Hamas leader in Gaza in October, who said,

“We are not going to accept Israel as the owner of 1 sq centimetre because it is a fabricated state”?

[Richard Burden]

That does not alter my view at all. My hon. Friend has illustrated precisely the point that I was making. On both sides of the debate, we can all produce quote after quote to give us an excuse not to engage in dialogue; to decide that our side is right; to decide that the other side are not worth talking to. It is Hamas now, but she may have made a few speeches a few years ago saying the same kind of thing about Yasser Arafat or about Fatah. That does not get us anywhere. It does not get me anywhere to say, because I can produce a load of quotes from someone like Lieberman—or even the Prime Minister of Israel, Mr Netanyahu—that they should be kicked out of negotiations, even if we all then pat ourselves on the back and say that we had done a good job.

If we are serious about peace, we have to contribute to peace. It is an old cliché, but it is right—peace is made not between friends, but between enemies. Unless we are prepared to try to reach out, not to our enemies, but to the enemies in the middle east and try to get them talking, what are we doing other than just acting as cheerleaders for one side or the other?

I was in Israel and Palestine last week. The situation there never loses its capacity to shock. Settlement building is continuing apace, in defiance of international law and despite having been condemned eight times in six months —or is it six times in eight months—by the Government. I know that the Minister is aware of the issue, but I ask him to pay particular regard to an area which became known as Area C in the Oslo process, which is one of the more rural areas of the west bank, and the encroachment of settlements and the dispossession of Palestinians there. When maps of the future Palestinian state are discussed, the focus is often on towns—on Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus and Tulkarm. All those places are important, but so too are the bits in between and the people who live there.

As we speak, Bedouin who are already refugees—in the main, they come from the Negev in what is now Israel and have been living in the west bank for decades—face forced displacement and dispossession to make way for settlements. I visited the school of Khan al Ahmar, just outside Jerusalem, which is under threat of demolition. There are two petitions going on, one to demolish the Khan al Ahmar school and one to demolish the Khan Al Ahmar community. One petition comes from the settlement just behind the area and one from the Israeli civil Administration in the west bank. That community, including the civilians—in fact, they are all civilians—and the children, face dispossession. Forced displacement of people by an occupying power is illegal under international law. We should not be scared to say that, nor to require Israel to abide by international law.

Even if those Bedouin were forcefully displaced to a palace it would be wrong. But the proposal is not to displace them to a palace. Instead, Israel proposes to displace them to a site next to Jerusalem’s municipal rubbish dump. I went to that rubbish dump and I saw the pipes that allow methane to escape. I saw a tanker appear, belching sewage from its back, and I saw where the land is being levelled to put Bedouin communities within 500 metres of the dump. As far as I know, that contravenes all health and safety regulations in that area.

Israel is beginning to notice the growing international condemnation of this proposal. It is no accident that access to the rubbish dump is now being blocked off by security blocks like those seen in other parts of the west bank. They have now appeared at the entrances to the rubbish dump—perhaps it has suddenly become a security risk. It may in fact be about stopping foreign visitors—and brave Israelis—from going there to bear witness to what is going on.

These things are wrong, and we should not be scared to say so. Settlement building is also dismantling the chances of a two-state solution before our eyes. The settlement building is not just displacing people to make way for settlers: it is increasingly severing the west bank into cantons or Bantustans that will not be viable as a state—unless we stop it. I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House, whether we consider ourselves friends of Palestine or of Israel, will demand that that process stops.

My final point is about child prisoners. We have already mentioned the prisoner swap that rightly led to the release of Gilad Shalit and of some 500 Palestinian prisoners. The second phase of that prisoner swap will take place over the coming weeks. There are 150 Palestinian children in Israeli military detention, but so far, none of those is scheduled to be part of that prisoner swap. Several recent delegations to the west bank and Israel—organised by the Britain-Palestine all-party group, which I chair, and other organisations—have been to the Israeli military courts where those children are tried. Like other hon. Members, I had already read the testimonies about how the laws applying to Palestinian children are different from those applying to Israeli children; about how Palestinian children are tried in military courts, but Israeli children, even in the occupied territories, are tried in civilian courts; about how many Palestinian children are given bail compared with how many Israeli children are given bail. But I was not prepared for the sight in a military prison—one of the most secure compounds I have ever visited—of 14-year-old boys shuffling in wearing leg-irons and handcuffs for their court hearings. All members of the all-party parliamentary group who were on that visit made the decision that we were not prepared to shut up about this. Something had to be done. Whatever one’s views on the occupation, on Israel and on the peace process, shackling 14-year-old boys is wrong. It is against the UN convention on the rights of the child and it is inhuman.

[Ann Clwyd]

Earlier this year, I was invited by the United Nations to a conference in Vienna on the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. It was the first time that I could remember the UN holding a conference with such a title. There were testimonies from people that made exactly the same point as my hon. Friend. Children are quite often charged without having a responsible adult present or legal representation. The stories that we heard were very similar to those he is describing now. It is an absolute disgrace that many of these children are in prison simply for throwing stones.

[Richard Burden]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. The biggest number of accusations is for throwing stones. A range of human rights organisations, including Israeli human rights organisations as well as Palestinian and international ones, and the United Nations have amassed loads of evidence showing how children are visited and arrested in the middle of the night and painfully tied with a single plastic cord in violation of Israeli army procedures. The issue of how the children are interrogated and who is allowed to be present is a matter of real concern. Interrogations are not video recorded. Children continue to be denied bail in about 90% of cases, and many are detained in prisons outside the occupied territories in violation of article 76 of the fourth Geneva convention. Those things are wrong.

Even though I thought I knew a fair bit about child prisoners in Palestine, I came across something last week that astonished me even more. I spoke to some ex-detainees in Bethlehem. Most of them came from the town of Hebron or thereabouts. They recounted some of the things that my right hon. Friend has said, that I have said and that the UN has reported, but I wanted to pursue this issue of why they were shackled and had leg irons on inside a prison.

I said to the young boys, “When did they put these leg irons on you? When did they shackle you?” They replied, “Before we went into the court and before we went into the prison.” I said, “You were detained, though. You were already in the prison, weren’t you?” They replied, “No, we were in the other prison.”

Many of those children are held not in Ofer prison, in which they are tried, but in other prisons which could be on the west bank or in Israel itself. The young man who was talking to me was held in Tilmond prison near Haifa and he said that that was where they put the shackles and leg irons on him. He wanted to talk to me about other things. He thought that his experience was quite normal. I said, “Hang on, how long were you in those leg irons and shackles before you got to the prison?” I thought that it would have taken one to two hours to drive to Ofer prison, but he said, “About nine hours.”

At that stage, I thought that I was getting some exaggeration because it is nothing like a nine-hour drive between Haifa and Ofer prison, which is between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. He said, “No, we don’t go straight there. We get picked up at about 1 o’clock in the morning and the prison transport takes us down to the Negev where we pick up some more from a prison there. It then takes us back to Ramleh where we have a break for the driver and then we go on to Ofer prison. It takes about eight or nine hours.”

I asked the young boy whether he was shackled the whole time. He said, “Yes.” Other young men around the room nodded in agreement and said that that had happened to them as well. I asked the young boy where they were being held. He said, “We were in this kind of prison bus which had rooms in.” I assumed that it was like prison transport with compartments. He said, “It was a bit overcrowded, but we just had to stay there with our shackles and leg irons.” I asked, “What happened if you wanted to go to the toilet?” He replied, “We just had to do it where we were.” This is the 21st century. Irrespective of our views on the Israel-Palestine conflict, are we honestly saying that those sorts of things should go on?

I know that the Minister and the Government are concerned about this matter. I welcome the work that both our ambassador in Tel Aviv and our consular-general in east Jerusalem have been doing to raise awareness of these and many other issues. There is another inquiry going on at the moment into the condition of child prisoners. This is an issue that must not go away because it is shocking to me and shocking to anyone who sees it. It is against the UN convention on the rights of the child and it is inhuman.

I have been raising these matters over a period of time —perhaps I have been a bit of a bore on the matter— but it is only in the past few days and weeks that we have seen a change in profile and a number of achievements. Israel has equalised the age at which a child is classified an adult—from 16 to 18. The age is now equal between Israelis and Palestinians, which is good. It would not have happened had it not been for the pressure that has been building up. The number of Palestinian children in Israeli jails is now 150; it was 164 a few weeks ago, so I think the Israelis are susceptible to pressure.

What is incredible is that there has been a campaign of hate, misrepresentation and libel against me and others for having dared to raise this issue. To some extent that goes with the territory, and I am not in the firing line; I am a British MP. I can speak in this place. It is easy for me to do so and it is my responsibility to do so. None the less, there are people for whom we do need to raise our voices. I am talking not just about the Palestinian children but the people who are prepared to speak out both in Palestine and in Israel. I am talking about those who are members of groups such as Peace Now, B’Tselem, Yesh Din, Physicians for Human Rights and Breaking the Silence; the brave soldiers who have seen the conflict first hand and have said that things must change. They are prepared to say that the kind of stuff that Israel and Netanyahu put out in the outside world does not reflect the reality on the ground and that there has to be a different way. Those people are the best of Israel.

Very often the Israeli Government and lobbyists for Israel talk about the danger of the de-legitimisation of Israel. Even members of those groups, Israeli Jews, are accused of de-legitimising Israel because they speak out on what is going on. In fact, those groups are protecting Israel’s legitimacy and democracy and they need our support now because laws are being put through the Knessset that will gag them. Any organisation that the Israeli state regards as political will be outlawed from getting foreign funding of over 20,000 Israeli shekels—about £6,000. All the evidence points to the fact that the ones that will be regarded as political will be the human rights organisations. It will not affect the settler groups that get millions from the United States and elsewhere; it will affect the human rights organisations. Legislation is also being passed that is doing strange things to Israel’s libel laws that will try to gag people from speaking out. There are even laws being passed about how judges and justices are chosen that will restrict the ability of such groups to petition the courts in Israel. Those groups need our support. Our ambassador has been forthright on this matter and I commend him for that.

My appeal is not just to people who agree with me on Palestine but to those who regard themselves as friends of Israel. Are they simply friends of whatever the Israeli Government happen to do or say at the time, or are they friends of Israel, of Israeli democracy, of dissent in Israel as well as of the establishment of Israel? If they are, I hope that they will join me and people throughout the world in standing up for Israeli democracy. B’Tselem and other organisations are bravely saying, “We will not be silenced.” We should not allow them to be silenced either.

18:19

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden). It was certainly fascinating to hear his powerful personal testimony of the military courts in Israel and Palestine. I had the opportunity to see the courts earlier this year, and one of the most disturbing things is that although, in a sense, it is a testimony to the openness of Israeli society that he and I could see them in practice, the same crimes committed in the same places by Israeli youngsters were tried in civilian courts with all the rights and protections that that implied. He is right to praise Israeli and Palestinian voices that have been raised in opposition to that system.

I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s broad opening remarks. They provided an informative tour of parts of three continents and numerous societies and conflicts. I do not know whether it is fair to say that some of these parliamentary debates are getting a little broad in their scope. This one encompasses, among many other things, the enormously hopeful transition to democracy in many countries following the Arab spring, the intractable problems of the Arab-Israeli dispute, the dislocation and war in the horn of Africa and the troubling situation in Iran.

Common themes are emerging, however. The first theme that I would identify is a hopeful one: the increasing role of regional organisations in many of these conflicts and policy areas. There was the recent positive initiative by the Gulf Co-operation Council in Yemen leading to what we hope will be the beginning of a resolution of the problems there; there is the very positive role being played in Somalia by the African Union; and there is the historic new-found confidence of the Arab League in tackling human rights issues first in Libya and now in Syria. Some of the Foreign Secretary’s Conservative colleagues might be sceptical of, and worry about, these regional groupings taking on a political role rather than a purely economic one, but I think that some of these disputes are proving the value of regional co-operation and regional groupings.

Rather surprisingly, a second theme appears to be the role of monarchy, which was eloquently expressed by the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) and then put slightly more eccentrically—I hope that he will forgive me for saying that while he is not in his place—by the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski). I would say to him that the history of monarchy—even restored monarchies—in places such as France and Greece has not been entirely trouble free, and that the history of middle eastern monarchy is not entirely safe and reliable either. He could look to Iran and Libya for examples of where the path of monarchy did not run entirely smoothly. European history shows that it is common for populations to have considerable respect for the magic of monarchy for quite a long time and always to blame the advisers and Governments, but eventually many monarchs run out of bad advisers to blame and sometimes lose their heads in subsequent phases of popular discontent.

The third common theme, rightly highlighted by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield, is the potential for a new, democratic and peaceful brand of political Islam. The Muslim Brotherhood is a complicated network of organisations operating in different countries but it has been overwhelmingly peaceful in most parts of the middle east. If it looks to countries such as Turkey and Indonesia for examples of how political Islam can play its part in a completely democratic process—and one that is tolerant of other political traditions in the same society—it will find a very different vision of political Islam from that of violent Salafism or the Iranian-inspired political extremism that we see at work in the region. It would be a terrible mistake to lump those together and to be too afraid of the role of political Islam in these regions.

It is a positive sign that the first democratic elections in Egypt commenced today, although even the operation of those elections has exposed the tensions between the continuing role of the military in Egyptian society and the instincts of the democratic activists in Tahrir square and throughout Egyptian society. Although it is a positive thing that those elections are taking place, we must make it clear to the Egyptian Governments who follow the elections that in due course those tensions must be resolved in favour of democracy, and that the military must learn, as they have done in many parts of Europe and the world, that to be truly patriotic they have to step back from political power and cannot expect immunity for past crimes.

The Amnesty International report from 22 November reinforces the fears of some of the protesters. It talks about military courts still trying protesters, about crackdowns on peaceful protest and about the remit of Mubarak’s emergency law being, if anything, extended in recent months. Those are very worrying tendencies, and I know that the Government are expressing their concerns and fears to the Egyptian Government. It is a positive thing that the military council has apologised and that there has been talk of investigations, amnesties and compensation—that is all welcome—but the fundamental necessity is for a clear shift towards a transparently civilian authority in Egypt.

[Bob Stewart]

I totally accept the hon. Gentleman’s point but my simple worry is that if the military were not there—I am not trying to support them—we might have a much worse situation. We have to be careful. The Egyptians have to decide exactly what they want, and we cannot say to them, “This is what should happen.” It is their business, not ours.

[Martin Horwood]

The hon. Gentleman is right, but certain fundamental principles ought to inform transitions to democratic government if they are to succeed, and two of those must be that the military step back from the exercise of political power and that they should not expect immunity from investigation of past involvement in human rights abuses. Successful transitions to democracy have always had those characteristics, and the Egyptians must learn from that. I welcome the Foreign Secretary and the Government’s strong line in that respect.

Libya presents different challenges. We must be grateful for the role that British and international armed forces played in that conflict but equally we must welcome the move to a post-military phase and congratulate the Government on reopening the British embassy on 17 October. As hon. Members have pointed out, the treatment of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi will be a test case: his capture provides the opportunity for the new Libyan regime to illustrate its respect for the rule of law and the rights even of despised opponents in a way that was not apparent in the treatment of Gaddafi senior.

I would like the Minister to comment on a security matter that the Foreign Secretary did not really mention: the reports that large amounts of military matériel are going missing in Libya. It is rumoured that some of it is finding its way into the hands of violent Islamic extremists, whether those with Salafist tendencies or even al-Qaeda members. I would be interested to hear whether the Government consider these accounts credible and, if so, whether they are taking action to counteract the problem.

In Syria, we have a different situation again. As the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington rightly said, we have to give the greatest credit to the Syrian people themselves for maintaining the uprising for eight months against the most brutal repression. It is an example of extraordinary courage and determination that should inspire people all over the world to rise up against tyranny. However, credit is also due to the Arab League, the regional grouping, first for expressing strong diplomatic disapproval and exerting pressure, then for suspending Syria from membership and, finally, for now imposing sanctions. Such a determined response by the Arab League and neighbouring Governments such as Turkey is a positive development in the history of the Arab League, which has not always been the most robust of organisations on such issues. However, it is now taking a proactive and positive role in the region, and towards Syria in particular.

I think that those in the Arab League see—I hope we see it too—that those developments may avoid the necessity for foreign intervention, which is not something that I have heard anyone in the Syrian opposition call for. Although we might see continued violent conflict in Syria—I think we will, in fact, see it—if a robust approach is taken, we might also see a resolution that does not involve even worse complications, arising from foreign intervention, because there are unfortunate precedents. In terms of geography and political, ethnic and tribal tensions, Syria is rather more like Iraq than Libya, which, in a way, was a rather simple country to intervene in. Libya is reasonably homogenous, its population basically live on one coastal strip and it is close to lots of NATO countries. Intervention in Syria would be a much more complicated and messy affair. We should try to avoid that possibility at all costs.

However, it is rather disappointing that some other international voices have not really joined us in trying to support the Syrian people. It is interesting to note the movement by China, but Russia’s position is completely indefensible. The opportunity for Russia to use its influence with the Assad regime for good is being completely lost. The recent comment by a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman—that what was needed was

“not sanctions, not pressure, but internal Syrian dialogue”—

was, frankly, completely incredibly. That approach risks Russia’s credibility, not just in Europe and the international arena, but specifically in the middle east. I hope that Russia will see that its position is neither credible nor in Russia’s long-term interests, and will instead join the growing international movement for effective international pressure.

The situation in Iran, not far from Syria, is rather more worrying—like other hon. Members, I deeply regret the expulsion of the UK ambassador. Again, this is an area where international co-operation could have proved effective. After all, the International Atomic Energy Agency includes China and Russia, so in a sense they are taking part in the pressure being exerted on the Iranian regime. The IAEA has clearly and unambiguously exposed credible evidence of the Iranian regime’s military ambitions when it comes to nuclear weapons. It is possible to understand Israel’s anxiety in that respect. To Israel, this development poses a real and present threat to its national security. However, I hope that we will join other members of the international community in expressing to Israel the clear belief that military intervention would inflame the entire region and critically undermine the chances of liberal opposition or a popular uprising in Iran, solidifying support for the regime. The role of the international community must be to provide robust and effective pressure—I welcome the increased sanctions regime at the end of this month. However, we must try to pursue that as a means of avoiding the possibility that any country in the region feels it is necessary to intervene militarily.

We have to accept that the Israeli people’s anxieties are quite real. It is not just the Iranian situation that seems to pose a threat to many people in Israel, but in some respects the Arab spring too. However, I nevertheless welcome the Government’s position, which is that Palestine now largely fulfils the criteria for UN membership, including statehood. I rather regret that this has not translated into a promise of a positive vote in favour of Palestinian statehood and membership of the United Nations; nevertheless, the tone of the Foreign Secretary’s remarks and those of Ministers has been absolutely right in that respect. It is right to call on Israel to realise that the only way to avoid unilateral initiatives is multilateral negotiation without preconditions. Israel needs to do that, not least to strengthen the hand of moderate, peaceful Palestinian political opinion, because the path of conflict and confrontation will only reinforce the position of the more extreme factions, if that diplomatic and peaceful process seems completely hopeless to ordinary Palestinians.

Moving around the world, let me turn to Somalia, where there are some quite positive things to highlight. I look forward to the London conference in February. The Foreign Secretary was right to highlight the need for more effective international strategies and pressure. Nevertheless, there is already some positive development to report. The courage of African Union troops and the positive role that the African Union is playing in the country are quite important. The fact that the Secretary of State for International Development was able to visit Mogadishu this summer is quite an extraordinary development. It was a very positive statement for him to make. It might not quite compare with the courage of African Union and Somali troops in trying to promote democracy or national security in that country, but it was a courageous act by a western politician, and we ought to pay him credit for that. There is a fear among Somali civil society that rather more money comes in from foreign countries in the form of ransoms than in the form of development aid. It is therefore positive that the British Government have made a visible commitment to work in Somali society and in Somali civil society, in particular, to promote development.

When we are dealing with piracy, it is quite important that such development should take place, because it is important—if I may misquote Tony Blair—not just to tackle piracy, but to tackle the causes of piracy. We do not just need police actions against ships and aggressive actions in the sea; we need to tackle, for instance, illegal fishing and the dumping of toxic waste, which are ruining traditional livelihoods and are also among the factors that sometimes drive people to seek such extreme forms of raising money. Wherever possible, we need to invest in infrastructure, such as fishing facilities and so on, to try and start the long, hard process of normalisation in that country. We need to involve Somali civil society in that, and not just in what is technically Somalia, but in those regions that are, in effect, proving autonomous, such as Somaliland and Puntland.

I commend to Ministers the experience of Saferworld and the role that it has played in DFID-funded projects both in Somalia proper and in Somaliland and Puntland. Its experience of trying to put together a positive framework for development in those parts of the world is extremely welcome. Indeed, it is also in line with the Government’s stated policy in BSOS—“Building Stability Overseas Strategy”—which talks about upstream prevention of conflict. In the case of Somalia, it is not so much upstream prevention as an upstream solution while the river is in full flood. We should not take the analogy too far—[Interruption.] Yes, we do not want anybody drowned in the process, but clearly we need to tackle the root causes of conflict, as well as the symptoms.

We see a regrettable deterioration of the situation in Sudan. Briefly, let me say that the Foreign Secretary’s instincts are exactly right in that respect too. We need to watch the situation extremely carefully and urge all parties, in both Governments—the Sudanese Government and the new South Sudan Government—to recognise the importance of trying to resolve their differences peacefully, if at all possible, and to allow the maximum amount of international support in so doing.

In Yemen we see more positive developments. We have the President’s signature on 23 November and the appointment of an opposition politician, Mohammed Basindawa, to the role of Prime Minister, which are encouraging developments. Clearly we are not out of the woods yet in Yemen, but what has happened is a positive step.

Last but not least, I would like to deal briefly with the situation in Bahrain, and I strongly welcome the Foreign Secretary’s remarks on the country. I listened with interest to the remarks of the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), who has long been an independent and forthright commentator on international affairs regardless of who happens to be in government at the time. In a way, however, I think she got the tone slightly wrong on the independent committee of inquiry whose report has just been published in Bahrain. She rightly said that it demonstrates comprehensive evidence of widespread and serious abuse of human rights, certainly implicating the security forces, and that this is part of a deep-seated process in the state of Bahrain. The fact that the report has been published at all, however, is a very positive development that we must try to hold on to. The fact that it was robust and that it did not pull any punches is quite a testament to the potential for openness and accountability in Bahrain.

We know from our own experience in this country that it took us decades to accept the role of our military in even very limited and isolated examples of the abuse of military power in Northern Ireland and later in Iraq, for example. These were not systematic, but very isolated cases of discreditable actions—not typical of the British armed forces as a whole—yet these were painful incidents for us to talk about and admit. Bahrain, however, has moved very quickly to a position in which it is openly discussing comprehensive and systematic human rights abuse by its own security forces, which is something to be praised.

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

I believe that the timely publication and the ability for people to see the transparency will be important steps in the reconciliation between the Sunni and the Shi’a in Bahrain. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?

[Martin Horwood]

Yes, I certainly agree with that. What the report has highlighted about the Shi’a is particularly important. It showed that the idea that Iran was stirring up trouble and was behind the Shi’a elements in the protests was not backed up by any real evidence. That was another honest and important conclusion from the report.

The test is, of course, what happens next. As Amnesty International has said, it is the “speed, extent and seriousness” of the Government’s response that is the real test in this case. The right hon. Member for Cynon Valley rightly highlighted the case of medical workers who are still in custody of one kind or another, which is simply not acceptable. The Bahraini Government should tackle that issue as a matter of absolute priority.

I am sure that Her Majesty’s Government will enthusiastically support that kind of robust response to the report by the Bahraini Government, and I think they should also seek to reassure any nervous neighbours of Bahrain that as the “Building Stability Overseas Strategy” rightly points out, we are now looking at a new philosophy of security for countries such as Bahrain and others around the world, whereby security does not come from repression and control, but ultimately and in the long term from societies that are capable of peaceful change, in which human rights and the rule of law are respected. From Somalia to Syria, from Mauritania to Iran, that commitment to peaceful change, human rights and the rule of law ought to be—and, I hope, will be—the hallmarks of British foreign policy.

18:43

[Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)]

I certainly hope that the aspirations of the people of the region that have been raised by the Arab spring are realised and that the lives of people throughout that region, and, indeed, beyond it, are improved. It is significant to note that before the Arab spring took place, there was very little, if any, coverage in the national media of the atrocities and lack of democracy that were a reality in those countries. Indeed, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights failed to condemn what was happening in those countries, which perhaps places a big question mark over the efficiency of the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

This is a wide-ranging debate, and I would like to comment on a number of areas. First, the Foreign Secretary mentioned the situation in Yemen. I know that the commitments made by the President to take action to bring democracy to the country are doubted by many people. I hope that the British Government will do all they can to ensure that the promises materialise and that the current regime will be replaced by a democratic one that reflects the interests of the people of Yemen.

Iran—not, of course, an Arab country—has been mentioned as an important player a number of times in this debate. I urge our Government to look at the plight of the Baha’i people in Iran and to note the continued persecution and new wave of arrests of the Baha’i minority. It is wrong that what is happening to that minority group is ignored by far too much of the world. I ask Ministers to make a statement about what they going to do to try to ensure that the Baha’i people are not intimidated or persecuted as they are now.

I shall also comment on the Palestinian-Israeli dispute and how I hope matters might be pressed so that justice can be achieved. The context of everything I want to say is that I firmly believe that the only way in which justice can be brought both to Palestinians and Israelis is to have two states of Israel and Palestine with negotiated borders, with an agreed settlement on refugees and an agreed sharing of Jerusalem. These objectives are not as far away as many people may believe. Indeed, a number of significant negotiations have come very close indeed to finding resolutions to those difficult issues. As I say, those issues will be resolved only by detailed negotiations between the parties concerned. It is right that the Quartet and others try to assist the negotiations, but a lasting solution can be brought about only by agreement between those two main parties. Calls for boycotts, sanctions and disinvestment will not bring peace and will not bring security. Direct negotiations are the only way.

It is a common call for there to be an end of the occupation to resolve this dispute. Indeed, I am opposed to occupation—the occupation of one people by another has to be bad both for the occupied as well as the occupiers—but too often ignored in debates on this issue is the fact that Israel has withdrawn from lands it occupied in its defensive war in 1967, when its existence was threatened by the armies of Arab states around it. Israel has withdrawn from territories it occupied, in response to offers of peace. Perhaps the best example was in 1979, when Israel withdrew from the whole of Sinai as part of a negotiated agreement with Egypt. Until now—and, we hope, in the future, although sadly there seems to be a question mark over this—there has been peace between Egypt and Israel. It has often been described as a cold peace, but it is nevertheless a peace. In 1994, Israel reached agreement with Jordan, which has also continued. Israel has withdrawn from territories occupied when threats were made to its very existence and peace has resulted from it. It is also the case that Israel has withdrawn from other territories it occupied as a result of attacks, but peace has not been the result.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

Given what is happening in Egypt at the moment, what is the hon. Lady’s sense of the Israeli position regarding the peace treaty and what might happen in Egypt? Given her extensive knowledge, will she inform us of her opinion on this issue?

[Mrs Ellman]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. I understand that Israel fervently wishes to maintain its peace treaty with Egypt. However, it is concerned about statements that have been made by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt which suggest that it would like to review or, indeed, drop the treaty. Israel wishes to maintain it, and I hope that that can be achieved.

Israel has withdrawn from territories that it has occupied as a result of attacks on it, and the consequence of that withdrawal has not been peace. In 2000, Israel correctly withdrew completely from south Lebanon. The consequence of that was the occupation of the area by the Iran-backed Hezbollah, followed by attacks on Israeli citizens. Although it was a correct withdrawal from occupied territory, it did not lead to peace.

More recently, in 2005, the Israelis correctly withdraw all their 8,000 settlers and military personnel from Gaza. As we all know only too well, the result of that was not peace but the election of Hamas—refusing to recognise Israel’s existence—and the firing of thousands of rockets and other missiles on Israeli civilians in Sderot, Be’er Sheva, Ashkelon and Ashdod. The withdrawal of the Israelis from Gaza, which I fully support, did not lead to peace.

People talk as though withdrawal and the end of occupation inevitably lead to peace. I stress again that I am against occupation, but in those two instances at least, when Israel has withdrawn from lands that it has occupied as a result of attacks on it, peace has not been automatic. Moreover, when people advocate the withdrawal of Israelis from occupied lands, it is not always clear exactly which occupied lands they are talking about. Are they talking about 1967 or about 1948? Here in London a few months ago, on al-Quds day, it was evident what was meant by many of the campaigners against Israel’s policies and against Israel itself. One illustration of that was a big placard held up by a young child, bearing the unfortunate words “For world peace, Israel must be destroyed”. That is hardly conducive to efforts to find a solution.

I also note that the Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s logo features a map that does not depict Israel as existing at all. When I hear calls from that organisation for Israel to end its occupation, I question what it really means. Is it talking about a negotiated solution to the problem of land that is occupied as a result of attacks on Israel in 1967, or is it talking about there being no Israel at all? We must know what people mean, in what context they are speaking and where they are coming from if we are to assess the validity of the criticisms that they are making at any given time.

[Martin Horwood]

I understand the genuine anxieties that the hon. Lady is voicing. However, she must accept that Fatah and the Palestinian Authority have made it clear that they are talking about negotiation more or less on the 1967 borders, and that anything beyond the 1967 borders of Palestine must therefore be Israel. That is an implicit, if not explicit, recognition of Israel’s absolute right to exist. By responding so aggressively to the peaceful and diplomatic approach to the United Nations made by the Fatah administration—by responding with extended settlements and threats to the economic and financial viability of the Palestinian Authority—Israel is surely playing into the hands of the very extremists, bomb-makers and rocket-makers to whom the hon. Lady is referring.

[Mrs Ellman]

I acknowledge that the Palestinian Authority has played a constructive role in the attempt to make progress. That is clear from the way in which it has worked with the Quartet and others on the west bank, the dramatic increase in prosperity there, and the way in which—again, working with the Quartet—it has developed its security forces and the civil administration. That could easily and quickly make Palestine into a viable and successful country, if only the political negotiations could make progress. I also think it important for the Palestinian Authority to recognise that the solution lies in urgent negotiations rather than declarations at the United Nations which, in practice, will not solve any of the practical and difficult problems that need to be addressed. The Palestinian Authority should be urged to return to those negotiations.

[Richard Burden]

I know that my hon. Friend is not happy about the reference to the United Nations—she and I disagree about that—but may I invite her to answer the question that was put by the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood)? Irrespective of whether she feels, or Israel feels, that it is a good idea for the Palestinians to go to the United Nations, does she think that it helps the peace process for Israel to respond by continuing and accelerating its settlement building, and by cutting off tax revenues that are owed to the Palestinian Authority but are being held by Israel?

[Mrs Ellman]

I do not think that those activities are helpful to the quest for peace. I think that the only way in which progress can be made is for the Palestinian Authority to be urged to return to the negotiating table. It is a great shame that when it stopped negotiating and said that it wanted a settlement freeze—I considered that to be a reasonable request, and indeed there was a settlement freeze—the Palestinians did not return to the negotiating table.

It is important to recognise that the role and the views of Hamas do matter. Quotations from Hamas are important, because they reflect the reality. Hamas still does not recognise the validity of the existence of the state of Israel. I am not talking about an argument about borders; it does not recognise the validity of the state of Israel. That is shown clearly in its charter, which states that it is its religious duty to have an Islamic state over the whole of the area in which Israel now exists. That has nothing to do with 1967 borders.

The charter also refers to Jews—not Israelis—running the world and controlling the media, and contains other diatribes against Jews, not just Israelis. As I mentioned earlier, Hamas leaders in Gaza have recently stated

“we are not going to accept Israel as the owner of one square centimeter because it is a fabricated state.”

Those are not just words while Hamas’s rockets continue to rain down on Israeli citizens. If it changes its position, we shall be in a different situation, and I certainly agree that a different approach must be taken. However, no one who believes that Israel’s existence should be guaranteed can accept that it should negotiate about its existence. Yes, it should negotiate about boundaries since 1967, but it should not be called on to negotiate about its existence. Unless the person requesting that is one of the people whom I mentioned earlier, who by “occupied lands” is really referring to Israel’s existence, it is land since 1948.

[Bob Stewart]

As a delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross, my wife used to have to deal with Hamas daily in south Lebanon when she was the delegate in Tyre. Would it not be in all our interests for huge efforts to be made—I am sure that some efforts are already being made—to persuade Hamas to change its position with regard to Israel and its right to exist, so that we could proceed to negotiation? It is clear that Israel must exist in future. It is equally clear that its borders must be secure—that is part of the process— but I agree that Hamas’s present position is a really big stumbling block.

[Mrs Ellman]

It would be highly desirable for Hamas to change its position. Indeed, it is essential that it does so in order to enable proper negotiations to proceed on the basis of there being two states.

[Martin Horwood]

Is there not an instructive example from our own country, however, in the way in which we drew Sinn Fein and the IRA into the process of negotiation and eventually a settlement even while there was still some violence going on, and even while those organisations were still committed to the abolition of the Province of Northern Ireland and to its incorporation into the Irish state? That political issue was resolved only at the very end of the negotiations, with the signing of the Good Friday agreement. Does the hon. Lady not agree that we should be trying to draw Hamas into the democratic process and the negotiating process, and not setting preconditions that even we ourselves did not set in our own peace process?

[Mrs Ellman]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. Sinn Fein only became part of the peace process—indeed, it did not become part of it directly—when it changed its position in respect of recognition, and I also do not recall that it had a theological basis of hatred for the British state.

[Martin Horwood]

I am sure the hon. Lady will remember that the mantra during the Northern Ireland peace process was that nothing was agreed until everything was agreed. The final commitments only came right at the end of the process.

[Mrs Ellman]

The whole process brought about changes, but there was acceptance only when Sinn Fein changed its position, and I repeat that I am not aware of its having had a theological determination to eliminate the existence of the British state. Hamas not only has a theological determination to eliminate the state of Israel, but is acting on that by sending its rockets over.

[Richard Burden]

I think I might differ with my hon. Friend on her history of what happened in relation to Northern Ireland, but may I put two questions to her? First, does she accept that, although some things such as the Hamas charter remain as they were and the phrases she quotes are no doubt genuine, there have also been indications coming out of Hamas that, while it may not recognise the state of Israel, it could live with living alongside the state of Israel? Is she aware of that shift, and does she think we should explore and encourage it and see where it can go? Secondly, I agree with her that Israel should not have to negotiate its own existence, but what does she think it sounds like to a Palestinian when she and others say a Palestinian state can only come about through negotiation?

[Mrs Ellman]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. The state of Israel came about because it was internationally recognised—[Interruption.] Following a number of commissions looking into the question of whether there should be a state of Israel, the UN put forward specific boundaries following the work of a special committee that had considered that matter over a number of years, and supported that. That was accepted by the state of Israel, but it was not accepted by the Arab states, which then invaded Israel. That was the origin of how the state of Israel came into existence.

I am aware that from time to time some elements of Hamas are said to have made statements to the effect that they would be prepared to live with Israel, but I cannot think that any state would take that seriously when at the same time much more senior people consistently state they wish to see the end of Israel and, indeed, start to act to do so by sending their rockets, directed at Israeli civilians. We must also bear it in mind that Hamas is not acting alone, but is backed by Iran in respect of training and arms—and Iran is, of course, repeatedly threatening the annihilation of Israel. I therefore think Israel has every right to treat Hamas very sceptically indeed, unless there is an explicit and profound change in its position.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

I was particularly interested in the hon. Lady’s recent comments about how Israel came into existence, pursuant to a United Nations commission which set out the boundaries and established how things would work. Would she accept a similar result from a UN commission now on the establishment of a Palestinian state?

[Mrs Ellman]

The state of Israel exists, and has every right to exist. Indeed, I know of no other country in the world in respect of which when its future is discussed questions are raised about the existence of the state itself. I agree that the state of Palestine, which does not exist at present, ought to be set up, but it can only be set up side by side with Israel on the basis of detailed negotiations about borders, refugees and Jerusalem.

Discussions have taken place, following past negotiations which ultimately failed, about the issue of Palestinian refugees. The solution to that problem can only come about by agreement between the parties, and on the basis that Palestinian refugees are to be able to return to a Palestinian state and, by agreement, to Israel and in agreed numbers, with compensation to be offered. I note that the critics of Israel often talk about the right of return of all Palestinian refugees to Israel, rather than to Palestine. That, of course, is simply code for the destruction of the state of Israel, but that distinction is seldom recognised.

There is a lack of balance in discussions on this issue. I am, for instance, increasingly concerned about the attempts to demonise and delegitimise the state of Israel. The term “Zionism” is now used as a term of abuse, which is wholly unacceptable. Zionism is the national movement of the Jewish people for a homeland in the state of Israel. Like all national movements, it contains a range of individuals and parties with very different views. Zionism is not a term of abuse, and when it is used as such, that illustrates the demonisation of the state of Israel itself.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

The hon. Lady mentions Zionism in the context of the creation of the state of Israel, but does she recognise that that term does not quite mean support for the state of Israel in today’s political context?

[Mrs Ellman]

The term Zionism means what it has always meant: a Jewish national movement for a Jewish national home in the state of Israel. It is Israel’s detractors who have perverted the meaning of the term Zionism and made it a term of abuse, in an attempt to delegitimise the very existence of the state.

[Mike Gapes]

I was going to comment on Hamas, but I think that has been dealt with by others. I can, however, confirm the point my hon. Friend makes about Zionism. I am not Jewish, but I have been denounced and vilified as “that Zionist MP” by various people simply on the basis that I support the two states position. That tactic is certainly used by some organisations and some activists in certain extremist groups as a way to try to change the narrative in British politics. It is very important that all of us who believe in the right of the state of Israel to exist alongside a Palestinian state make it very clear to these people in the various campaigns that it is unacceptable to use the term Zionist as a term of abuse. It is used as such against both Jewish people and non-Jews.

[Mrs Ellman]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments and agree with what he said.

I am also increasingly concerned about the loose use of language, which is leading to a creeping anti-Semitism in this country and elsewhere, causing increasing concern among the Jewish community. I was extremely concerned to see on the website of the Liverpool Friends of Palestine a cartoon—this was viewed on 9 September—headed “The power of Zionists”. It depicts a stereotypical Jewish man—a man with a large hook nose holding a Jewish emblem in his hand—pointing to an American soldier under the heading, “Join the United States army” and at the bottom it says “and fight for Israel”. That cartoon could have come out of Nazi literature, given the depiction and the heading “The power of Zionists”. I was appalled to see that and although it has now been removed from the Liverpool Friends of Palestine website, I must ask how it came to be there and what kind of thought was behind it. I gather that it is not a solitary example of what is happening on websites of similar groups.

Some years ago, the New Statesman had a front cover with the big headline “A Kosher Conspiracy?” Underneath that headline was a cartoon depiction of a Jewish symbol—an Israeli Magen David—piercing the British Union Jack, among other things, thus raising the old anti-Semitic allegation that Jewish people are not sincere citizens of their country. After considerable controversy, and some weeks later, the editor said that he had no understanding of what he was doing when that was published, that he did not mean it to be done in the way it was done and that he did not know it was reminiscent of Nazi literature and old stereotypes, and he apologised for it. That occurred some years ago, but this loose language is now going rather further.

I read with increasing concern an article by Deborah Orr in The Guardian on 19 October about the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from his captivity with Hamas. After long, hard bargaining, the Israeli Government eventually decided that the only way they could secure his release was by accepting the proposed deal from Hamas that more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners should be released. The fact that the Israeli Government accepted that has been controversial in Israel for a lot of reasons, including the fact that among those 1,000 Palestinian prisoners released in exchange were extremely serious terrorists and murderers, including those who sent the bombs to the young people in the pizza parlours of Jerusalem and to the old people at the Passover service at the Park hotel in Netanya, and those responsible for many other atrocities. The Israeli Government felt that they should strike that deal because they felt that realistically it was the only way in which Gilad Shalit would be released.

I was appalled when I read Deborah Orr’s article in The Guardian, which was entitled “Is an Israeli life really more important than a Palestinian’s?” When talking about the background to the situation, she said:

“At the same time…there is something abject in their”—

the Israelis’—

“eagerness to accept a transfer that tacitly acknowledges what so many Zionists believe—that the lives of the chosen are of hugely greater consequence than those of their unfortunate neighbours.”

That is basic anti-Semitism.

I am sure that Deborah Orr is not anti-Semitic, and indeed, she later published an apology of sorts, in which she stated:

“Last week, I upset a lot of people by suggesting Zionists saw themselves as ‘chosen’. My words were badly chosen and poorly used, and I’m sorry for it.”

Deborah Orr did say that, but just as I was concerned a number of years ago when the New Statesman felt that it was perfectly in order to have the sort of front page it had—one headlined “A Kosher Conspiracy?” and questioning Jewish people’s loyalty to their country, the United Kingdom—I am concerned that Deborah Orr, not an anti-Semite, thought it was all right to write about Zionists in terms of the word “chosen” in that derogatory manner, when the Israeli Government had done all they could do to secure the release of a soldier. The conditions came from Hamas, not from the Israelis. These are all great warning signs that loose language is now causing more anti-Semitism to be around and to cause disquiet within British society.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

The hon. Lady has alluded to references in sections of the British media. My concern is ensuring that she would not besmirch the entire range of British media with the accusation of anti-Semitism, because that is a grave charge. I just wanted clarification on that.

[Mrs Ellman]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. I do not refer to the whole of the British media. I made my comments in relation to one instance in the New Statesman and I referred to Deborah Orr’s article in The Guardian. I also note that the editor of its readers’ section has recently acknowledged that the way in which The Guardian has used these words has helped to encourage the growth of anti-Semitism. My comments are very specific: they related to the journals and articles that I mentioned. This is not about the British media as a whole, which do not all share this weakness and looseness of language.

What matters most is that there should be a resolution to the long-standing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. I reiterate what I said at the beginning of my contribution, which is that the only way to bring that about, on the basis of two states living side by side in security and peace, is through a resumption of direct negotiations. I hope that our Government will continue to do all they can to ensure that that comes about.

19:17

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

How very jealous George Canning would have been in 1823 to see the scope and ambition of this debate. Triumphant from Waterloo and Trafalgar, with the greatest economy and Navy in the world, he hesitated to get involved in affairs in France and Spain, whereas we have skipped in this debate from toxic waste in Somalia to minorities in Sudan, the situation in Yemen and the Baha’is in Iran. We have touched elegantly on the military in Syria and in Egypt, on elections in Morocco, on Islamists in Libya and in Tunisia, on refugees in Niger and on the fishermen of Mauritania. How jealous he would have been.

Given that we can pack the House for a debate on the fair fuel tariff, one would imagine that we would now find the journalists leaning over the railings, the Gallery packed and the House stuffed, with everyone desperate to get involved at this moment of deep crisis when the middle east and north Africa are teetering on the edge, and Europe is in trouble—but no. Why not? It is because at the heart of our problems in the middle east and north Africa is the situation of Britain for the past few decades. As our relative economic power declines, our ambitions become ever greater and our rhetoric becomes ever more inflated. We wish to get involved in countries that would have been obscure to us at the time of our greatest power, yet at the same time we hollow out the institutions on which we depend to deliver our policy.

Let us consider the middle east and north Africa and what we have done in this Arab spring. On Tunisia, the reality is that we had abandoned not just Mauritania but Tunisia itself to French diplomacy and French policy. In Libya, we contented ourselves with kissing Gaddafi on the cheeks and handing out a doctorate to his son at the London School of Economics and our connection with Egypt was contained to snorkelling as guests of Mubarak in Sharm el Sheikh.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way—

[Bob Stewart]

Were you there snorkelling, too?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

This is not a point about snorkelling. My hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) is making an impassioned and eloquent speech, but surely he must recognise that the reason why we are more committed to intervention in such areas—more so than in imperial times—is that we are part of a wider comity of nations. We are part of the UN and of NATO and as part of that joint venture we are committing and projecting ourselves in the region. In imperial times, such circumstances did not prevail. We acted unilaterally and, as he is right to say, in many instances we chose not to intervene and interfere in the internal politics of other countries.

[Rory Stewart]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, but the problem is not our desire or our commitment to the multilateral system but our capacity and what we can actually do. Our engagement with the United Nations and NATO and our various grand views about globalisation and economics lead us to believe that we should be involved in all those areas, but what capacity do we have to deliver, what understanding do we have of those specific countries and what power do we have in our hands to do one half of the things that have been discussed in the Chamber today?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Surely my hon. Friend must acknowledge and accept that the recent intervention in Libya was a great success. If it were not for our Prime Minister getting that resolution and pushing it through the UN and past President Obama’s reticence, the bloodbath that Gaddafi would have pursued would not have been avoided.

[Rory Stewart]

I agree absolutely, yet it was, to quote the Duke of Wellington, a “damn close run thing”. We stretched our military sinews and our diplomatic resources hard to achieve that success in Libya. We did it by pulling Dominic Asquith in from Egypt and John Jenkins; we gathered almost all the Arabists at our command to deal with one single country of 6 million people in north Africa.

[Mike Gapes]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s remarks about the overstretch in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Does he also recognise that we did what we did in Libya in conjunction with France, that the lead was taken by a number of European countries, working together, and that his vision, which goes back 150 to 200 years, is of a very different world? The future for British foreign policy is not just in the United Nations but in co-operation with our European partners.

[Rory Stewart]

I would agree absolutely if I did not fear that Europe itself is hollowing out its foreign services in exactly the same way as we have hollowed out ours. German diplomats, French diplomats and Italian diplomats recognise that they are pinned in their offices with 400 e-mails in their in-tray, unable to study languages, unable to get out into the rural areas or to collect the political intelligence on which their Governments depend. They are looking in dismay at an External Action Service that is clearly not delivering and they are looking to countries such as Britain for the inspiration and leadership that they might find it increasingly difficult to receive.

Look at what we face. So far, we have dealt with just the second division but we are now entering the premier league. We are looking at countries such as Syria, countries of astonishing complexity with Orthodox Christians, Catholic Christians, Druze, Sunni groups, Alawite groups, orthodox Shi’a groups, Yazidis on the border and Kurds in the north. We are looking at a country such as Egypt that is set fair to become a modern Pakistan on the edge of Europe: a country where the economy is faltering, the military is grabbing on to power and terrorism is appearing on the fringes. We look, too, at Iran, split between its rural and urban populations, with nuclear weapons being developed.

What do we have to put against that? What will happen when we move with our team from the second division into the premier league? Are we up to the job? The answer is that, in many ways we are not. We are in a bad situation. Due to duty of care regulations, our diplomats have become increasingly isolated and imprisoned in embassy compounds. It is increasingly difficult for a British diplomat in a country such as Afghanistan to spend a night in an Afghan village house and even to travel outside the embassy walls without booking a security team in advance. When we attempt to compensate for that, as we did in Iraq by relying on Iraqi local translators or employing Iraqi staff to perform the jobs that our diplomats were not permitted to do, we find ourselves the subject of a class action suit from a British law firm, arguing that we owe exactly the same duty of care to our Iraqi locally engaged staff that we owe to our British staff, thereby tying us up absolutely.

[Laura Sandys]

Let us think about what we used to do under the colonial service, although that has lots of negative connotations: people lived in those countries for years—perhaps 10 years—and spent time travelling the country, getting to know all the different levers, whether they were economic, political or otherwise. Does my hon. Friend think that the structure in our FCO, which involves postings of two to three years, is fit for purpose when we consider the more complex and dynamic environments in which we and those diplomats must operate?

[Rory Stewart]

That is a very good point. The analogy with the colonial period is a very dangerous one and we do not want to recreate some form of colonial service. The structures of imperial control are no longer relevant, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right about the complexity and unpredictability of the modern global world. My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) misleads himself, perhaps, in that he imagines the modern global world as some uniform space in which the fundamental language is English and the fundamental symbol is the mathematics of the banker. In fact, the modern globalised world is defined by complexity and by specificity. The very failed states that we consider tend to be among the most isolated and most alien societies with which we have to engage. That brings us to the problem of the Michael Jay reforms.

Those reforms are the second problem that our Foreign Office has inherited. Since 2001, a consecutive series of permanent under-secretaries have shifted the balance at the Foreign Office from languages and area expertise towards management jargon and an increasing insistence on the “best practices” of the corporate world. All that has meant that because of the very precise details of the “core competences” required for promotion to the senior grades and the appointment procedures, the Foreign Office, instead of giving linguistic and political experts that sense of status and pride, is rewarding people for their ability to deal not with people outside the embassy walls but those within the embassy itself.

That all takes place within a broad context. As the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) suggested, we operate in a multilateral world in which we are very dependent on other partners. Those partners, too, are being hollowed out. We hope that we can depend, as our political service collapses, on journalists, but the newspapers are collapsing and their foreign correspondents are being drawn back to their capitals. There is less and less capacity on the ground.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My hon. Friend knows, probably better than anyone in this House, the extent to which modern media and modern technology have completely revolutionised the way in which we gather information and deploy our authority. I have listened to the debate for a number of hours now and I was intrigued to discover that people were harking back to colonial times, the empire and that sort of thing. They had nothing like the technology we have today and although I completely agree with my hon. Friend about the need for languages and cultural expertise in the Foreign Office, it is not remotely apparent to me that we should have exactly the same infrastructure today as we had in 1930 or 1880. That model is completely false in today’s environment.

[Rory Stewart]

This is a very tantalising and attractive argument and I can see exactly why it is made. Of course, we should not have the same structure as we had in 1880 or 1930—and nor do we—but the notion that technology and the related aspects of the 21st century have somehow transformed our relationship with a country such as Afghanistan is fundamentally misguided. In the recent Helmand police intake, eight out of 100 people could write their name or recognise numbers up to 10. There is no electricity between Herat and Kandahar. The notion of a Facebook revolution in Afghanistan, Somalia or South Sudan is a distant fantasy. The fact that in the British embassy in Kabul two years ago, there were exactly two people who had passed a Dari exam at an operational level and that there was not a single Pashto speaker is testimony to the fact that we believe we live in a globalised world in which it is unnecessary for us to study other people’s languages or understand their culture.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

With respect to my hon. Friend and the House, I have always said in relation to these issues that linguistic competence is absolutely vital, and it is a scandal that the Foreign Office should have turned its back on that. He must acknowledge, as I think he is doing, that the technological environment in which we operate allows us to have certain levers and information that we did not have 15 or 20 years ago.

[Rory Stewart]

I could not agree more—it certainly allows us to have a great deal of information. However, at the fundamental core of the Foreign Office’s work, which concerns politics and power, there appears to be a problem. The same problem was apparent when nobody challenged the Government’s policy on Iraq, which is the single most humiliating mess into which the British Government have got themselves since Suez. Not a single senior British diplomat publicly or even privately challenged the Prime Minister on that issue. Why? Because at the same time as we imagine that everything is manipulable through technocratic processes and technology, the knowledge and the confidence that came from country immersion and language is lacking, as is the confidence that would allow one to challenge power.

[Laura Sandys]

I thank my hon. Friend for being so generous with his time. Let us look at what the Pentagon did about four or five years ago. It put a huge amount of investment into technology and the technological retrieval of data, and then it decided that many of its decisions, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or internationally, had failed because the system did not have enough human intelligence. Technology can deliver a certain level of intelligence, but ultimately we need people who really understand the area to interpret that information and to add that human dimension.

[Rory Stewart]

I could not agree more. This is not an either/or situation. I am deliberately being somewhat, or even intensely, polemical, so let me try to be more reasonable. Technology is not irrelevant and nor is it the case that the world has not changed since the 19th century, but it is important to recognise that the countries that pose the most trouble for us are often those we find the most difficult to understand. It is in precisely those contexts that deep knowledge of those countries and their power structures and relationships is required, and I think the same would almost certainly be true if one was trying to run a business selling into those markets. That applies not only to our diplomats’ relationships with politicians and a Cabinet but to their relationships with rural populations and opposition groups. All of that would put Britain into the state of grace and provide the insurance policy on which this country depends.

Moving towards a solution and a conclusion, the solution must lie in pushing ahead with the very reforms that the Minister and the Foreign Secretary have undertaken, but to push them harder and faster. The diplomatic excellence initiative that the Foreign Secretary has launched is a very good beginning. Even today, however, one still meets political officers in embassies who say that they cannot see how that will help them with promotion. They say, “Focusing on policy work is not going to get me promoted because you haven’t changed the core competences. It’s management of two people and the DTI staff that will get me my next job.” Those are the things we need to address.

[Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

In Afghanistan and, indeed, Iraq, I felt very sorry for the previous Government because one often had the feeling that they were not being told the truth at every opportunity. On a Defence Select Committee trip to Afghanistan, I remember being briefed by a guy in the Foreign Office who gave us the normal line that everything was going terribly well but that there were challenges. Six weeks later, he sidled up to me in a restaurant and said, “Adam, I’m really sorry about that briefing I gave you, but the problem is that no one gets promoted for telling it how it is.”

[Rory Stewart]

This is fundamental because we live in a world in which there is not enough challenge in the system. There are not enough checks or balances. I have mentioned that our newspapers have fewer and fewer foreign correspondents. The quality of foreign reporting in Britain is not as good today as it was 20 years ago because we simply are not investing as much in foreign reporting. At the same time, the military is increasingly preponderant in the United States, and brings with it the inherent optimism and determination to say, “We’ve inherited a dismal situation but we have the resources and the mission to deliver a decisive year,” pushing aside the civilian advice. We are flattered by English-speaking, upper-class Afghans, Iraqis and Libyans who feed our fantasies and tell us what we want to hear.

In that context, and in the context of the temptation across Europe and the United States to have more and more centralised power, we need our Foreign Office to act as a check and balance. We need it to challenge policy and to speak truth to power. Above all, we need it to say not just what the UK interest is, what our ethical limits are or what we are not prepared to do morally, but, most fundamentally of all, what we cannot do. When somebody comes forward and says, in country X, “In this failed state, we will create governance, the rule of law and civil society,” it should be the job of our Foreign Office to ask “How?”, “With whom?” and “With what money?” It should ask, “What possible reason have you to believe that you can achieve this grandiloquent objective you have established?”

We also need to explain matters to the public, because this entire rhetoric is the rhetoric of a poker game. It is the rhetoric, perpetually, of “raise” or “fold”, and of driving people to ask, “Have you met your $3 billion objective on trade this year?” or “Have you or have you not set up the rule of law and civil society?” and if not, “Why have we got an embassy in Mongolia? Why have we got to bother having any representation in Peru? Why don’t we drag it all back to London and do it down the internet?” The way to cease that is to be honest—not just internally but with the British public as well.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My hon. Friend raises a particularly pertinent point about the operations of the Foreign Office. He will remember that in times gone by, that was the Foreign Office’s job and it consistently said no. If we are to believe the memoirs of politicians, it consistently set itself as a roadblock to ministerial action and said, “No you can’t do that,” to Ministers who wanted to intervene or act purposively. He will also remember that a former Conservative Prime Minister once commented that she understood that the Agriculture Department looked after farmers, that the Labour Department looked after workers and that the Foreign Office looked after foreigners. It is well known that the Foreign Office has been the check that my hon. Friend describes.

[Rory Stewart]

The Foreign Office has a very distinguished tradition of doing that. With many of the things it challenged, it did so correctly. It challenged Lord Salisbury’s insane idea of launching an invasion into Afghanistan in 1879, it challenged Lord Grey’s absurd ideas about secret treaties with France in 1912 and 1913, and it challenged the absurdity of Suez. In all those ways it acted responsibly, but increasingly it is no longer performing that role.

Of course the politicians can, when they want, overwhelm the Foreign Office, push it aside and push ahead, and that is fine, but—on this, I think, we should conclude—we are now in a very strange position in this country. We are hollowed out. We are facing an enormous crisis. Europe is teetering on the edge. The German Chancellor is invoking ghosts of European destruction. The middle east and north Africa have seen more tottering regimes and dynasties than in any period since the end of the first world war. At this time we need to remember that that very modest investment in the Foreign Office—only £1 billion a year on its core costs, if we exclude the British Council and the World Service—is an extremely wise insurance and investment.

We need to remember at times like this how vital is the ability to set out our limits, to set out a strategy and vision, to explain exactly, as this Government are doing, and to continue to explain more clearly to the public, exactly what Britain believes and what our strategy is—that peculiar mixture of pragmatism and belief in rights, a belief not just in ideals but in common sense, expressed in a world that understands that today of all times a residence can be much more powerful than a regiment, a Tuareg specialist than a Tornado, an Arabist than an aircraft carrier, and that the Foreign Office is our strength, our nation, and our defence.

19:41

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

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) but I shall not go into Tuaregs and Tornados. I shall immediately go into the election that is taking place today in Egypt.

It seems that there is a large turnout for the election, with queues at polling stations. For most Egyptians it must have a similar impact to that of the first democratic elections that took place in South Africa after the end of apartheid—another large African country undergoing a process of transformation—but there are, of course, significant differences. The election in Egypt today is about establishing a constituent assembly, from which 100 people will be chosen to draft a constitution. That will be followed by a presidential election, the date of which has just, reluctantly, under pressure from the streets, been announced by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces—12 March next year.

We will not know the outcome of the elections until they are verified and adjudicated by lawyers, and the result will not be known until January. That is worrying. We saw from what happened in Afghanistan a year ago how legal challenges to elections and disputes about the validity of the vote and about candidatures can lead to great complications when a body is established. We have also seen in other countries disputed elections leading to severe delays. I am worried about that and other difficult processes that Egypt has to go through.

As has already been said, Egypt has a very large young population, high levels of youth unemployment and an economy that is in decline and could go into an even more serious decline because so much of the revenue is built upon tourism and foreign investment that may not come about because of the uncertainty and instability that are developing. At the same time, there are worrying developments in the nature of the political process that has been established.

There was a democratic election in Tunisia under a formula whereby 50% of the candidates had to be women. That led to an elected Parliament in Tunisia which reflects the fact that in Tunisian society under the previous regime women played an important role. There is much greater equality overtly between men and women in that country. Even though the Islamist party Ennahda has come out as the largest political grouping, there are some positive signs about the continuation of women’s role within the political process in Tunisia.

The same cannot be said of the situation that has developed in Egypt. A helpful research paper produced by the Library points out that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces in Egypt is distinctly conservative in its approach to women’s representation. Under the old electoral system in Egypt 64 parliamentary seats were reserved for women. That law was abolished by the military regime. In its place is a provision that every party list must include at least one woman. That is an extremely worrying development.

It has also been decided that there will be no requirement for any women’s representation on the committee that will be established to draft the constitution, and there is only one woman in the present Egyptian Cabinet of 28. That raises serious concerns about where Egypt will go after today’s elections and the constituent assembly that is established in future, and what kind of society there will be in the post-Mubarak era.

Further concerns have been expressed by many of the demonstrators in Tahrir square about religious tolerance and what might develop in the future in a country where a significant proportion of the population—more than 10%—are Coptic Christians. There has been a series of attacks on Christian places of worship and on Christian ceremonies. Other worrying developments include statements from some of the more extreme Islamist groups about the kind of society and kind of laws that will emerge and whether minorities will continue to be tolerated in Egyptian society.

The international community must be resolute. We should send clear messages to the newly elected Egyptian political establishment when it is announced and also to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that there are international standards that we expect a democratic Egypt to uphold, and that the international community’s response to the changes in Egypt will be shaped by the treatment of minorities and women in Egyptian society.

[Mr Leigh]

The plight of Christians in the middle east is desperate and many of our actions have made that plight far worse, particularly in Iran. What is happening to the Coptic Christians is very worrying. Does the hon. Gentleman think there is more that we in the west can do? Can a Christian west take more responsibility for the plight of Coptic Christians? What does he think we can realistically do and what pressure can we impose on an Egyptian Government? What is going on there is terrible.

[Mike Gapes]

At this moment we need to give the Egyptians the benefit of the doubt because the process is still developing. We should try to get groups from the United Kingdom and other Western European Union countries reflecting faith forums and diverse groups, including leading British Muslims, to go to Egypt, taking with them Jews and Christians to show diversity and tolerance and how we work together. We also need to talk to countries such as Turkey, where an Islamist-influenced political party, the AK party, is in power in a secular state and where religious minorities are treated with tolerance in Turkish society. I think that we should try to use our influence.

When the Turkish Prime Minister, Mr Erdogan, went to Cairo to give advice, he seems to have been very strongly welcomed. Interestingly, there were large demonstrations in the streets when he arrived, but when he left, having made it clear that he wanted Egypt to remain a secular state rather than adopt an Islamist constitution, even though he was an Islamist, the demonstrations were much more muted. The message he sent the Muslim Brotherhood was not the message it wanted to hear. He said that he wanted a Prime Minister from an Islamist political party, but in a secular state. That was very important, and he should be praised for trying to show that the Turkish model is not just one in which Islamist parties can come to power and that democracy means leaders, after coming to power, having respect for women and minorities rather than imposing an intolerant form of society that does not respect diversity.

I would like to consider the revolutions that have been called the Arab spring. Had they taken place in summer, I suspect that we would refer to the Arab summer, but I am not sure that we would talk of the Arab winter. Nevertheless, the issues are now much more complicated than they appeared to be at the start of the year. We are in a situation in which we can be guided by history, which the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border mentioned in his contribution. Those of us who have studied the history of the 19th century will know that the revolutionary processes that took place in that century and at the end of the 18th century were not easy, were in some cases bloody and often led to years or even decades of turmoil. I suspect that what we are seeing in north Africa and the middle east and what we will see in the Gulf states could be such a period.

It is only 20 years since the transformation of central and eastern Europe after communism was lifted. The political formations that have taken power in some of those countries have at times been difficult to cope with and some very unpleasant organisations have since come out from under the stone. We have seen political parties that are overtly homophobic, racist and authoritarian, and some that are associated with admiration for the Waffen SS have been elected to Parliaments in countries such as Latvia, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland, yet all those countries have come through the process. They still face difficulties, but because of the European Union they have been able to become democratic, pluralistic countries in which there have been changes of power. Parties that were in power have lost it and oppositions have won power and then lost elections. That is what democracy means. Just because elections are beginning in Egypt does not mean that that country is already a democracy.

Similarly, although there has been an election in Tunisia, it is not yet a democracy. Democracy will be entrenched only when parties that win elections are thrown out of office and when there is respect for diversity, the rule of law and minorities. Some of these countries will have to learn that respect. We have seen the great difficulties in Iraq when the parties that fought the last election came to a standstill and there was no possibility of Mr Maliki and Mr Allawi agreeing on who should be Prime Minister. It took the Iraqis almost as long as the Belgians to form a Government because there was no tradition or understanding of how Government and opposition work within a pluralistic political culture. Ba’athism had destroyed that political culture.

If the revolution comes to Syria and the Ba’athist regime there is forced to leave or is overthrown, there will be an almighty, complicated mess to deal with. It will be extremely hard to achieve stability and a pluralistic society, given the diversity in Syria that has been mentioned, and we will need to be patient. We should not expect these countries rapidly to become models of democracy of the sort we have in this country and elsewhere in the EU.

[Laura Sandys]

I started working with the Iraqi opposition in 1993, and it was 10 years before Saddam Hussein was overthrown. As the hon. Gentleman rightly says, in many ways there is a more complicated patchwork of different communities in Syria, and I very much welcome the Government’s support for the Syrian opposition. Does he agree that that will require sensitive handling as we move forward so that we do not end up in a worse situation?

[Mike Gapes]

I agree. I think that we should be guided by some of Syria’s neighbours. The Arab League has made an unprecedented move towards imposing sanctions on the country. We should also listen to what the Turkish Government are saying. I had a meeting last week with the Turkish Foreign Minister while he was here and also heard the remarks of President Gul when he spoke to Members of both Houses in the Royal Robing Room. The situation in Syria is causing extreme alarm within Turkey and the Turkish Government have basically had enough of the way the Assad regime has lied to and misled them—my words, not Turkey’s—about the promises of reform that were not kept. Instead of reform, there has been brutality and repression. Turkey has now come to the same view that Britain, France, the United States and many other countries have come to: the Assad regime is no longer capable of being the agent of reform and it must go.

How the regime goes, in what circumstances and when are very difficult questions. We need to be sensitive to the fact that Iran is playing a destructive role in the region. As I mentioned in my earlier intervention on the Foreign Secretary, the Iranians have a significant relationship, through Hezbollah, with the Lebanese Government. They also have significant influence in the Iraqi political system through some of the Shi’a political parties in Iraq. It is significant that the two Arab League countries that have said that they will not impose sanctions on the Syrian regime are Lebanon and Iraq.

Iran will potentially play another destructive role. We have seen our country denounced in the Iranian Majlis and its vote calling for the expulsion of Dominic Chilcott, our excellent ambassador. We have been there before: a former nominated British ambassador to Iran, David Reddaway, was prevented from taking up his post many years ago; and a few years ago the royal garden party in Tehran was attacked from outside by people throwing rocks over the wall at the time when Geoffrey Adams was ambassador. A few years ago the Iranian revolutionary guards detained British naval personnel in the waters just off the coast of Iraq.

It is quite possible that the Iranian regime will now engage in a series of provocations and incidents in order to up the ante and gain for itself a diversion from its main problem, which is that it has been found out: Iran has been developing for many years a nuclear weapons programme, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, in its latest report, has confirmed that some nuclear enrichment and other nuclear activities have continued over recent years. But we should not therefore move easily into the dangerous area of saying, “Because the sanctions we have imposed so far have not worked, and because, despite those sanctions, the Iranian regime has continued to build up its nuclear programme potential, Iran is about to gain nuclear weapons and there are grounds for a pre-emptive military strike.”

I was encouraged by the remarks of the United States Defence Secretary, Leon Panetta, whom The Guardian reported on 11 November as saying that military action against Iran could have “unintended consequences”, and agreeing that such an attack would only delay its nuclear programme, rather than prevent it from obtaining a nuclear bomb. In these circumstances, talk of pre-emptive military action can do no more than strengthen the Iranian regime internally and weaken the democratic voice of the country’s young, dynamic population who do not like the theocratic cap that the regime has put on them.

Similar comments were made on 4 November in an interesting article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which noted that the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defence Minister Barak favour military action against Iran in circumstances where Iran is about to obtain a nuclear bomb, but that three former chiefs of the defence staff in Israel do not, and that the former head of Mossad who retired earlier this year, Meir Dagan, has said that Israel would be “stupid” to launch an air attack on Iran.

That does not mean we should accept as “a good thing” Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon—absolutely not. Given the arms race that would be unleashed in the middle east, and given how countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other Gulf states would secure the potential, through Pakistan, to obtain a nuclear weapon, it would be a very worrying development: a Sunni nuclear bomb to offset a Shi’a nuclear bomb. There are other ways of dealing with the situation.

I refer to an interesting article by Trita Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council, published a few days ago, stating how strengthening the IAEA inspection regime, and not imposing more and more sanctions that do not work but adopting a policy of more transparency, may be a more effective way of dealing with the immediate problem. The key to that is the IAEA’s additional protocol, which Iran has not yet signed, but which the international community, through UN Security Council resolutions, has called for.

We face a difficult period in Europe, but we are sometimes obsessed with our own problems. Compared with the difficulties of many hundreds of millions of people in the Arab world, our difficulties are insignificant. The people in north Africa and the middle east face a difficult transition on an uncharted course from authoritarian regimes to new democracies. They will need our help and solidarity. The European Union should do more through its neighbourhood programme and by other means, but our country does not have an insignificant role in the world. It has an important role, working with its partners and neighbours to ensure that the international community makes the right decisions and supports the right side in this democratic transition.

20:05

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

It is a great honour to follow not only the poetry of my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), but the practical and pragmatic approach of the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes). The hon. Gentleman’s last point was about how our problems in Europe are a great challenge but events in the Arab world are of a different scale, but I would refine it and say that the problems in north Africa and in the Arab world are our problems, too. I commend the Government for what they have done over the past year and a half, and for how they have been able to change the relationship between north Africa and this country.

Many people were worried about our involvement in Libya, and although I was supportive I was concerned. I would have voted against the Iraq invasion if I had been a Member back then, but the decision on Libya was clear for me, and it was clear on a humanitarian basis. We not only assisted the Libyans in ridding themselves of their dictator; we started to develop a different relationship with parts of north Africa, one I hope very much we will continue. We did so with sophisticated diplomacy, and we should be extremely proud of the outcomes in Libya.

[Mr Holloway]

Just after the fall of Tripoli, I, with the director of the Conservative Middle East Council, went out there and, in the chaos of the week after, met an Islamist who, having fought against us in Iraq and Afghanistan, made the most extraordinary comment, saying: “This is the first time that the west has stood with ordinary people in the region. We shall not forget it.”

[Laura Sandys]

I very much welcome that intervention. That is the absolute core of the issue.

We need not only to build on the momentum that we have started, but to change and recalibrate how we engage with north Africa, an area that was in many ways caught in aspic by the cold war. Every dictator who has been deposed over the past year was a product of that rather binary environment, “Are you against us or for us?”, and we have rid ourselves of that through the people.

We have to be careful about engaging directly and passionately with the new Governments who arise. As the hon. Member for Ilford South said, there will be lots of iterations of democracy, and they are not going to emerge as some sort of Westminster parliamentary structure for perhaps 10, 20 or 30 years, so we have to maintain that relationship with the people. Obviously we need to work with Governments, but the credibility and legitimacy of the people are what matters. Toppling regimes is not easy, but the transition process is even more difficult, and that is where we need to ensure that the Foreign Office is absolutely at the top of its game, as I am sure it is.

We have heard a lot today about the politics, about building institutions, and about threats, but not many Members have talked about the economics. Can emerging democracies survive when they have insecure economic environments and are finding it difficult to keep a hold on inflation? My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr Holloway) talked about the people of the region. Those people were not necessarily just looking for the vote, although some of the countries had elections, if perhaps false elections; they were looking for democracy as a representation of opportunity for all, with no corruption, and the ability to get on in life without being part of the in-crowd or the out-crowd and to ensure that they could deliver a secure future for their families. Too often, in the Foreign Office and in our debates, we talk about institution-building and the governmental dimension, but we need to talk about north Africa’s economies.

In starting to develop a lot further how we could build greater economic stability in north Africa, we should act on the basis not only of those countries’ national interests and democracy-building but of our own national interest. The French are rather good at economic diplomacy. Is that such a dreadful term to use? They have completely understood where their national interest lies. Their ambassadors are an integral part of the French business community and spend a lot of time ensuring that the French economy and French businesses are integrated into the countries in which they operate. We have been rather weak at this in the past.

What north Africa really needs is expertise and commercial acumen, with partnerships to develop and exploit industries and technologies, management skills, and operational capabilities. I do not know whether those things are on the Foreign Office checklist and are being considered for north Africa, but it is absolutely essential that we start to make a move on this as quickly as possible, before economic instability undermines the democracy that has been created. In addition to sending three-day trade delegations out to these countries, we should be thinking in a much more considered way about what support each country needs and where, to be self-interested, the UK can benefit.

Just outside Tripoli, Libya has a large oil and gas institute, but it has not been updated for years. Why are we not taking on the responsibility for giving the Libyans a state-of-the-art institute that looks at operations, exploration and building skills, and links with the people, not necessarily with transient Governments? Tunisia needs tourism to get its economy off the floor. Its tourism industry employs 400,000 people, yet the number of visitors has dropped by 45%. We should be revitalising the country’s visitor economy, establishing courses and training for young people entering the sector and supporting the small businesses that make up the majority of it. We should set up a small business institute to ensure that we are bringing expertise and allowing the people to exercise their democratic right through economic security.

Egypt is facing a great challenge in food and cotton production. Why are we not asking Hadlow college to set up an operation in the Nile delta, bringing students from all over Egypt to think about how to increase yields and improve standards and water management? That would get to the heart of what these Governments need to deliver to their publics to maintain some stability while democracy is gaining a foothold. If we are not in these countries delivering value-added assistance and practical input, then others will be, and yet again we will look back nostalgically in 10 years and say, “Why did China, Turkey, Russia and France steal a march on us when we were so involved in those early years?”

I propose that we look at the Economic Community of West African States as a model for promoting greater economic prosperity within the north African region. While ECOWAS has its limitations, it is developing stronger links with its neighbours. Joint economic activity is building greater political interdependency. In north Africa, greater economic interdependency will be one of the biggest deterrents to any political friction between states that could emerge over the next decade.

My final suggestion is that we start to take forward a stronger interrelated economic model as between the countries of the north and south Mediterranean. The hon. Member for Ilford South mentioned that. Some important organisations already exist, but they have mainly regarded north Africa as the liability and southern Europe as the superior model. This needs to be recalibrated, and we need to turn a talking shop into an active economic forum.

We are facing a new world. The previous century was one of global politics; this century is one of global economics. Every country will need to deliver economic security for its domestic audience and will play out its international politics on that basis. If we can work closely with these countries on what really matters to them—their economic survival, jobs for their young, and a greater relationship with the international community —we will be doing them, and this country, a great service.

20:09

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

Earlier this year, I was in Tunisia, where, in addition to having talks with members of the temporary Government who were in office before the country’s election, I spoke to business men and visited tourist sites. I was very troubled by the fact that those tourist sites were empty. It was understandable that after the upheaval in Tunisia people might have been wary about going there and doubtful about their own safety. On the other hand, if there was a velvet revolution anywhere in the Arab spring, it was in Tunisia, with one poor man dying because he had been insulted and then no more deaths. It is important for us to make it clear to the people of this country, a considerable number of whom have habitually visited Tunisia and seen its beautiful sights—not only the holiday areas but places such as Carthage—that it is safe to go there, good to go there, and good for democracy in north Africa to be there.

The hon. Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys) referred to Libya. Of course, she is right to say that it is not for us to impose our concept of democracy on Libya. It is a fact, however, that there would not have been a change of Government in Libya without the action of NATO. That being so, we have a right to communicate our views—the views of that community—to the people who will be governing Libya. I hope that the Government will make it clear to those who are in office in Libya at this time that, while it is right and proper that Saif Gaddafi should be tried, it would go against everything that we have been supporting in Libya if he were executed.

One of the great failings of the Labour Government was that they did not make their voice heard when the Iraqis moved to execute Saddam Hussein. He was an evil dictator, and the Gaddafi family were a family of evil dictators, but the whole point about liberating people from dictators is that one does not behave in the way the dictators behaved towards their enemies. I know that this Government have a strong policy of opposing capital punishment wherever it is carried out or planned. I hope that they will make it clear to those in authority that turning a new page for Libya means getting rid of primitive and savage punishment in Libya.

In talking about what NATO has done to the benefit of the people of Libya, it is important to draw to the attention of the House where NATO has gone wrong and where it has run amok. What has been taking place in Pakistan over the past few days is an abomination. Pakistan is an independent country and an ally. A great many people of Pakistani origin live in this country and take part in our democracy. Its independence was violated by NATO going in and killing 24 people and injuring a great many more. That was a violation of Pakistani independence and sovereignty.

That was not the first time that such a thing had happened. It happened when the Americans sent their navy SEAL mission to kill bin Laden. Again, he was an evil man who had done dreadful things. However, the whole point of our being what we are is that we do not do what vile terrorists do. An article in The New Yorker not long ago told, move by move, how the SEALs went in. They did not have a fight with bin Laden, but simply went in to kill him, with the President of the United States and the American Secretary of State watching it all on television. That struck me as one of the most odious manifestations of the kind of Administration that the United States now has.

When George W. Bush was President of the United States, I expected it to behave in a way that was odious. We were dragged by Bush not only into the Iraqi war, but into the unplanned, chaotic aftermath of that war. The sanctimony of Barak Obama led us to believe that he would not get involved in the same kind of thing. However, Guantanamo Bay remains open three years after the man was elected President. We must have a British and European foreign policy, and not simply be dragged behind the American Administration, whatever it is that they do, as unfortunately the Labour Government were from time to time. We have just had another example of that with the attempt by the United States Administration to water down international regulations on the use of cluster bombs, which are used by the Israelis in their attacks on the Palestinians and which were used in Gaza in Operation Cast Lead.

I do not know whether Obama believes that he can get re-elected by behaving like the Tea party, but we must not behave like the Tea party. We must behave like a British democracy. I find many aspects of this Government’s foreign policy attractive and it is possible to support them. In listening to the Foreign Secretary and hearing about the kind of things that have been taking place, I hope that we will not permit this extremism from across the Atlantic to motivate and dominate our policies.

Another example, which has been referred to by many hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), is the situation with regard to Iran. Iran has an odious regime internally, which stones what it calls adulterous women to death, which stones homosexuals to death, and which tortures and imprisons. It is one of the most unpleasant regimes not simply in the region, but on the planet. On the other hand, although it would of course be a matter of profound concern if Iran acquired a nuclear weapons capability, as many hon. Members on both sides of the House have said, and although Iran undermines many regimes, as we have heard this evening, it has never carried out an outright attack on another country. Indeed, it was the victim of an attack by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

In the region, there is a country with a large nuclear stockpile: Israel. It has not only a huge nuclear capability, but nuclear missiles, which were based originally in Dimona in the Negev. Israel has a record of invading other countries. It invaded Lebanon several times. We do nothing whatever about that.

I agree with hon. Members about how important it is to take action and to deter Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. However, if military action were taken against Iran, the consequences would be incalculable. One of the great rules of action, whether in internal or overseas policy, is that we should not do something the consequences of which we cannot calculate before we do it. It is impossible to know how dreadful the consequence might be of military action against Iran. The Americans will not do it because Obama does not want another war in the less than a year before he faces the electorate again, but he might well want others to do it. Netanyahu, Lieberman and Barak have their own objectives based on the precarious nature of their Government in Israel. It is important for us to make it clear to the Israelis how strongly we would be opposed to their taking any military action against Iran.

The situation between the Israelis and the Palestinians gets worse day by day. I have spoken with some commendation of Foreign Office policy, but I was very sorry that the Government veered away from voting for Palestinian membership of UNESCO, and I am concerned that they intend to abstain when, eventually, the Security Council votes on the Palestinian application for UN membership. By abstaining, we will get no thanks from Obama and the United States, who want us to vote against, and at the same time it will give us no leverage whatever with the Israelis.

Today the Foreign Secretary, as he does whenever he talks about these things, advocated peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and set out yet again the parameters for the outcome of those negotiations. However, the prospect of such negotiations is nil, because the Palestinians will not sit down with an Israeli Government who are constantly expanding settlements, and I do not blame them for that. There are thousands and thousands of settlements. Other hon. Members, like me, have been there and seen not only the expansion of the settlements but the way in which settlers move into a Palestinian’s house in a Palestinian area of Jerusalem, live there and force people out of the house, with the support of the Israeli police. Can one be surprised that Palestinians do not want to sit down with people who do that to them and get away with it both internally and internationally?

The checkpoints continue to impede movement, and as I have seen and other hon. Members will no doubt have seen, the illegal wall—as illegal as the settlements are—keeps olive cultivators away from their groves. A grove that is five minutes away by foot is hours away, if it can be got to at all, because of the wall. Does one really expect the Palestinians to accept that and sit down with the people who are doing that to them?

Now, the latest development, the Israeli punishment of the Palestinians for having applied for membership of the UN and achieved membership of UNESCO, is that the Israeli Government are illegally withholding £63 million of tax revenues from the Palestinians. That will affect tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of jobs of Palestinians working in the public sector, but what happens? Hillary Clinton gets on the phone to Netanyahu, and Netanyahu basically tells her to get lost. The Americans could have their will with the Israelis whenever they wanted to, as George Bush senior did when the Israeli Government refused to go to Madrid for talks, but they do not. They whimper. Tony Blair has complained about the tax revenues being stolen by the Israelis from the Palestinians, but nothing happens.

What is more, the Israelis have refused to stop planting land mines, which the House united in opposing. They are now saying that they will do something even nastier to the Palestinians if the talks between Fatah and Hamas provide a unity Government. Hamas is a dreadful organisation, yes, but it is there, and it won an election democratically. There was international invigilation showing that it was a democratic election. It had a more valid election result than George W. Bush’s first one.

If there is to be a united Palestine, it is absolutely essential that those parties get together. Otherwise, there will be at best an independent west bank with Gaza separate from it, and nobody else will take in Gaza. When I had a talk with Mubarak about Gaza and asked him whether, because of its physical separation from the west bank, it would make more sense for Egypt to incorporate Gaza, he said, “I wouldn’t have Gaza in my territory for $5 million.” The only way in which the Gaza problem can be solved is a Palestinian unity Government, and we should want to foster the unity of Fatah and Hamas, not oppose it.

I was interviewed by a bizarre Israeli television interviewer last week, who said to me, “At least you’ve got to agree that Israel is a democracy.” But that democracy is being impaired the whole time. The Knesset has passed legislation limiting freedom of speech, and it has just passed legislation that forbids overseas Governments from providing finance to the NGOs, many of which would not be able to function without that finance. I pay tribute to the Department for International Development for what it does with the NGOs. If there is a shining example of what this Government are achieving, it is the work of that Department, but its efforts are being hampered by the way in which the Israelis are conducting themselves—against international law.

I would love to go along with what the Foreign Secretary said—which the Minister will no doubt repeat—about how hard we are working to get talks going, because in the end, talks are the only way in which this will be solved. But there will be no peace in the region—in all that turbulent region—until the justified aspirations of the Palestinians are fulfilled.

20:36

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

The right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) and I do not always agree on everything, but it is a pleasure to follow that speech. I did not agree with all of it, but much of what he said is deserving of approbation from both sides of the House. I am conscious, as I always am in these debates, of the considerable knowledge that he and others bring to this issue. It is far greater than mine, although my hon. Friend the Minister will recall that it was in a debate such as this that I had the temerity to make my maiden speech. On that occasion, at least, I had the considerable privilege of not being interrupted. It is an example that I encourage the House to follow this evening—

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

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Stephen Phillips]

I will happily give way to my hon. Friend, but I think that attempt was a little tongue in cheek.

On the last occasion that the House debated these issues at length, I spoke on the subject of Egypt, an issue—and indeed a country—close to my heart, not least because of the legacy that this country left for the Egyptians and the responsibility that we bear for the situation in which we left our former mandates with regard to democracy. In the case of Egypt at least, the good beginnings that we perhaps left behind were thrown away.

I shall begin with Egypt, not least because it is in that country that today—at least according to The New York Times and the Financial Times as I have read them online during the day—we have seen those queues, which are so familiar in countries that have not enjoyed democracy, snaking around the block from the polling stations, as those who have not experienced the benefits, even the joys, of electing those who represent them queue to vote for the first time in many cases. That has certainly been the case in Egypt today for many people. With the possible exception of an 18-month period in the 1980s, there have been no real democratic elections in the last 30 years in one of the largest and most populous Arab states.

The right hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander) observed in his remarks that Egypt is a particularly important country in the context of the Arab spring. That is something with which I agree and with which my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary agrees. The simple fact is not merely that Egypt is the largest of the Arab countries by population and geographical size but that it carries considerable influence. It is the seat, for example, of the rejuvenated Arab League. As someone said to me earlier, it is the future Brussels of the middle east. It was with horror, therefore, that I saw my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) in the debate earlier. I feared that he would remain for the entirety of the debate and that on making that remark, he would intervene on me and tell me the inadequacies of the euro and of everything else to do with the European Union. I am glad to see, at least on this occasion, that he is not in his place and that I can make the remark without fear of intervention.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

He is watching somewhere.

[Stephen Phillips]

I have no doubt that whenever I speak in the Chamber, my hon. Friend the Member for Stone is watching.

Egypt has also been the most stalwart of the allies that this country and the entirety of the west have had in the middle east for a number of years. It is a country that has a refined economy that is capable of providing the economic motor for north Africa and the Arab states. It is of course the bread basket of that region and is capable of providing a great deal of food, which is necessary in so many of these impoverished countries and regions. For that reason it is extremely important that the revolution that began earlier this year in Egypt is sustained and that the democracy that we have seen growing is fostered not only by this country but by our allies in the western world and the European Union. There is this fear, certainly in my mind, that were the revolution in Egypt to fail, the rest of the Arab world might run the risk of sinking back into some form of authoritarianism, even were it not the authoritarianism that we witnessed under the Mubarak regime.

When the revolution took place, there was of course great hope. I spoke about it earlier in the year. A number of Members on both sides of the House have said quite rightly that it is not for us to impose our model of democracy on either Egypt or any of the other countries passing through the Arab spring. When the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces took power and the Prime Minister travelled to Cairo after Mubarak’s fall, there was great hope that the sweeping reforms that were promised would be delivered in short order and that there would be a swift return to stability within the country and a prompt transition to elected civilian rule. It is a matter of regret, I think, on both sides of the House, that that has not happened as quickly as we would have liked. There has been an absence of a clear political plan and of the bold reforms that are necessary to deliver democracy in Egypt—as they are necessary to deliver democracy in the rest of the region.

Most worryingly of all, the economy has faltered, which appears to have led to the current ream of protests that have again resurrected themselves in Egypt. The Supreme Council and the generals are obstructing the necessary economic reforms, which my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys) mentioned earlier. That has deterred international investment in Egypt and, most worryingly, it has let the country slide further into debt—the sort of debt that we in the west know all too much about.

The timetable for democracy has been unnecessarily stretched out, from months to years. The generals have hinted that they expect to retain a dominant role, entirely failing to understand or reflect the spirit of change that led to those momentous events in Tahrir square earlier in the year.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces was overhasty and undemocratic in bringing forward the amendments to the constitution proposed in the al-Selmy proposals. Trying to slip in additional pre-emptive clauses to protect the privileges and powers of the armed forces and trying to keep the defence budget a secret is simply not acceptable in a modern, democratic society. The discipline that the army reimposed on protesters—for example, using military tribunals and the emergency laws first passed in the 1950s and first used in the 1960s—has naturally led those who wanted democracy in Egypt to return to the streets to protest against the lack of progress towards the reforms necessary to secure the sort of democracy that we have in this country.

Those protests have recently resulted in appalling loss of life. Thousands have returned to the streets again not least, as I have mentioned, because of the state of the economy in Egypt, but the response from those who seem to be isolated from their people has been too little, too late: the offers to hold presidential elections by the end of June, to free political prisoners and to allow impartial investigation of the obvious abuses by the security forces that have been documented in the media have been wholly inadequate. It remains to be seen whether the democratic exercise to which the Egyptian people have for the first time been given the right today will calm matters and return peace to the streets of Egypt. That is to be hoped for, given not only the recent unrest but the loss of life last week.

The path to democracy is never easy, however, and we should commend Field Marshall Tantawi and those responsible for ruling Egypt since the revolution on their reiteration of the army’s determination to leave power eventually. As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary indicated, however, we should encourage them to do so as quickly as possible.

The recent moves have gone some way to meeting the popular demands of the Egyptian people. No doubt that is why the Muslim Brotherhood expressed cautious support for some of the recent announcements by Field Marshall Tantawi and SCAF. As several speakers have said, we should not tell those whom we are encouraging to exercise their democratic rights what sort of Government they need to elect. If we are honest about democracy, we must live with whatever Government are elected, whether in Egypt or anywhere else. If there is fear in the House about the Muslim Brotherhood taking power in Egypt, as I suspect that it will—no doubt in coalition, which is something of which I am not a great fan, but there we are—that is not something of which the House, the Government or the British people should be afraid.

Other speakers have pointed out that the exercise of power by Islamists who take power through the ballot box deprives al-Qaeda of the oxygen that it has always had, which is its argument that there is no route to Islamist control of middle east countries and Arab states without violent revolution. That is why we do not need to be afraid of these events—indeed, they indicate that we should support those Governments who will take power in due course whether in Egypt or anywhere else.

Whether in Egypt, Syria or elsewhere, the army and those institutions that have hitherto assumed that it is their automatic right to govern should retreat from politics and leave it to politicians elected by the people. Furthermore, military tribunals and emergency laws must be abolished, the legacy in the middle east of failed democracy—so much the fault of the west—must, perhaps for the first time, be cast aside and those who inhabit the Arab states must for the first time have the opportunity to exercise the rights that we take for granted.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

My hon. and learned Friend makes some important points. Countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh—Islamist-led countries, yet stable democracies—give a positive sense of where things can go. It behoves us and this Government to do everything we can to support those emerging democracies and give them the direction that we can, in the way that he is indicating.

[Stephen Phillips]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes an extremely valid point. Democracy may not be the best system by which mankind can be governed, but it is certainly the least bad system that we have yet hit upon. As I said to the House previously—I think in March this year—we are not in possession of the one, unique form of democracy in this country, nor are any of the other western democracies. It must be for those countries concerned to determine what form of democratic systems they must put in place—consistent, it must be said, with human rights, which are inviolable, accountability, including democratic accountability of politicians, and any number of other things. However, once those core things are in place, precisely what form of democracy a particular country follows must be up to that country. It is for that reason that one can support and see the validity of establishing the principle that certain proportions of Members of Parliament in some of those countries must be women or must be under the age of 30—as I think is the case in Tunisia—and so on. That is a matter for those countries. It is not for us to decree precisely how they should run their countries.

There is considerable optimism as a result of today’s elections in Egypt. They may be too late and they may be being conducted under an extremely complex system, which seems designed in part to generate confusion and perhaps to entrench some of the interests that the Egyptian people would rather see lose out—that is, the interests of the elite that has governed them tyrannically for so long—but there is genuine hope in Egypt, as in other countries. It is for that reason that I sincerely hope that today’s elections will result not only in a reduction in violence, but in a democratic Government being installed in Egypt, for the first time in the living memory of many.

The motion on the Order Paper is wide-reaching. There is much that I would wish to say about a number of other countries; however, I will say something about just a few. The first is Syria. There is universal condemnation, on both sides of the House, of the existing regime in Syria. Its time has come, a fact that is clear from the action taken by the Arab League and from the reaction to the regime’s repression of its own citizens. It is also clear in the sense that there is now no international support for the regime at all—no votes, for example, in favour of retaining Syria in the Arab League. I was pleased, therefore, to hear my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary tell us of the pressure that the Government are bringing to bear on the regime, and also of the pressure being brought to bear on those who, it would seem, do not wish to impose further sanctions or encourage the regime to follow the route that is so obvious to all of us in this House. The regime must eventually stand aside, and there must eventually be democratic elections in Syria too.

Perhaps most notable has been the recent reaction of the Kingdom of Jordan, hitherto standing aloof perhaps—or certainly standing neutral—which one can understand, but now utterly condemning what has been going on in Syria. If Syria, the Syrian regime and President Bashar al-Assad think that they have any friends left—whether in the west or the Arab world, or whether China or Russia—I rather suspect that that misconception will be quickly eradicated in the next few months.

So, Syria, one hopes, will be a country where the west will keep up its pressure over the next few years and over the next few weeks and months. Our allies will do the same and every member of the United Nations will do the same in utterly condemning the violence and requiring those who have hitherto ruled Syria to stand aside and to allow the people of that nation the democratic freedoms that so many others in so many other Arab nations are now experiencing as a result of the Arab spring.

Let me touch briefly on Bahrain. There have been wide-scale human rights abuses in that country, and it is perhaps a matter of encouragement that the King established the independent human rights commission to examine the protests. The commission was led by Cherif Bassiouni, a former war crimes lawyer for the United Nations. Members of all parties will have read the report that ensued and will have congratulated the Bahraini Government. It is important that the pressure continues to mount on Bahrain to bring to justice those responsible for these appalling human rights abuses. It is also important to recognise, however, that no other Arab ruler has voluntarily invited such scrutiny of an Arab Government. For that reason, the Government are taking, in my judgment, precisely the right actions on Bahrain. I think there has been general agreement that this applies pretty much across the middle east.

The great benefit to this country of the Arab spring is perhaps that it not only presents us with the opportunity to ensure that many citizens across the Arab world who even a few years ago could not have expected to live in democratic societies have that opportunity for the future, but affords us the opportunity for the first time, given our history and our responsibility for the region, to do what is right, to encourage the democracy that we value so much and to ensure that everybody across the Arab world enjoys the rights that we take for granted.

20:03

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I am pleased that we are having this debate. I shall endeavour not to take too long so that time is available for everyone to speak.

We are dealing with an amazing atmosphere, which is of historic proportions, across north Africa and the middle east. It is interesting to reflect that over the past 60 years, the countries of this region have seen the end of the second world war, an independence process being established, an initial Arab spring in the 1950s, the degeneration of many of those then revolutionary Governments into autocratic and authoritarian Governments who relied heavily on secret police and prisons, leading up to the uprisings that have broken out right across the region this year.

I think we should bear it in mind that every single one of the countries across north Africa and the middle east has at least half of its population under the age of 25, with many even younger. There are a great deal of very young, very angry people who have been through school and college, in some cases to university, yet they cannot find jobs. There is a big economic aspect and economic demands underpinning the whole process, which then relates to the political sphere of the unaccountability of government and the power of police forces and the secret police to imprison and control people.

In their search for an accountable Government and for some degree of opportunities in people’s lives, we need to be aware that people do not necessarily view western Europe or north America as a good example. They do not necessarily want to create the kind of societies that we have; they are looking for something that is identifiably theirs and of their region, not aping the previous imperial masters that controlled so much of that region for so long. We need to be a bit more cautious and respectful of the historical process that is going on.

I shall touch briefly on a number of issues. First, the Foreign Secretary mentioned the meetings he had had in Mauritania and Morocco. I intervened on him—and I was grateful to him for giving way—on the question of Western Sahara. Many people have been in refugee camps in Algeria since 1975, when, following the Spanish withdrawal from Western Sahara, Morocco marched in and established a military presence, driving them out of the area.

Under decolonisation statutes, as former Spanish colonial subjects those people have the right of self-determination. They are entitled to decide whether they want to live in an autonomous region or an independent country, for instance. However, they have never been allowed to make that choice. More than 80 countries recognise the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. This country does not recognise it—indeed, no European country does—but all of Africa except Morocco does, as do many other countries, particularly in Latin and central America.

We should spare a thought for the difficulties of a Government who, based in refugee camps and in exile, must lead their people while the majority of them also live in refugee camps, and must explain to them that they do not want to go back to war or launch a terrorist attack. In fact, they want a peaceful resolution and look to the United Nations to provide it, and I hope that this country will do what it can to support their aim. I had a useful meeting with the Minister to discuss the issue, and he showed considerable understanding of the situation. Let me compliment him on the fact that Britain has not supported the renewal of the EU-Moroccan fish agreement on the basis that it has been of no benefit to the people in the occupied territories—although, of course, it should have been—because it is taking resources, fish in this instance, from the waters alongside the western Sahara. I hope that he is aware of the strength of feeling that exists. As chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on Western Sahara, I can assure him that we will continue to pursue the issue.

According to a parliamentary answer given to me last week, the war in Libya has cost £1.8 billion, rather more than the £200 million that we were told it would cost at the start of the conflict. I am not very surprised, because wars cost an awful lot of money. I am not here to defend human rights abuses by anyone. I am here to support the idea of accountable government, an independent form of justice, and adherence to UN basic law on human rights—all the fundamental elements of the UN charter.

I did not support the intervention in Libya for a number of reasons which I gave at the time, and I remain very concerned about the human rights situation in Libya. I am concerned about, for example, the number of African migrant workers who were living and working in Libya and who have been abused or murdered, or whose lives and homes have been destroyed, and the number of others who have faced summary justice in Libya since the transitional national council took over.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) mentioned Saif, Gaddafi’s son, who has been arrested. It is still not clear whether he is in the custody of the transitional national council or in the custody of some other group in the town where he was captured, but I think that he should be put on trial. He probably has a great many interesting things to say about Libya’s economic relationship with this country, France, Italy and many other nations less than a year ago; about the amount of money that Libya spent in this country, France and Italy less than a year ago; and about the arms supplied by all those countries. He deserves to be put on trial, not just because of the abuses of human rights carried out by his father’s regime and the killing of prisoners some time ago, but so that we can understand what those relationships lead to at the end of the day. A lot of truth needs to come out.

I would prefer Saif to be tried by the International Criminal Court, but within the terms of the Rome statute, he does not have to be tried there. The national jurisdiction can put him on trial, although it must follow international standards and allow international observers and international representation.

[Bob Stewart]

I was always under the impression that the basic rule is that if the national jurisdiction decides to try someone, that takes precedence over any International Criminal Court proceedings. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Yes, that is my understanding. That is why I said that Saif does not have to be extradited to The Hague. I would prefer it if he was, but that has to be decided. However, we do have to be confident that there will be an independent judicial system. The murder of his father by a mob is not a very good precedent. We must also look at some of the other abuses of human rights that are now taking place in Libya, and have some very serious concerns.

We should not say, “Ra, ra, we’ve won,” too often, because there is too much pain and too much suffering, and too many people have already died. I read an interesting article by Franklin Lamb from Sirte in Libya called “Bad moon rising over great Sirte bay.” He supported the TNC and the overthrow of Gaddafi, but he describes what he sees as problems for the future. One of them is relations with Algeria, and he also quotes someone saying about NATO:

“‘They destroyed our country and now they want us to pay them to rebuild it. I wish we could rebuild without one NATO country profiting. It’s like that crazy American woman running for President of your country who wants Iraq to pay for the death of US occupation soldiers who were killed.’”

The article goes on to describe the cynicism with which a great deal of the western involvement in Libya is viewed. I therefore think we should be a bit more cautious and circumspect about this matter.

Egyptians are voting in their elections today. We all hope those elections will be properly run and will turn out an accountable Parliament and Government, but above all we must hope that they bring the military under democratic control. There has never been a time in Egyptian history when the primary power of the state, the armed forces, have been under any kind of democratic control. They might have been very popular at various times, and they might have been very unpopular at certain times, but they have never been subject to the kind of parliamentary control that we, along with most other countries in the world, would see as the norm in respect of our armed forces. If that is not achieved, a constitution might be developed in which the Parliament and Government exist, but only as a kind of parallel power structure—as in Chile under Pinochet, in Indonesia and, to some extent, in Turkey before the more recent reforms—with the army being effectively independent of the democratic process, raising its own funds, existing in any way it wants and able to take control of things in the future.

The people who were in Tahrir square over the weekend, and those who were killed last week by the army and police forces, were demanding accountable Government and democracy. The west should be a little cautious in thinking it can do deals with the military to bring about some kind of solution in Egypt.



Egypt has always been the headquarters of the Arab League. Under Nasser it was also very much the centre of the whole Arab uprising and that period of Arab nationalism. There is a competitor on the horizon, however: the Gulf Co-operation Council, which is beginning to assert itself. The GCC started out as a fairly mild union of Gulf states, but it has now, in some respects, become a kind of rival to the Arab League. Strangely, Morocco has now joined the kingdoms of the Gulf region. The last time I looked at the map, Morocco did not appear to be a Gulf country, but perhaps something has changed. The GCC includes US bases in Bahrain, and it has allowed or encouraged or facilitated—we may choose whichever word we want—Saudi Arabia to occupy Bahrain in order to support the kingdom and condone the many human rights abuses that have gone on in Bahrain not only over the last few weeks but the last few years.

Behind that, we must ask some questions about what is happening in Saudi Arabia at the present time. I was given a note about last week’s

“death of four Shia protestors in Qatif…after clashes with security forces. The government accused outside agents as usual but the crisis is more profound. The Shia have been protesting since March over the detention of political prisoners without trial and asking for an end to discrimination and exclusion.”

It goes on to cite:

“The trial of 17 reformers described by Amnesty International as peaceful activists in Jeddah. They were sentenced to 5-30 years in prison. The case demonstrated how the justice system is under the control of the Ministry of Interior.”

Many issues of human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia have to be examined but, again, Britain’s overwhelming commercial relationship with that country, through arms sales and oil imports, seems to dominate what ought to be genuine concerns about human rights there, about the inability of ordinary people there to express themselves and about the denial to women of any basic or fundamental rights that any other country in the world ought to be able to subscribe and aspire to.

What my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) said about what is happening in Bahrain is absolutely true. I first met human rights activists from Bahrain at a UN conference in Copenhagen in 1986, when they came to see me to talk about the suspension of the constitution, the weakness of the Parliament, the power of the King, and the degree of discrimination and abuses of human rights. Last week, a very lengthy report was published by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, and I shall quote from a small passage about the establishment of the commission by decree in June 2011:

“The commission found that arbitrary arrests—in many cases pre-dawn raids conducted by armed and masked security…forces—showed the ‘existence of an operational plan’ to terrorize protestors and opposition members. It concluded that the arrests and detentions ‘could not have happened without the knowledge of higher echelons of the command structure’ of the security forces, and that failure to investigate rights abuses could implicate not only low-level personnel, but also higher level officials.”

This country has close relations with Bahrain, we have had close military co-operation with Bahrain and we have sold a great deal of equipment to Bahrain, including surveillance equipment that has been used against highly democratic human rights protestors, so we need to be cautious about our double standards.

The last two points that I wish to make concern ever-present, huge threats that exist in the region. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) made a brilliant speech about the situation facing Palestinian people. It was the most moving speech that I have heard for a very long time on that issue, and it was made on the basis of a very recent visit. He and I have been to the west bank and Gaza together on a number of occasions, and I hope that we will be able to go there again.

[Bob Russell]

As we approach the anniversary of the birth of Christ, does the hon. Gentleman agree that today Joseph and Mary would not be able to get to Bethlehem because of the walls, the shepherds would be ethnically cleansed and the three kings would not be allowed into Palestine?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I have been through the miserable experience of what ought to be a pleasant, if short, journey from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. One goes through many checkpoints and then sees the obscenity of the wall around Bethlehem and how it goes through streets and fields and takes people’s land away. Some people cope with it in a witty way. I went to a nice, ordinary Palestinian café in Bethlehem that I had been to before the wall was constructed 3 or 4 metres in front of it. The people there had renamed it “The Wall Café” and painted the menu on the wall. One sat in the café and read the menu off the wall, and everything on it was to do with the wall. One could have wall falafel, wall burgers, wall chips or wall coffee—it was “wall” everything. What a way to have to live! People see their whole communities and societies destroyed by the construction of the wall and the construction of settlements.

Palestinians living in their village on their farm, with their olive groves, oranges or whatever else they grow suddenly find that a wall comes and they have lost access to their land, or a settlement comes and all their water is taken away, or a road is built that they are not allowed to use. There are settler roads and settlements supported by the Israeli army and police forces, who are condoning absolutely the theft of land and the occupation of the best land with the best water supplies. Then they say, “Come on—let’s make peace.” I am sorry, but if they are going to make peace they must start by ending the settlement policy and withdrawing the settlements from the west bank. But we are quite a long way away from that.

Palestine applied for UN membership, and that is to be decided. I hope, although it is probably a very faint hope, that the British Government will vote in support of it. I understand we are going to take the incredibly brave position of abstaining—a really tough decision to make. And what happened when the UNESCO membership went through? Israel withdrew the tax money that should be paid to the Palestinian Authority, which means the authority is rapidly running out of money, and the United States withdrew funding from UNESCO, which means that UNESCO will have a financial problem. Sorry, but for what? Because the Palestinians had the temerity to want to be a member of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. That is a truly ridiculous situation.

If we want peace in the middle east, we must recognise the Palestinian people and negotiate with their representatives, whether we like them or not. There are lots of representatives of the Palestinian people: Hamas, Fatah, independents, people who undertake civil disobedience and pacifists. There are people of all descriptions and views, but they are all Palestinians and they all recognise the right to exist as Palestine within that region. Israel seems incapable of deciding what its borders are, yet insists that Palestinians should continue to give up land. I strongly support the right of the Palestinian people to exist and to have their own identity, and putting false barriers in the way will not bring about peace.

Israel, however, is a very powerful country. It is the world’s fourth largest arms exporter and a possessor of nuclear weapons. It has not signed a nuclear non-proliferation treaty, but it has signed up to the Mediterranean weapons of mass destruction-free zone. As a nuclear power, Israel must recognise that if we are to bring about peace in the region, it needs to be involved. Last year’s NPT review conference called for a nuclear-free middle east, so Iran as a member of the NPT organisation must obviously be part of that just as Israel, I suspect, should also be part of that process. I do not want anyone having nuclear weapons in the middle east, and I think that the best way to deal with Iran is by consultation and by having as many dealings with it as possible. It is not to condone the human rights abuses or everything that goes on, including the imprisonment of trade unionists and all the other denials of human rights, but to recognise the lessons we have learned from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Are we seriously going to go down the road of having a war in Syria or Iran? I sincerely hope not. I want there to be peace and justice, but I am not convinced that the process of wars and British involvement in those wars have done anything but cost us a great deal of money and brutalised our own country. Nor have they improved our standing around the world. The Department for International Development does a great job in many ways and many places, including Palestine. We seem to be obsessed in this country with the idea that a nation of 65-odd million people on the north-west coast of Europe has the funding, resources and power to have global reach. I am not sure we do. We need to think about these things and start being much more supportive of international institutions, international law, human rights and all the other issues that go with them, rather than turning a blind eye to human rights abuses because it suits our commercial interests at certain times to sell arms, buy oil or whatever else.

Let me conclude with a final thought. I have met a number of former soldiers who have been in Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed, some of them can be found in the occupations around London. Tragically, an awful lot of former soldiers can be found as homeless people and others going through a very bad time in their lives. Almost a century ago, Siegfried Sassoon wrote that the

“the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it”.

A statement has been issued by 15 British soldiers and two Royal Marines, supported by four Americans. The first signatory is Joe Glenton, who refused to go to Iraq and has since left the Army. I shall not read it all out because it is quite long, but I shall quote part of it:

“We are veterans, from the British and American Armed Forces, acting on behalf of soldiers and citizens at home. We know that these wars have nothing to do with democracy, security, women’s rights, peace or stability, they are fought for money and power, nothing else. Our comrades’ blood has lubricated the ambitions of a few. The goals could only have been achieved by negotiation and this remains the case.

We have seen and endured the suffering of the soldiers affected by these wars and, unlike those who send them to fight, we know these people at a human level. We have seen and regret the suffering of the innocent people in the countries involved. We are protesting against the conduct of the war and the reasons it was started by the United States and the United Kingdom. We object to the insincerity and imperialistic objectives, for which people continue to be sacrificed, displaced, tortured, imprisoned and wounded.”

It goes on to say that they think 10 years is enough for these wars.

I know that is not a majority view in the House and might not even be a majority view across the whole country. However, people are increasingly questioning our foreign policy and the amount of resources we spend on weapons of mass destruction and our own nuclear weapons while claiming that nobody else should have them. I think we need a bit of a rethink on our foreign policy. We should admire and support those who stand up for democracy, but let us not start another war with Syria or Iran. That is not the right way to go.

21:20

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I respect and rather like the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), but of course I cannot agree with the last sentiments in his speech. I shall make a short speech as I believe there are two Opposition Members yet to speak. I shall bear that in mind.

I have lived or worked in Egypt, Jordan, Cyprus, Yemen and Bahrain. The United Kingdom has a traditional and present-day interest in what happens throughout the middle east and north Africa, but that does not give us the right to direct exactly what should happen politically in those countries. Like many hon. Members who have spoken, however, I very much hope that we can influence the direction of their politics in future. I shall confine my remarks to countries in which I have lived or of which I have some experience, starting with Egypt, where I lived for a while in 2005.

The current situation in Egypt is totally unacceptable. The idea that protestors have had to go back to Tahrir square is a dire warning to Field Marshal Tantawi, and the fact that 35 people were killed recently is utterly abhorrent and very worrying. The military will have to stand away from politics but I fear they will find that very difficult to do. Today’s parliamentary elections in Egypt might help. Tantawi has promised to hand over power to civilians, so we will see what happens in that regard. We now have a timeline for that, and a president should be elected by June 2012. Personally, I doubt whether the military will be able to give up their stranglehold on power and privilege as easily as people might think.

I lived in Bahrain as a young man in 1969.

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

A young man?

[Bob Stewart]

I was indeed young once—it is almost the start of a song. When I lived in Bahrain it was a very different time to now. I desperately want to see human rights in Bahrain and I am very unhappy about what has happened there recently, particularly about the Saudis coming in with their armed forces. I very much hope that things will get much better.

The final country that I want to talk about is Yemen, where I lived when I was an even younger man between 1954 and 1958. I have always taken a close interest in what has happened to the Aden protectorate. Yemen is a strategic location right at the bottom of the Saudi peninsula and has always been important. It was important to us as a place where our steamers were coaled up for going to India. It was also the home of Osama bin Laden. Let me say how pleased I am with the UK Government’s launch of the Friends of Yemen group.

I will conclude, as I want to keep my comments as short as possible for obvious reasons. Huge changes are taking place in the middle east and north Africa. It is clearly a time of great opportunity for the peoples of the region. I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) and my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys), who made points about our business links to the region being part of our foreign policy. That is an extremely good idea and I know that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary is doing his very best to combine diplomacy and business.

I am very hopeful that the Arab spring will liberate large numbers of people and change their way of life in the middle east and north Africa, but the danger is that in times of turmoil things can go either way. That is the problem that we face. We must use our limited power—I stress limited power—to influence what happens throughout the region for the better. I very much hope that, this time next year, we will see the peoples of the middle east and north Africa in a much happier place than they are at present. I keep my fingers crossed and I believe the bottle may well be half filled, rather than half empty.

21:26

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart). I congratulate him on his speech and his generosity in leaving time for others to speak.

I follow the sentiments of the hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips), my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander) in saying how fitting it is that, on this day, when the people of Egypt start to go to the polls in their parliamentary general election, we are holding this debate on the future of the middle east and north Africa.

I shall restrict my remarks to the situation in Syria and Bahrain. I hope it is helpful to the House for me to take us back to the origin of the protest on 18 March, when Syrian Government forces detained 15 children for spraying anti-regime graffiti on a wall. When civilians took to the street to protest against that heavy-handed crackdown, the same security forces brought the uprising to a brief and brutal conclusion by killing four protestors. The next day, thousands more people took to the streets.

To date, Syria continues its ruthless practice of violently extinguishing protests, no matter how peaceful, as a precondition to any engagement with the opposition parties. The UN estimates that 3,500 protestors have been killed since the protests began. The non-governmental organisation Freedom House estimated that in 2010 between 2,000 and 2,500 political prisoners in Syria were held. It described Assad’s regime as an “ossified dictatorship”.

Until the early part of this year, Syria had perhaps somewhat successfully portrayed an image of stability to the media in the west. In an interview in The Wall Street Journal on 31 January, President Assad asserted with some confidence that Syria would not fall victim to the same fate as the regimes in Egypt and Tunisia. He said:

“Where there is divergence between your policy and the people’s beliefs and interests, you will have this vacuum that creates disturbance. So people do not only live on interests; they also live on beliefs”.

The ideology of the Syrian people to which Assad referred in that quote was the opposition to Israel. Syria and Israel have clashed militarily on a number of occasions. However, he failed to recognise that the people’s beliefs transcend religion and that Syrians believe in genuine economic and social reform and in democracy and equality.

At an Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Indonesia last week, the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that the situation in Syria could soon result in civil war. The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has taken the view

“that it already looks like one.”

It is difficult to refute that argument when recounting the unfathomable cruelty that Assad has waged against his own people. However, unlike the Libyan opposition, whose strategy appeared haphazard but who were coherent and single-minded, the Syrian opposition are unfortunately splintered. There have been some interesting diplomatic developments. The Turkish Prime Minister recently said:

“It is not heroism to fight against your own people.”

His criticism is particularly significant, as he previously referred to his Syrian counterparts as “his brothers”. The Turkish President, Abdullah Gul, last week noted that Syria had reached

“the point of no return.”

Where to now for Syria? Michael Broning, director of the east Jerusalem office of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, a German political foundation, has noted:

“Syria has recently experienced annual economic growth rates of around 5 percent, but the country is still plagued by staggering unemployment, increasing costs of living, stagnating wages, and widespread poverty.”

The UN estimates that in eastern Syria alone 800,000 people live in extreme poverty, owing to a sustained period of low rainfall. When he succeeded his father Hafez in 2000, Assad moved towards economic liberalisation with the creation of a stock market and the opening of the banking sector to private banks, yet Syria is rated 144th out of 183 countries in the World Bank’s latest report on the ease of doing business. Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at Oklahoma university, considers the prospects for economic development to be bleak, noting recently:

“Eventually things will fall apart.”

Unlike with events in Libya, the Arab League has been reticent in its approach to the uprising in Syria. Although the causes of the Arab uprisings in recent months are deeply complex and entrenched, in some cases, they stem from a culmination of decades of repression and underdevelopment. Although the eventual catalysts differ from state to state, the long-term causes appear to be consistent: high inflation, rising food prices, mass unemployment, absence of social mobility and human rights abuses. Economic and social reform in the middle east is arguably as important as political reform in the shape of overthrowing autocrats.

Like Syria, Bahrain is an example of an unrepresentative regime—a 70% Shi’ite majority is governed by a Sunni, pro-US regime. Indeed, some commentators have argued that the US has been reticent in its stance on Bahrain, relative to its sharp condemnation of other Arab autocrats, but the US Secretary of State said recently that the tumult in Bahrain serves Iran’s interests. She said:

“Meaningful reform and equal treatment for all Bahrainis are in Bahrain’s interests, in the region’s interest, and in ours—while endless unrest benefits Iran and extremists.”

Last week the Bahrain independent commission of inquiry cleared Iran of being the hidden hand behind the Shi’a protests, which in itself is encouraging, but under no circumstances should we see the heat taken off the Bahrain Government. Last week’s report also surprised many middle east commentators for its candour and acceptance of the Bahrain Government’s accountability. The report contains a number of damning indictments of the security forces’ conduct, including: the admission of deaths of 35 protesters; the admission of lethal force being used against protesters, leading to civilian deaths; the admission that torture was pervasive among those detained and led to five deaths; the admission that female prisoners were threatened with rape; and, most importantly, the admission that the reforms must now be rapidly implemented to inhibit the litany of human rights abuses that mark the spring uprising in Bahrain. But that acceptance of culpability has also to be followed by purposeful reforms to ensure that the victims of human rights abuses receive justice, and that safeguards are established in law to prevent any repeat. The BICI report details evidence that imprisoned protestors were beaten, whipped, hooded and subjected to electric shock treatment, and those findings must lead to real change.

Dramatic changes are also needed to the economy in Bahrain. Unemployment stands at 15% and youth unemployment is at 20%—and that, too, is reflective of other states in the Arab region. In Libya, unemployment is at 30%, and in Yemen, where President Ali Abdullah Saleh last week signed the deal to transfer power, it stands at 35%.

We have a new generation of young people who are unwilling to accept the inequality experienced by past generations, and it falls to the international community to ensure that the brave efforts of protestors in Manama and elsewhere throughout the middle east have not been in vain, and that the promise of the Arab spring is not squandered this winter.

21:36

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

It has certainly been a wide-ranging and interesting debate. We had the Foreign Secretary and the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) competing as to who had visited the most distant locations, and the hon. Gentleman also expressed his concern that the Conservative party was dominated by Guardian-reading, Radio 4-listening liberal lefties, which I am sure was a revelation to the Foreign Secretary. My right hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander) welcomed the debate, which is timely and a welcome opportunity to discuss the momentous events taking place throughout the region.

I do not want to appear churlish, but briefly I shall express a slight concern, because in Afghanistan we in the UK have a direct influence on events and a vital interest, with several thousand of our service personnel there, and this weekend the Bonn conference on the future of Afghanistan will take place, with more than 1,000 delegates attending. That would have been a significant moment even before the events of last weekend, so we should also recognise the considerable parliamentary concern about how the substantial gains made by the women of that country can be preserved.

In a speech last week, the Foreign Secretary pointed out:

“In 2002 only 9% of Afghans had access to health facilities in their local area, today this proportion has risen to 85%. One in three of the six million children in school in Afghanistan is a girl. Just last year 50,000 new teachers were trained, over 30% of them women,”

and:

“Sixty nine female MPs were elected in 2010.”

That is why last week more than 100 Members of this House attended a photoshoot to show their support for the gains made by Afghan women, so I am slightly surprised that the Government did not this week schedule a debate in which they could have outlined their aspirations for the conference, but at the very least I hope that we will have more information in Foreign Office questions tomorrow and a report back next week.

The other inevitable problem with a debate of this breadth is the difficulty of focusing clearly on particular areas and of developing clear themes. During the Foreign Secretary’s speech I was not clear whether there was an overarching strategic approach. The issue of national strategy has concerned the Public Administration Committee, and I would have hoped to have seen more of the strategic thread, but perhaps that will emerge in the Minister’s response. So I shall inevitably have to deal with matters country by country, and I apologise for those that I do not cover in the time available, but the Minister needs a reasonable amount of time to cover the wide range of issues that have been addressed.

I shall begin with Somalia. There are massive governance issues that clearly have a huge effect on the local population, impacting on the safety of neighbouring countries such as Kenya in particular, and on world shipping, with continuing depredations from piracy, to which I shall return. The Minister will know only too well that I have been raising this with his Department for over a year. My persistent complaint has been that the Government have the right intentions but are slow in taking action and encouraging a collective international response. I welcome the statement that has been put out today indicating that discussions will be taking place at the European Council, but those discussions have to be translated into action.

At the end of last month, the Prime Minister made a welcome announcement about the placing of private armed guards aboard vessels. Straight away, I wrote to the Home Secretary, who had been designated as the lead Minister on this, to pose a number of entirely proper questions. I asked what would be the procedures for command and control; what would be the rules of engagement; whether there would be arrangements with ship owners to recruit only reputable firms and individuals; whether there would be a register and, if so, who would maintain it; what sanction there would be against companies that were not in compliance; whether this would apply only off the Somali coast and into the Indian ocean or elsewhere; and what discussions there had been with other countries in the relevant region, where guards would embark and disembark. Those are absolutely core parts of a policy for dealing with piracy by the use of guards. There was no sound from the Home Office until today, when it faxed my office to say that it had transferred the matter to the Department for Transport. That does not show the sort of urgency that is needed, and unfortunately it has been only too typical of responses in this area, where the general direction has often been right but the implementation has been sorely lacking.

October is when the piracy season starts in Somalia, because the monsoons go down and piracy therefore becomes easier. As was rightly pointed out in the debate, that is absolutely crucial, because it means that if the warlords and pirate organisers are the main source of funding for governance in Somalia, its governance will be enormously destabilised.

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

Another reason for urgency is that, unfortunately, despite the efforts by the international community, and by the British Government in particular, there is every indication and every reason to fear that there may well a recurrence of the famine next year. We therefore need action on an international level as soon as possible.

[Mr Spellar]

I fully agree with my hon. Friend. That is why we particularly welcome the support for the beleaguered population of Somalia, especially food aid, and the substantial involvement of the Department for International Development, working directly and through non-governmental organisations. We also welcome the initiative of the conference on 21 February that was announced by the Secretary of State.

As with the involvement of the Arab League in the middle east, I hope that we will ensure that there is significant involvement in Somalia on the part of the neighbouring African countries and, indeed, the wider African continent. The hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) properly referred to the considerable role that the forces of the African Union are playing there. Equally, the role of the naval patrols should be not only to stop the pirates coming off the coast of Somalia but to stop the illegal fishing and dumping of toxic waste that has created some of the preconditions for piracy in that unfortunate area.

We fully accept that we cannot intervene everywhere within the scope of the debate—that part of the discussion is where I might differ slightly from the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart)—but we have to decide where, in particular, we are going to put our weight. Like all countries, we have limited resources. Even the United States has to make a decision about where it is going to put its main focus. I was therefore slightly surprised that the Foreign Secretary’s statement earlier this month had only about four lines on Tunisia—the country where the Arab spring started. Indeed, the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) referred to it as the first country of the revolution. Tunisia is therefore symbolic, but it also, in many ways, fits the criteria for a country that can succeed. It has a sizeable educated population and a long secular tradition in many parts of the community, and it gave women access to the political system well in advance of other countries in the region. It had an election which, as my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State indicated, had about a 90% turnout for the Constituent Assembly, and that Assembly has already met. That is the ideal country on which to focus our efforts, partly for development and partly to build capacity in the political parties.

As I said on 16 May, there is a danger that some parties are well organised because of the underground structure that they have had in opposition to previous regimes and that other parties, which represent a wide body of opinion, are less well structured. It is important that those parties are given capacity, not by banning other parties, but by ensuring that there is a level playing field between the various tendencies. That applies across the region, but Tunisia might well commend itself as significant in that respect.

In the time available to me before I give the Minister time to reply, I will make a couple of points. There has been a lot of discussion about Iran, particularly with regard to its nuclear capacity. There was an exchange between the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) about Russia’s attitude on this matter. I think that it is true that Russia would be concerned about proliferation. However, there is a danger that it is complacent about proliferation, particularly because of its involvement in the civil nuclear programme. It might believe that it has that under control, which may or may not be true. The situation inside Iran is uncertain. There are reports tonight of another explosion at the Isfahan facility, with no indication as to the cause. There is a degree of complacency.

Finally, with regard to Libya, I take the point of the hon. Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys) about the difficulties in transitional periods. That will be true in all of these countries, not least in Libya. I hope that the Minister will give us an update on the concerns that we have expressed before about where the surface-to-air missiles have gone. We know that there are a considerable number and that they are being looked for. This is a matter of considerable concern.

In conclusion, this is an historic period. Much progress has been made, but it will not all happen at the same speed and it will not go uninterrupted in a single direction. There will be difficulties in transition. It is clear from the debate that there is a common sentiment on both sides of the House that not only do we welcome progress, but we want to work to ensure that it is achieved. We look forward to the Minister answering many of the points that have been made in the debate and saying how he will achieve progress in real time.

21:47

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

May I pay tribute to the House for yet another interesting debate on this important subject, which will have a significant bearing on world history and our national security?

In responding to the Arab spring, neither the Government nor the House has forgotten about areas of less conspicuous but equally important instability. Members have not said a great deal about the Sahel or the horn of Africa, but I know that they have been much on colleagues’ minds at other times. We are alive to the dangers to the region and to our own national security. We are working proactively with regional actors to protect against terrorism and piracy, to increase development and humanitarian assistance, and to strengthen governance. The balance of the debate has been towards Arab spring issues. The right hon. Member for Warley (Mr Spellar) pressed me for some themes. In the time available, one can either talk about countries sequentially or about themes. It is difficult to talk about both, but in my 12 minutes I will do my level best to do so.

The events of the past year have illustrated a profound change in the dynamic between Government and the governed, with a decline in the power of forceful coercion and a rise in the power of the voice and the vote. People united by a wish to exercise their rights cannot be subjugated by military force. Values have proven themselves to be the most important tool in rule by Government—the very values that we champion: transparency, accountability and respect for human rights. Those values, not ideologies or external influences, have been the most often heard cries from the street to accompany a desire for change.

We have learned that maintaining a stable and secure world order is not achieved by propping up friendly but repressive regimes. Our influence in the Arab spring has been exercised by holding true to our values, denouncing tyranny, calling for democratic transition and demanding respect for human rights. We have also learned that influence is best exercised with legitimacy, and in the company of regional actors. Our approach to the Arab spring, intervention in Libya and stabilisation in the Sahel and the horn of Africa has been collaborative. We have worked with close allies, and with the support of other states in the region.

One theme that has emerged during the conversation that we have had for the past few hours has been the renewed success of regional organisations, such as the Arab League and the Gulf Co-operation Council. We can pay tribute to their respective executive secretaries, who have done so much to contribute to the success of their organisations. We can pay tribute to the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the United Nations for the pressure put on Iran and Syria and the African Union for its help on piracy issues. Perhaps this is a renewed period in which those organisations have come into their own. We have all appreciated what they have been able to do.

I wish to pick out some themes in the contributions of individual colleagues. I will do my best to touch on each contribution, but I apologise if I cannot. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) spoke about the difference between republics and monarchies in the recent process. Yes, that has been noticeable, but the situation has also taught us that the concept of governance is different across the piece. I suspect that we will end up with different types of governance across north Africa and the Gulf, but both systems can have the feel of consent about them. How that evolves will be fascinating.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden), in an excellent speech, covered a number of matters, some of which I will mention later. He and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington mentioned moderate Islam and the defeat that it represents for al-Qaeda. It has indeed been a defeat for al-Qaeda, whose ideology has not worked. People have been crying out for different values.

That leaves the question of how we would support Islamist Governments who might arise from democratic elections. I wish to put it on record that we recognise that reform may lead to Governments less well disposed towards the United Kingdom, but failure to support reform will only exacerbate existing and future problems including unemployment and terrorism. The crucial requirement of all parties taking part in elections is that they respect the inherent commitment to human rights, individual freedom, the rule of law and non-violence that is at the heart of democracy. Let us not be afraid of labels; let us look at what people actually stand for.

My hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) took up the theme of the structure of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and its ability to react to events. He gave us much food for thought, but I am pleased that he recognised the reforms to diplomatic excellence that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is introducing, with their emphasis on the need to truly understand the countries where our diplomats work and on the importance, now more than ever, of language and in-depth knowledge of areas. I am delighted that my right hon. Friend has picked up on those matters and is working them through the Department.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys) mentioned the importance of economies and economics in this whole business, as did a number of colleagues. She was absolutely right that if there is to be a firm underpinning of what has been achieved, the role of economies and their ability to expand beyond the public sector, encouraging entrepreneurs and private businesses to pick up employment, will be very important. I was pleased to be in Jordan just a few weeks ago to see the work of one of the projects that we are supporting, Oasis 500, which is also supported by His Majesty King Abdullah. It is an entrepreneurial incubator of new online companies, which is absolutely in the spirit of what we are looking for. My hon. Friend was also right about how important it will be to help stabilise Libya as it moves forward.

A number of colleagues mentioned Egypt, notably my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips). He reminded us of his original contribution to the House, in which I believe he spoke about the importance of relieving pressures in Gaza. Today, he, the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) and the right hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander) raised questions about Egypt. I cannot deal with them all in the time that I have, but I was asked whether we were satisfied and assured about the progress of the transfer to civilian rule. Yes, we are assured that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces wants to ensure that, but it has to prove that it has the ability to live up to its words. That is what is proving so difficult at the moment. The progress of the elections today and the way in which they have been welcomed by the population is very good news. The fact is that those who wanted a boycott have realised that actually the best antidote to worries about elections is to take part and ensure that your voice is heard, and that is equally important.

The right hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South raised the importance of the economy in what we are doing in Egypt. The offer is there of support through the Deauville partnership and our own Arab Partnership. We are seeking to encourage Egypt to accept loans from the IMF and other international financial institutions as soon as the political situation allows. It is very important that they recognise the offers that have been made and we should encourage them to do so.

In looking at north Africa, we should not neglect the success of Tunisia. It is remarkable that, after all the events that it began, it now constitutes a small part of our conversations because we believe and trust that it is on its way.

Several colleagues mentioned Bahrain, including the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) and my hon. Friends the Members for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) and for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood). The right hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham looked at Bahrain from different aspects—the glass half full and the glass half empty. The right hon. Lady concentrated on the problems brought out by the commission, but my hon. Friend said how remarkable it was in the region that the commission should have reported at all, and that it should have done so with such remarkable honesty. I take my hon. Friend’s point. It is very important that the issues raised by the right hon. Lady are addressed, but the manner in which the commissioners worked has been impressive. Now what has to be impressive is the response by Bahrain to the issues raised. It is essential that the recommendations are delivered. The United Kingdom will review the commission’s findings in detail and we will identify specific areas in the recommendations it made where we can be of most assistance. The point is that if we have encouraged Bahrain to deal with these problems in this way, we should also play what part we can in trying to assist its progress. We will also call on the opposition in Bahrain to take part in a co-operative manner, because they have as much responsibility as the Government in moving forward.

Several colleagues raised the issue of Syria, and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary laid out our situation clearly. The hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain) made the point about the economy and how important it is. It is important that the merchant classes of Aleppo and Damascus recognise the alternative being offered by the Syrian opposition and we will work with them on their needs. Again, the way in which the international community has responded with sanctions has had a profound effect. The right hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South asked me about what will happen next. A 10th round of sanctions will be agreed on 1 December at the Foreign Affairs Committee, which will affect finance, banking and the oil sector, and—again—the individuals responsible for repression. Once again the pressure will be kept up, and I have tonight issued a statement about the interim report of the commission of inquiry investigating human rights abuses. The House will not be disappointed by what I have had to say.

Several colleagues mentioned the middle east peace process. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield made another powerful statement about what he has seen and experienced, which illustrated the value of Members travelling and seeing things. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) put the other side of the case, which showed that the House is capable of putting both arguments very well. The truth is that we all know very well how to say no to making progress in the middle east peace process. The cry is out for someone to know how to say yes. Everything that is raised as a stumbling block is also an opportunity to do something positive, and whether it is on settlements, borders or anything else, we must do so. The Government are determined that we should press for further negotiations to make progress.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield raised a specific issue of child prisoners. I raised issues with the Minister responsible in Israel on my last visit. We are pleased that the age of responsibility has been raised. My note says that we have not previously said publicly that shackling children is wrong. It is time I did so. Shackling children is wrong, and I am happy to say so.

Alas, there is no time to deal with a couple of other issues. I pay tribute to the continued attention that the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) pays to Western Sahara, and to those who raised the issue of Somalia.

This debate constitutes neither the beginning nor the end of our conversation on the Arab spring. It is a way station—an opportunity for the House to comment on events that mark, in terms of the Arab world, a complex mix of evolution and revolution, and changes whose consequences for the 21st century will be profound. It will be with humility that we note that we have not always made the right judgments in respect of our own relationships, so this new wave justifies an examination of ourselves as well as those areas in which the events are taking place. It is a fresh chance for all of us to consider this country’s best interests in looking forward—

22:00

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 9(3))

Business without Debate

Monday 28th November 2011 Commons Chamber

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Monday 28th November 2011 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Legal Services

That the draft Legal Services Act 2007 (Appeals from Licensing Authority Decisions) (No. 2) Order 2011, which was laid before this House on 15 September, be approved.—(Mr Dunne.)

Question agreed to.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Rehabilitation of Offenders

That the draft Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) (Amendment) (England and Wales) (No. 2) Order 2011, which was laid before this House on 17 October, be approved.— (Mr Dunne.)

Question agreed to.

Business of the House

Monday 28th November 2011 Commons Chamber

Ordered,

That, at the sitting on Wednesday 30 November, 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—(Mr Heath.)

Committees

Monday 28th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

With the leave of the House, we will take motions 6, 7 and 8 together.

Ordered,

European Scrutiny

That Tony Lloyd be discharged from the European Scrutiny Committee and Sandra Osborne be added.

Northern Ireland Affairs

That Mel Stride and Gavin Williamson be discharged from the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee and Kris Hopkins and Nigel Mills be added.

Welsh Affairs

That Owen Smith be discharged from the Welsh Affairs Committee and Nia Griffith be added.—(Mr Francois, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.)

Vascular Services (Warrington)

Monday 28th November 2011 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Mr Dunne.)

22:01

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I am very grateful to have the opportunity to discuss vascular services in Warrington, and in particular the decision not to locate a vascular centre there. The review of vascular services conducted by the NHS in Cheshire and Merseyside was fatally flawed. It has no proper evidence base. It failed to engage clinicians in Warrington and Halton and it demonstrated a singular lack of transparency. It failed to adopt the open and transparent procedures used elsewhere and instead held only two meetings—one for staff and one for the public—to cover the two counties. The survey it carried out was on the internet, thus excluding many of the people in the centre of Warrington and in Halton who do not have internet access. The conclusions it drew from that survey were rather bizarre. Although people said that they valued safety first, it does not mean that the position adopted by Cheshire and Merseyside NHS makes things safer. Anyone who follows that flawed logic should not be conducting a review of services in the first place.

We have been left with a decision that will damage service at Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and dismantle the partnership working that has been built up with St Helen’s and Knowsley NHS Trust over the years. It has left unanswered some serious questions about co-dependent services and about possible increased risk and mortality elsewhere. This is a shabby little stitch-up that cannot go unchallenged. If the Minister wants to champion local decision making, it is his duty to ensure that those decisions are properly based on evidence and are reached through due process. That has not been the case here.

This review started by looking at “evac” procedure. It then mutated into a review of vascular services as a whole. It is never a good sign when that sort of slippage occurs. The review then decided that any centre must carry out a minimum of 50 open aortic aneurysm repairs and 100 carotid endarterectomies. Where is the evidence for these figures? The Royal College of Surgeons has never recommended them and many other centres operate using different minima. The suspicion is that the figures were chosen to bolster the case for two centres rather than three, yet Great Manchester will have three, as will Cumbria and Lancaster. Unless the Minister is prepared to argue that centres operating on different minima are unsafe—I do not believe that he is prepared to argue that—there is no evidence base for these figures.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate and on making an excellent speech. She said that the Minister will probably argue that this is a matter for local decision making but she has shown that there is no clear evidence base, so one would hope that the Minister would ensure that the matter is reconsidered.

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend is right. I want to come to some of the other evidence and how the review was carried out. The decision was eventually taken that one centre would be located in Liverpool and one at the Countess of Chester hospital. Originally, the review panel allowed both Liverpool and Chester to take away their submissions and rewrite them from June until October, but it did not allow the same leeway to Warrington and Halton NHS trust. After protests from overview and scrutiny committees, it allowed them only seven days. That is not a fair process.

It is also clear that the review panel originally had reservations about locating a centre at Chester in partnership with Wirral university hospital. It said that

“there were a number of outstanding questions about how the proposed arterial centre would work clinically”.

However, when we asked how those clinical problems have been resolved, answer comes there none.

There were other questions about the skills base, co-dependent services and possible increased mortality rates elsewhere, which it is clear from the impact assessment carried out for Warrington have not been resolved. We were left with the decision to base a centre at Chester—a decision that, I understand, was queried even by its partner at Wirral university hospital NHS trust—that has been designated the south Mersey centre. I have to tell the Minister that I was born and bred in Chester, and it is not on the Mersey but on the Dee, and it is difficult to get to it from elsewhere in the region.

The result of this decision is that centres are concentrated in a relatively small area—one in Liverpool, one in Chester and a satellite one in the centre of the Wirral. There is nothing in the review for those who live in north or east Cheshire, and as a result emergency patients from the Warrington area will now have to travel 30 miles by emergency ambulance instead of the maximum eight miles as before. Those who wish to travel by public transport will, because of the different combinations of buses and trains, be facing a journey of three to four hours. That is important because car ownership in Halton and the centre of Warrington is lower than the national average—people are reliant on public transport.

The questions about access, which were deemed to be important, have not been resolved but there are other troubling issues. It seems that the review—based, after all, on flawed evidence—will form the basis for decisions on other specialties. For example, the review stated that it was highly desirable, if not essential, that hyper-acute stroke units be located with vascular centres. That indicates that Warrington’s chances of getting these services in the future are limited. However, the review also undermines existing stroke services in Warrington—services that are highly rated and delivered in partnership with St Helens and Knowsley trust. If a vascular surgeon is not to be on site, those stroke services will be undermined.

The same is true of trauma care. The review thought it desirable that in the future trauma centres be co-located with arterial centres. That would seem to be pre-judging where those services will be located in future.

As things stand, Warrington often deals with serious cases because it is at the centre of a motorway network. Many will need a vascular surgeon, as well as other specialties. The response from the review was that patients could be stabilised by a general surgeon and that a vascular surgeon would be on site within 30 minutes. Frankly, anyone who knows Warrington’s traffic will know that that is absolute nonsense. The North West Ambulance Service gave evidence to the impact assessment panel about gridlock in Warrington. If the service cannot guarantee that it can get an emergency ambulance through, there is little chance of getting a surgeon through. Indeed, I have done the journey from Chester to Warrington many times, because I still have relatives there. It is not possible to do it in 30 minutes at peak time—one has to get through the traffic in Chester, go along a congested motorway and then get through the traffic in Warrington. Where on earth have those figures come from and how have they been validated?

The suspicion is that the review has been carried out in a cavalier manner in order to fit a predetermined outcome. Indeed, there are also concerns arising from the impact assessment, because the points put by clinicians in Warrington appear to have been accepted, yet nothing has been done about them. For instance, the review panel received evidence that the vascular services in Warrington were well developed and had worked over 10 years in partnership with St Helens and Knowsley trust. The panel accepted that it was desirable to maintain that partnership and that disrupting it was contrary to practice elsewhere in the NHS. The panel said that it hoped that the partnership would be maintained. However, the clinicians in the St Helens and Knowsley trust had already given the panel evidence showing that it could not be maintained if the recommendations of the review were accepted, because transfer times and transport difficulties would mean having to partner with Liverpool.

Similarly, the North West Ambulance Service gave evidence showing that it could not guarantee ambulance response times in Warrington if it had to transfer patients from Warrington to Chester. The service’s figures were accepted by the impact assessment panel, which then said that it was drawing the matter to the attention of commissioners as a cost not yet planned for. Where will the extra money come from to fund extra ambulance services in Warrington, given that the NHS is already expected to take cuts of £20 billion? If the Minister wants to get up and promise us extra money for Warrington ambulance services, we would be very pleased to hear from him, but I do not think he can.

Similarly, the ambulance service drew attention to the fact that Warrington is uniquely prone to gridlock, because if an accident happens on the motorway system, it can gridlock the whole town. The response from the panel was that gridlock was “challenging”. Not being able to get an emergency ambulance through is not challenging; it is life-threatening. Indeed, it is really quite arrogant to dismiss the concerns of those responsible for transferring patients in that way.

However, worse was to come. The clinicians from Warrington and Halton—who, at this stage in the process, were now being consulted for the first time—gave evidence about the impact of removing vascular services on other specialities. In particular, they were concerned about the problems of ensuring support for vascular injury in other surgical procedures and invasive specialities. The panel then said that the volume of patients needing to be transferred could become “unmanageable”. It also said that the number of patients whose services would be disrupted might be greater than the small number who would see an improvement. All that was asked of the review panel was that it should publish its evidence at the same time as its implementation plan. Frankly, that is the wrong way round: if the evidence is not there, there should not be an implementation plan to start with.

[Derek Twigg]

My hon. Friend is most generous in giving way again. I am sure that she will discuss this further, but the areas covered by the two hospitals—Whiston, Warrington and Halton; and Knowsley, St Helens and the centre of Warrington—are some of the most deprived boroughs in the country, and yet the services are being transferred to one of the most affluent parts of the north-west. Does she not think that an odd way to deal with populations that suffer the most ill health?

[Helen Jones]

I agree. One thing that the review appears not to have looked at properly is the incidence of these sorts of vascular illnesses and where the centres should be located to deal with them.

Another interesting issue is that clinicians told the panel that more and more patients would need to be transferred over time as a result of not having vascular services on site. In fact, one clinician on the panel expressed the view that the

“lives at risk in these situations, equalled, or outweighed those saved by the anticipated improvements.”

I have to ask what sort of service improvement it is that can put more lives at risk. Evidence was also given about the difficulty of maintaining cancer services without support from vascular surgeons—Warrington is a centre for renal cancer—about the difficulty of maintaining limbs compromised by diabetes without having those surgeons on site and about the waste of resources, with Warrington having invested in new facilities. It has the most modern vascular lab in the region and the only fully compliant one. That will go to waste if vascular services are transferred, and we will spend millions elsewhere in providing new services on another site.

In short, what we have is a proposal that breaks an existing working partnership—one that has provided highly rated services—that could harm co-dependent services, that could impact on ambulance transfer times in a way that puts other patients in Warrington at risk and that wastes services. In the end, it will seriously damage services at Warrington hospital. In fact, I am told that a consultant interventional radiologist who had already been appointed has now declined to come because of this decision. Yet an implementation plan is going ahead even before we have begun the consultation. That is no consultation at all.

I ask the Minister to look at this seriously. I will support changes in services where they can be shown to improve patient care. I cannot support them where there is no evidence that they will improve patient care and there is a lot of evidence that they will damage patient care in other specialties. The ultimate responsibility, I say to the Minister, is his. I have agreed with Mrs Thatcher on only one thing—when she said:

“Advisers advise, and Ministers decide.”

He has to look very seriously at what has been going on here and he needs to act before other services in Warrington are damaged.

22:14

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

I congratulate the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) on securing this debate, and I totally agree that it is important for patients to have access to high-quality vascular services. I know that she is an active campaigner locally on health issues and a strong supporter of local health services.

The hon. Lady has raised a number of issues about the current review of vascular services in Cheshire and Merseyside. I appreciate that her constituents may be concerned about proposed service changes and want to be assured that they will have access to these services. Due to the shortage of time available, I hope she will forgive me if I do not go into the detail of the background at national level of all that the Government and the NHS are doing on vascular services, health checks, screening and so forth. I would like to address the situation in her constituency that she has raised. If I do not have enough time to provide all the answers to her questions, I assure her that I will write to her.

Currently, the commissioning of complex vascular services varies. In some areas, they are commissioned by regional specialised commissioning groups, but in others they are commissioned by individual primary care trusts. Evidence shows that, in order to maintain the safety and quality of these services, it is better that they are commissioned for larger populations.

There is robust evidence, highlighted by the work of the Vascular Society of Great Britain and Ireland, which shows that patient outcomes are best when complex vascular care is delivered by units that treat higher volumes of patients. In response to that evidence and national screening for abdominal aortic aneurysms, vascular services are being reviewed locally across England.

Reflecting that approach, in June 2010, the NHS in Cheshire and Merseyside embarked on a review of the way in which vascular services are delivered. It deals with non-cardiac vascular services for conditions such as abdominal aortic aneurysms, strokes and mini-strokes. Cardiac services continue, and will continue, to be provided in local hospitals in Cheshire and Merseyside. Vascular services are provided by nine district hospitals across Cheshire and Merseyside, including Warrington hospital in the hon. Lady’s constituency.

The review proposes that local hospitals should work in partnership to deliver the range of vascular services, with arterial complex interventional radiology and emergency surgery being carried out in a small number of arterial centres. Out-patient clinics, initial investigations and follow-up treatment will continue to be provided in local hospitals, including hospitals in Warrington and Halton. Patients with a vascular emergency will be taken to their nearest local hospital—unless the referring GP suggests otherwise—where they will be stabilised. If they require further emergency or arterial surgery, they will be transferred to the arterial centre. I have been informed that vascular surgeons will be based at local hospitals as well as arterial centres, which will ensure that patients can have access to their expertise.

[Helen Jones]

How many vascular surgeons will be based at Warrington, and what kind of rota will there be? The Minister knows as well as I do that problems occur with rotas when those surgeons are not available.

[Mr Burns]

Given that I want to deal with some of the other points raised by the hon. Lady, may I write to her about that? Given the shortage of time, I suspect that I shall also have to write to her about a number of other issues.

The Cheshire and Merseyside vascular review project board led the review, and was advised by a clinical advisory group consisting of local clinicians, including some from Warrington. The group developed a set of standards that each vascular network would need to meet, along with locally agreed minimum activity thresholds. They were considered in the light of the size of the population served by Cheshire and Merseyside. On the basis of advice from the clinicians, the project board concluded that, given the clinical activity and population size, it would be best for two vascular networks to serve populations in north and south Mersey, and that each network should have its own arterial centre.

In January 2011, the project board undertook a pre-consultation of local people, which included public and NHS staff meetings. They presented the pre-consultation to the local overview and scrutiny committees in every local authority across Cheshire and Merseyside, and wrote to local MPs, including the hon. Lady and, I assume, the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) and my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat). In October 2011, the board provided the commissioners in Cheshire and Merseyside with a report setting out its findings and recommendations. The report proposed that the arterial centre in the north Mersey network should be based at Royal Liverpool university hospital, while the arterial centre in the south Mersey network should be based at either Warrington hospital or Countess of Chester hospital. However, the final decision was left to commissioners.

The two joint bids for the south Mersey network from the Warrington and Chester trusts were presented to the clinical commissioning group chairs in Runcorn, Widnes, Warrington, Wirral and Western Cheshire. The commissioning groups, including Warrington, unanimously decided to recommend to the PCT cluster board that the arterial centre for the south Mersey network should be based at Countess of Chester hospital. I understand that they felt that the joint bid from Chester and Wirral contained the most credible plan for developing a networked vascular service for the populations of Warrington, Halton, Western Cheshire and Wirral, while facilitating a full range of local hospital services. I appreciate the hon. Lady’s concerns about the impact on Warrington hospital of the arterial centre being located at Chester. I understand the project board commissioned an impact assessment of the changes on Warrington, which highlighted a number of issues, but it concluded that these could be mitigated. The proposals have been considered by the Cheshire, Warrington and Wirral and Merseyside primary care trust cluster boards, which have supported the project board’s recommendations, subject to formal public consultation.

The proposals will also be subject to gateway review and national clinical advisory team assessment, as well as assurance from NHS North West that they meet my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health’s four tests for service change: the proposals must demonstrate strengthened public and patient engagement; be based on sound clinical evidence; there must be support from GP commissioners; and there must be consideration of patient choice.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

The Minister is describing in some detail the process by which the nine centres that previously existed are to be reduced to two, and we can, perhaps, accept the logic of that. This is a piecemeal decision for one type of service, however. If every centralisation decision is taken in a piecemeal way, Warrington and Halton might well lose every single time. When decisions on centralisation are made, should there not be some kind of strategy for deciding what will end up where, so that every decision is not made on a piecemeal basis?

[Mr Burns]

If my hon. Friend means by “piecemeal” that the decision is dealing only with a certain part of the country, then that is indeed the case. However, the review was carried out in the context of a wider geographical area in and around Merseyside, and in that respect it is achieving its aim of finding the most relevant service for the local communities. That is why the recommendation was to have two arterial centres located there.

The hon. Member for Warrington North raised the issue of population, as she believes, I think, that there should be a third centre. The following point is based on advice from both the Vascular Society of Great Britain and Ireland and the local clinical advisory group. The population in the area under discussion in respect of this decision on services is 1.2 million, whereas the figures that would be required to have a third centre are 1.4 million for the vascular networks and 1.6 million for abdominal aortic aneurysm screening programmes. Therefore, the population currently under discussion is too small to warrant an extra centre. I hope she will accept that.

[Derek Twigg]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Burns]

No, as there is not sufficient time.

On the proposals for consultation, I have been assured by NHS North West and the PCT cluster boards that an implementation steering group will ensure that the recommendations made in the impact assessment are taken forward. The final proposals will be subject to formal public consultation in 2012.

I appreciate that the hon. Lady and her constituents have concerns about the proposals for vascular services. However, I should stress that these proposals have been developed by the NHS in Cheshire and Merseyside based on advice by clinicians made in the light of best practice recommendations by the Vascular Society of Great Britain and Ireland. I therefore encourage her to take the opportunity to discuss the proposals with the Cheshire and Warrington and Wirral PCT cluster boards while they are being prepared for formal consultation, which will take place next year, as I mentioned earlier.

Question put and agreed to.

22:29

House adjourned.

Petition

Monday 28th November 2011 Petitions

Monday 28 November 2011

Social Care for Older People

Monday 28th November 2011 Petitions

The Petition of Rotherham Pensioners’ Action Group,

Declares that the Petitioners are concerned about social care for older people.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to implement a fair and equitable system of care for the elderly, without imposing a financial burden on those requiring care.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.—[Presented by John Healey, Official Report, 26 October 2011; Vol. 534, c. 434.]

[P000969]

Observations from the Secretary of State for Health:

“The Coalition: our programme for government” set out the Government’s clear commitment to reforming the system of social care to provide much more control to individuals and their carers, and to ease the cost burden that they and their families face.

Since then the Government have taken a number of steps to improve social care provision in England and has committed to publishing a Care and Support White Paper in the spring.

In October 2010, the Government prioritised funding for adult social care in the spending review, allocating an additional £2 billion per annum by 2014-15 to support the delivery of social care.

The Government followed this by publishing their “Vision for Adult Social Care” in November 2010, which set a new agenda for adult social care in England. It focused on commitments to: break down barriers between health and social care funding to incentivise preventative action; extend the rollout of personal budgets to give people and their carers more control and purchasing power; and use direct payment to carers and better community-based provision to improve access to respite care.

The Government have also set out their position in relation to strategies published by the previous Government through the Carers’ Strategy refresh and a revised implementation plan for the previous Government’s Dementia Strategy.

More recently, the Government have received two independent reports that make recommendations on how to reform the system.

In May 2011, the Law Commission’s review into the legal framework for adult social care reported making a series of recommendations to Government for the wholesale reform of the law.

The Commission on Funding of Care and Support, set up by the Government when they came into power, reported in July 2011 with recommendations for changes to how the cost of care is shared between the individual and the state as a partnership. The Government have welcomed this report, which is an immensely valuable contribution to meeting the long-term challenge of an ageing population.

The Government are now engaging on a broad range of areas for social care reform that covers the recommendations from these two reports and more. This will inform a Care and Support White Paper and progress report on funding reform to be published in the spring.

Written Ministerial Statements

Monday 28th November 2011 Written Statements

Monday 28 November 2011

Fire Service College (Key Performance Indicators 2011-12)

Monday 28th November 2011 Written Statements

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

The following key performance indicators have been agreed for the Fire Service College as part of the 2011-12 business planning round and performance against them will be reported in the college’s annual report and accounts:

Limit the financial year 2011-12 operating loss before interest to £3.6 million;

Achieve a reduction in fixed staff costs compared to financial year 2010-11 of £0.3 million;

Achieve 80% in “Good” and “Excellent” scores for United Kingdom customer satisfaction for achievement of learning objectives;

Achieve 80% in “Good” and “Excellent” scores for United Kingdom customer satisfaction for the overall learning experience;

Short-term staff sick absence, measured over the financial year, to be no more than four days per employee at the financial year’s end;

To embed health and safety awareness throughout the organisation by reducing accidents by 10% and increasing near miss reporting by 15% compared to financial year 2010-11.

The core role of the college is to support national resilience by providing safety critical operational, command and leadership training, and professional support to the fire and rescue service. These indicators support that core purpose and the work which the college is undertaking with the Chief Fire Officers Association and the wider fire and rescue service to develop and deliver a common and consistent approach to operational and leadership training within an accredited framework in order to improve interoperability, training assurance and resilience.

Education, Youth, Culture and Sport Council

Monday 28th November 2011 Written Statements

[The Minister for Sport and the Olympics (Hugh Robertson)]

The Education, Youth, Culture and Sport Council will be held on 28 and 29 November in Brussels. Culture, audiovisual and sport issues will be taken on 29 November. The Deputy UK Permanent Representative, Andy Lebrecht, will be representing the UK for the culture and audiovisual sections of the Council. Shona Robison, Scottish Minister for Commonwealth Games and Sport, will represent the UK for the sport section of the Council.

Audiovisual

The first item on the agenda will be the agreement on the proposal for a Council decision concerning the signing of the European convention on the legal protection of services based on, or consisting of, conditional access. Agreement to this decision would enable the EU Council to sign the European convention so as to widen the scope of the provisions of the EU Directive, 98/84/EC on the legal protection of services based on, or consisting of, conditional access, to apply to the Members of the Council of Europe who are not also Members of the European Union. A number of UK TV rights holders support this move so that piracy can be tackled in more countries. It is expected that a formal agreement on the proposal will be reached at the Council meeting.

The Council will be invited to adopt conclusions on the protection of children in the digital world. These conclusions highlight the challenges raised in relation to electronic media and the protection of minors, in particular those linked to the uptake and growing importance of online services. The UK will support the adoption of these conclusions.

Culture

The Council is expected to adopt Council conclusions on cultural and creative competences and their role in building the intellectual capital of Europe. These conclusions invite member states to consider raising awareness of the role that the development of cultural and creative competences can have in areas such as education, youth, training, employability, growth, innovation, research and lifelong learning. The UK will support the adoption of these conclusions.

There will be a discussion of a presidency paper on the contribution of the cultural sector to economic recovery and growth, job creation and social development and enhancing the evidence base. The paper asks member states questions on the collection and use of statistics in the cultural sector at national level and the possible role or support at EU-level in this respect. The UK is seen as a leader in the EU in policy and statistical support for the cultural and creative industries and the Deputy Permanent Representative will intervene to outline UK practice in this area and how this work can best be taken forward at EU-level.

Sport

Under the sport section of the meeting, the Council will be invited to adopt a resolution on the representation of the EU member states in the foundation board of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WAD A) and the co-ordination of the EU and its member states’ positions prior to WADA meetings. The resolution sets out the system for representation at meetings of the WADA foundation board and the approval process for the agreement of an overall position of the EU and its member states in advance of these meetings. Previous concerns with the text around the co-ordination process and the presentation of the EU position on anti-doping matters have been addressed during negotiations and the UK intends to support its adoption.

The Council will be asked to adopt conclusions on the role of voluntary activities in sport in promoting active citizenship. The conclusions highlight and promote the invaluable role volunteers and voluntary activities play in sport. The UK supports the adoption of these conclusions.

Council conclusions on combating match-fixing will be presented to the Council for adoption. These conclusions invite member states to raise awareness of the detrimental effect of match-fixing on the integrity of sport and encourage co-operation and information sharing between stakeholders in the combat against the practice. The UK will support the adoption of this text.

A policy debate will follow on good governance in sport. The presidency has asked member states to consider questions on the definition of good governance in sport and best practice at both national and international level. The UK will provide examples of best practice within the UK and outline support for action at EU-level only where there is clear added value for our sports bodies.

Under any other business the presidency will report on key events held under the Polish presidency of the EU. The Danish delegation will inform the Council on the priorities for their forthcoming presidency. The Commission will provide information on the state of play of the audiovisual sector in the digital age and present its recommendation on the digitisation and online accessibility of cultural material and digital preservation. I do not foresee a need to intervene on either of these.

Also under any other business, the UK delegation will present a short film on the London Olympics in 2012.

Foreign Affairs Council and General Affairs Council

Monday 28th November 2011 Written Statements

[The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)]

The Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr Howarth) who is responsible for international security strategy will attend the Foreign Affairs Council in defence format on 30 November. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will attend the Foreign Affairs Council on 1 December. I will attend the General Affairs Council on 5 December.

The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, will chair the Foreign Affairs Council on 30 November and 1 December.

Foreign Affairs Council (FAC): Defence

European Defence Agency (EDA) Steering Board

Ministers are likely to discuss the work programme for 2012 and the plan for the next three years, the annual defence data report, the category B project on helicopter training and pooling and sharing. The UK will work with the agency and its member states to develop and improve the agency’s effectiveness and performance, but will urge the EDA to be realistic about its budget requirements. Unless postponed, the EDA budget will be discussed as an agenda item in the Council meeting.

Operations

The three operation commanders will be present and will provide an update on Operation Atalanta (Counter-piracy off the horn of Africa to protect world food programme and vulnerable shipping). Operation Althea (Operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina) and EU Training Mission Somalia (Military training mission to counter security threats in Mogadishu). There is also likely to be discussion between member states on possible future operations, with a likely focus on a training mission in the Sahel, a regional maritime capacity-building operation off the horn of Africa to strengthen local counter-piracy efforts, and potentially in full respect of the principle of Libyan ownership and in co-operation with the UN, further assistance to the new Libya. The extension of Operation Atalanta’s mandate, which the UK supports, will be discussed during the session. We intend to indicate our support for the ongoing operations, and the need for an internationally recognised strategy for Somalia.

Joint Foreign Affairs and Defence Ministers Dinner

The joint dinner (the first since the Lisbon treaty) is scheduled to focus on “hardware” of operations and capabilities, and software. The overarching theme will be effectiveness of common security and defence policy (CSDP) with a focus on force generation, reduced budgets and better tailoring of missions and operations. It is also likely that there will be further discussion of the Weimar nations’ agenda. We will spell out the UK’s vision for the future of CSDP: smarter operations and missions, more coherent use of EU military, civilian, diplomatic, humanitarian, and economic tools, and better EU-NATO relations, maintaining our insistence that the EU should not duplicate NATO. Underpinning this, we need member states to invest in deployable capabilities and focus on value for money. We will resist calls for the creation of any unnecessary additional institutions or processes. The dinner will also provide an opportunity to emphasise the benefits of closer UK-France defence and security co-operation, which we will promote as an example to encourage others to seek better value for money and improved capability through a similar partnerships approach. EU Foreign Ministers will discuss this further at their meeting on 1 December (see below)

Foreign Affairs Council (FAC)

Western Balkans

Baroness Ashton is expected to brief on political elements of Western Balkans policy, focusing on: Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the Government remain concerned about the political situation; and Serbia and Kosovo, where the Government see normalisation of relations between the two countries as a priority, and support further progress in the EU-led dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade.

Iran

Following discussion at the 14 November FAC, Ministers are expected to further develop their response to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) report on Iran which highlighted grave concerns regarding the possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme. We are expecting the Council to agree to a list of new designations of Iranian entities and persons.

On 21 November, the UK Government imposed tough new financial restrictions against Iran which cut off all financial ties with Iranian banks. The Foreign Secretary said:

“The IAEA’s report last week provided further credible and detailed evidence about the possible military dimensions of the Iranian nuclear programme. Today we have responded resolutely by introducing a set of new sanctions that prohibit all business with Iranian banks.

We have consistently made it clear that until Iran engages meaningfully, it will find itself under increasing pressure from the international community. The swift and decisive action today co-ordinated with key international partners is a strong signal of determination to intensify this pressure”.

Southern Neighbourhood

We expect Ministers to agree conclusions taking stock of the EU’s engagement with its southern neighbourhood, including implementation of the European neighbourhood policy. Ministers are also expected to be asked to welcome proposals to create a European endowment for democracy, which aims to support democratic reform in the EU’s neighbourhood.

On Egypt, Ministers will take stock of the situation following the planned first round of elections. They will consider how the EU and its member states should react to the situation in Egypt, balancing concern at the recent violence with the need to encourage and support progress on the transition. Our objective is EU support for Egypt which will help to deliver political and economic reform.

Ministers will have an opportunity to discuss the current situation in Syria and co-ordination with the international community to end the violence. This might include a further, 10th round of sanctions against the Syrian regime. We have proposed the listing of 10 military officials involved in the ongoing violence around Homs.

Baroness Ashton is likely to brief Ministers on the latest political developments in Yemen. We expect conclusions to be adopted which welcome signature of the agreement, call on all parties to deliver on their commitments, and state that the EU will continue to monitor the situation in Yemen. The Foreign Secretary welcomed the signing of the Gulf Co-operation Council initiative on 23 November. He said:

“We welcome the fact that today President Saleh has signed the GCC initiative committing to the transition of power within 90 days, after which he will stand down.

It comes after months of deterioration of the situation in Yemen, and will give hope to the Yemeni people that change in their country is possible.

We now call on all political leaders and forces in Yemen to commit to a peaceful and orderly political transition. Both the supporters of President Saleh and the opposition must seize this opportunity and comply fully with UNSCR 2014. We will review progress with other members of the Security Council in the coming days.

The Yemeni people have suffered for too long. The UK is committed to helping them tackle the many challenges involved in this transition.

We commend the Gulf Co-operation Council for their unrelenting efforts to facilitate today’s agreement. President Saleh must now act on his commitment and implement the agreement in full”.

Middle East Peace Process

Ministers are likely to discuss options for helping to relieve restrictions on Gaza. Our position is that we want an increase in the importation of construction materials to Gaza; an increase in exports from Gaza to Israel, the west bank and other countries; and a relaxation of restrictions of civilian movement between Gaza and the west bank. We also expect Baroness Ashton to brief on her three-pronged Gaza package and on the progress made in the 14 November Quartet envoys talks with the parties.

CSDP

Following the joint Foreign and Defence Ministers’ discussion of 30 November (see above), we hope that discussion will continue, concluding with a set of Council conclusions that have a strong operational focus. Potential missions include training local security forces in the Sahel, a regional maritime capacity building operation off the horn of Africa to strengthen local counter-piracy efforts, and possibly an offer of further assistance to the new Libya in full respect of the principle of Libyan ownership and in co-operation with the UN. We will indicate our continuing support for counter piracy efforts and the need for an internationally recognised strategy for Somalia.

Iraq: Camp Ashraf

Baroness Ashton is expected to raise the issue of the future of the (Iranian) residents of Camp Ashraf in Iraq, as the Government of Iraq’s deadline to close the camp at the end of the year draws closer. We will underline our support for the UN’s role in resolving the issue, and stress the responsibility of the Government of Iraq to find a solution which respects the human rights of the residents of Camp Ashraf.

Human Rights

Baroness Ashton is expected to update Ministers on the state of play of the draft EU human rights strategy. She is likely to confirm that she will present the strategy to the European Parliament on 14 December. The draft strategy will issue as a joint High Representative/Commission communication. It will be considered further by member states before it returns to the Foreign Affairs Council for substantive discussion in the first quarter of 2012. Member states are procedurally unable to amend the content of a communication, so are likely to endorse the strategy through Council conclusions. We will provide further information to the chairs of the relevant committees in the House of Lords and House of Commons on the progress of the strategy.

General Affairs Council (GAC)

Preparation for the December European Council

Ministers will prepare the December European Council, the agenda for which will cover three issues; economic policy, energy, and enlargement. The accession treaty with Croatia will be signed in the margins.

i.) Economic Policy. The situation in the eurozone is likely to dominate debate. Ministers will discuss an interim report from President Van Rompuy, in line with October European Council conclusions, on the steps to strengthen the economic union in the euro area. This will explore the possibility of limited treaty change among other issues. Measures to enhance EU economic growth will also be discussed.

The conclusions of the October European Council meeting can be found at:

http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/ec/125496.pdf

ii.) Energy. Ministers will review progress on the agreement reached at February European Council which set out a series of measures to be taken forward on energy policy. There will be an opportunity to follow up on the findings of the nuclear stress tests.

The conclusions of the February European Council meeting can be found at:

http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms data/docs/pressdata/en/ec/119175.pdf

iii.) Enlargement (see also below). Ministers will discuss the Commission’s enlargement package of 12 October. The report recommended: (i) candidate status for Serbia if it re-engages in the dialogue with Kosovo; (ii) opening accession negotiations with Montenegro; (iii) tasking the Commission to develop a “new approach” to enlargement negotiations.

Multi-annual Financial Framework

Ministers will review progress made on the technical discussions made under the Polish presidency to clarify the Commission’s multi-annual financial framework proposals. There will be an opportunity to comment on the proposed changes to the revenue generating elements of the package, which have been discussed at committee level throughout November. The package includes changes to the UK abatement and new EU taxes.

Enlargement

Ministers will seek to agree conclusions taking stock of progress on EU enlargement and on the stabilisation and association process in the Western Balkans. The Government believe the Commission communication to be a broadly fair and balanced assessment. We will seek conclusions reconfirming support for EU enlargement and recognition that the accession process gives strong encouragement to political and economic reform in the enlargement countries and reinforces peace, democracy and stability in Europe. We agree with the Commission’s view that progress towards the EU should be based on the principles of consolidation of commitments, fair and rigorous conditionality, and good communication with the public. We agree that key challenges remain for most enlargement countries, for example, the rule of law, and in particular the fight against corruption and organised crime. We also support a focus on the criteria of regional co-operation, particularly for the Western Balkans countries.

On individual countries. Parliament on 22 November debated the closure of chapter 23 of Croatia’s accession negotiations, and Croatia’s accession to the EU. A draft Council decision on Croatia’s accession to the EU has been released and is due to be adopted by the GAC on 5 December, before signature of the accession treaty in the margins of the European Council on 9 December. On Turkey, we will want conclusions that provide a fair assessment of progress and inject much needed momentum into the process. On Iceland, we want the Council to commend the progress Iceland has made in accession negotiations this year. Conclusions will also need to address existing obligation, such as those identified by the European Free Trade Association Surveillance Authority under the European economic area agreement.

Following the FAC discussion of 1 December (see above), the GAC will return to the Western Balkans and discuss the Commission’s enlargement package for the Western Balkans countries. I set out the Government’s views on the Commission’s reports in my explanatory memorandum of 7 November. We remain fully supportive of the future of all the western Balkans countries in the EU once conditions are met. We will take a final decision on the UK position on the opening of accession negotiations with Montenegro before the December European Council. We will also take a final decision on the proposal to grant Serbia candidate status, based on their progress on Kosovo, including in the dialogue. We will take the opportunity to support further steps to provide a tangible EU perspective to Kosovo.

The European Commission work programme for 2012

The European Commission will make a short presentation to Ministers of its work programme for 2012.

Search and Rescue Helicopters

Monday 28th November 2011 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Justine Greening)]

I wish to inform the House of the Government’s intentions for the future of the search and rescue helicopter service in the UK. Following the cancellation of the SAR-H private finance initiative in February, the Department for Transport will today publish a notice in the Official Journal of the European Union to commence procurement for a new UK-wide service contract.

My right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary has agreed that the new contract will provide a search and rescue capability provided by civilian crews, enabling our armed forces to focus activity on their front-line operations.

The Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force crews have shown great dedication and professionalism in delivering an exemplary search and rescue service for many years, and we owe them all great thanks for this. Looking forward, we are confident that, building on nearly 30 years of civilian service provided under contract to the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), a fully civilian service will be able to maintain the same standards in the future.

This competition will procure a contracted search and rescue helicopter service for the whole of the UK, for a period of approximately 10 years. The Royal Air Force and Royal Navy will continue to provide search and rescue coverage until the replacement for this capability is in place, and it is my intention that the contract I let will require this to be the first part of the new service to become operational. This will ensure that the Ministry of Defence is able to meet its previously announced intention to withdraw from service and retire its fleet of Sea King helicopters by March 2016. The replacement for the capability currently provided by the MCA will follow on from this. This transition will ensure continuity of service.

Bidders for the future service will be able to put forward options which will utilise a mixed fleet of modern helicopters based on the capabilities required at each of the bases (such as range, carrying capacity and endurance). The services will be capable of delivery by different contractors providing complementary services.

The introduction of a modern fleet of fast, reliable helicopters will lead to major improvements in the capability available from the present mix of helicopters. Modern helicopters operating from 10 full-time bases can not only continue to meet all current service requirements but also provide faster flying times to a large part of the UK search and rescue region, as well as providing a more reliable service. This will therefore be reflected in the new contract.

It is my intention that search and rescue operations will cease at RAF Boulmer in 2015 and at MCA Portland when the interim arrangements that were announced in July expire. Other operations at RAF Boulmer will be unaffected by this.

Given the complexity of the issues that need to be considered by bidders during the procurement, I intend that this procurement will be undertaken using the competitive dialogue procedure. As far as is practicable however, I intend to run the competition using lean procurement principles during some stages of the procurement. This will, I hope, both expedite and simplify some stages of the procurement that would ordinarily be time consuming and costly for industry to participate in.

I expect to award a contract in early 2013 to give the future service provider time to mobilise the new capability.

Health and Safety Regulation

Monday 28th November 2011 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

On 21 March 2011 the Government announced the launch of an immediate review of health and safety regulation overseen by an independent advisory panel chaired by Professor Ragnar Löfstedt, director of the King’s Centre for Risk Management at King’s College, London.

The Government are pleased to announce the publication today of Professor Löfstedt’s report “Reclaiming health and safety for all: an independent review of health and safety legislation”.

The professor’s report is based on a thorough examination of the available evidence, including analysis of existing research, a call for evidence which attracted 250 responses, and meetings with key stakeholders. Professor Löfstedt also considered comments submitted to the red tape challenge website during the health and safety spotlight period over the summer.

Good health and safety is vital to good business. Sensible and proportionate health and safety regulation can support economic growth by maintaining a healthy and productive workforce. However, to be effective, and to provide genuine protection for workers and the public, regulation needs to be easy to understand, administer and enforce. The Government are committed to simplifying health and safety legislation to ease the burden on business and encourage growth.

Professor Löfstedt’s report sets out a number of risk and evidence-based recommendations to reduce the requirements placed on businesses where they do not lead to improved health and safety outcomes. The Government support the recommendations and are publishing alongside the report their plans for implementation.

A copy of the document will be available in the Vote Office later today.

Further details are available on the Department for Work and Pensions website at:

http://www.dwp.gov.uk/policy/health-and-safety/#review.

Grand Committee

Monday 28th November 2011 Grand Committee

Monday, 28 November 2011.

Arrangement of Business

Monday 28th November 2011 Grand Committee

Announcement

15:30

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Gibson of Market Rasen)]

My Lords, if there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, this Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes.

Welfare Reform Bill

Monday 28th November 2011 Grand Committee

Committee (17th Day)

Relevant document: 17th Report from the Delegated Powers Committee.

15:31

Clause 109 : Prosecution powers of local authorities

Amendment 103A not moved.

Clause 109 agreed.

Clause 110 agreed.

Clause 111 : Amount of penalty

Amendment 104

Moved by

[Lord Freud]

104: Clause 111, page 78, line 12, at end insert—
“(2) In section 190 of that Act (parliamentary control of orders and regulations), in subsection (1), before paragraph (za) insert—
“(zza) an order under section 115A(3B);”.”

Amendment 104 agreed.

Clause 111, as amended, agreed.

Clause 112 agreed.

Clause 113 : Civil penalties for incorrect statements and failures to disclose information

Amendment 104ZA

Moved by

[Baroness Drake]

104ZA: Clause 113, page 78, line 24, leave out from beginning to end of line 25 on page 79

[Baroness Drake]

My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendment 104AA. In Clause 113, we see the Government’s intention to introduce a civil penalty for negligence in providing incorrect statements for all categories of universal credit claimants. The penalty will also apply to the failure to disclose information. This is a probing amendment to understand why and how these penalty powers will be applied.

The civil penalty will be awarded where an error is not being dealt with through fraud action. The power to award will not be restricted to the Secretary of State but given to any authority that administers housing or council tax benefits, so it is quite a significant power.

Although there is an existing tax credit civil penalty regime, such a principle will now be extended to all universal credit claimant communities, many of whom are very vulnerable, such as those with disabilities or illness. What exactly is the offence and how will it impact on the population of claimants?

In response to a question from my noble friend Lady Hollis and me, the department has kindly advised that “negligence” should be construed in accordance with the everyday meaning of the word: that is, not exercising the care that the circumstances demand—in this context, being careless about, or paying insufficient attention to, the accuracy of any statement or information given in a benefit claim. Not exercising care and not paying sufficient attention are not actions that can be assessed for negligence without having regard to the capacity and the capability of the individual when providing that information.

More than 4.2 million adults lack the basic, day-to-day competences of functional literacy, 6.8 million adults lack functional numeracy, and I understand that it is estimated that two-thirds of claimants on income-related JSA have the functional literacy of an 11 year-old. There will therefore clearly be a higher concentration of adults with limited numeracy and literacy skills in the claimant population. As I have said, many claimants will also be vulnerable for other reasons—disability, illness or whatever. All these characteristics add up to a greater propensity for errors to occur and mean that the most vulnerable will be disproportionately hit by the civil penalty.

However, my arguments do not stop there. The Government are assuming that 80 per cent of claimants for universal credit will fill in their application forms online, but evidence from charities suggests that a much lower number will be able to do so without error; a more realistic figure may well be 40 per cent. What plans will the department put in place in the event that it becomes clear that the percentage of applicants who can fill in their forms online is significantly below that forecast?

Universal credit will also bring a new set of rules and people will not always understand what is expected of them. People have complicated lives, and even if someone is sitting next to them they may still get it wrong. Even when individuals want to get it right but are not competent, cuts to the funding for legal advice and the winding down of the local authority-based benefit services will mean that those who would otherwise have helped the claimant to fill in the form will not be there. Claimants may want help from face-to-face contact at Jobcentre Plus, but many centres are being closed and they are likely to be in urban areas and so they are remote from rural claimants. Yes, call centre staff will be available, but they may not be sufficiently experienced in the new rules, certainly in the early years of universal credit, and their guidance may lead to errors in the filling in of the form.

We have layer upon layer of capacity, capability and complexity considerations that, once added together, reveal why non-fraudulent errors will occur in statements and information provided by vulnerable claimants. This indicates a systemic series of reasons for errors that will not be addressed by exhorting the most vulnerable to be more personally responsible and hitting them with civil penalties. The most vulnerable claimants are often scared of filling in their forms, but now we have the potential to make them petrified. One can imagine their anxiety at receiving some heavy-handed departmental letter telling them that they are about to be fined. Their ability to know that it is a civil penalty rather than a criminal one may be a subtlety that misses them when they receive such a letter.

Let me ask the Minister three questions. First, can he give an assurance that civil penalties will not be introduced before transparent criteria are set out to ensure that claimants are not penalised for making innocent errors and failing to understand the need to report changes within a required timetable, and that definitions of “reasonable excuse” will take account of a claimant’s individual circumstances? Secondly, how will decisions about when to issue a civil penalty be made, and how and when will good cause be considered? Thirdly, how does the Minister expect to ensure that the most vulnerable and the most prone to make errors will not be unfairly penalised by the civil penalty—not the exhortation that the most vulnerable will not be hit but how he expects to ensure that that exhortation is met?

The reason given for the extension of the civil penalty power is to reduce claimant error and increase personal responsibility. The savings from introducing the civil penalty power will be £19 million over the three years to 2014-15, but the application of that power could have a considerable impact on some very vulnerable people. I understand that the Government’s estimate of the volume of civil penalties is just under 600,000 a year, which seems very high given that, first, universal credit is intended to be a simpler, more transparent system; secondly, that the number of penalties for tax credit claimants last year was, I understand, 1,221; and, thirdly, that there were 7,249 administrative penalties for the benefits service.

That leaves me concerned as to how these civil penalty powers will be used in practice, because in the impact assessment, fraudulent and criminal activity is lumped together with non-fraudulent and non-culpable—or potentially non-culpable—error. However, they are clearly not the same thing. The same community of people is not being addressed, but they are being considered in an almost holistic way in the impact assessment.

It worries me that the department appears to be applying a common mindset to both, which in part is my reason for tabling Amendment 104AA, which seeks to prevent the Secretary of State allowing any targets to be set that would prove an incentive to increase both the number and the value of civil penalties issued. The stated purpose of these civil penalties is to improve claimant personal responsibility. However, we know over time from our own common sense and experience that organisational cultures can result in such penalty powers being abused for reasons other than their original purpose. The punitive intention increases, or they become an opportunity to raise money.

In a world where there is increasing competition for access to tax revenues, civil penalty powers will be vulnerable to abuse. They could end up being deployed more aggressively to improve revenues or to be punitive. One can think of examples of where ordinary people think that this may have happened. For example, are the approaches to catching people speeding and the margin of tolerance over the speed limit determined by a desire to incentivise good behaviour and avoid bad, or has it become a means of raising revenue? Did some local authorities deploy surveillance techniques against ordinary citizens for reasons never intended by legislation? Whatever the validity of people’s thoughts on these matters, they are an indication of concerns as to how civil penalty powers can be deployed in a way that was never intended.

I would prefer the civil penalty not to be there, but certainly I want to ensure that the powers to impose civil penalties set out in Clause 113 of the Bill are never abused. The recipients of that abuse are most likely to be vulnerable people who easily make mistakes, and who could come to fear the department’s staff as a sort of form of police force that is free to hand out fixed civil penalties at will. Any targets set would almost certainly be set by reference to national standards, and this amendment seeks to prevent the Secretary of State from ever allowing such standards to be set. The population does not conform to national standards. There are differences in localities, in regions, in demographics, in educational attainment, language skills, level of employment, labour market characteristics, which all have an impact on the volume of forms likely to be completed incorrectly. There will be a concentration of impact from these civil penalties if targets are applied.

In summary, I am a strong believer in public service and support, but I have a great antipathy to the deployment of bureaucratic power that frightens or abuses people. I have real concerns about the deployment of this civil penalty and I look forward to the Minister’s response to my questions.

15:45

[Lord Skelmersdale]

My Lords, I am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, has called attention to Clause 113, because it is easy enough for some people not to understand the form that they are filling in, even sometimes in the presence of a member of the Minister’s department in the jobcentre. My real problem with this clause is that it talks about negligence. If you fill in a form in a slapdash manner, that is negligent. I would far prefer something like “knowingly”: in other words, designing to commit some sort of fraud. That would be a much happier arrangement.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I support my noble friend’s amendment. Following on from what the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, said, I would say that the test of fraud is normally—I think I saw a former Lord Chancellor who would know much better than I—associated with intent and ignorance of the law and is not a defence, but I think in this case it is because we are dealing with the interlocking of very vulnerable people and a new and very different system for people to understand.

There are three or four matters on which if I were asked now whether people needed to declare things, I could not guide them, and I like to think I have some nodding acquaintance with this Bill. For example, a lone parent has a boyfriend who works away. He stays with her overnight one or twice over the weekend. As a result, is she no longer a lone parent? Clearly it will not depend on their sleeping arrangements but on what contribution he makes to their financial arrangements. On a weekend basis, would that be sufficiently substantial to make her no longer a lone parent but part of a couple and therefore falsely declaring if she claims to be a lone parent? I am not clear what would happen in that situation under the Bill. Perfectly reasonably she might regard the fact that as she is getting universal credit she is not a lone parent and he is somebody who comes in as a boyfriend but not a partner.

With housing benefit, you could have a family with a student son who is living at home, going to the local university and working part-time. Should he be declared for housing benefit as a potential contributor to the rent so that non-dependent adult deductions come into play? I do not know. I think it would be quite difficult for that couple to assess.

Let me give another example that we discussed at considerable length and about which the Minister was rightly sympathetic—kinship carers. Conventionally, kinship carers are entitled to claim for child credit and so on if they have the equivalent of the child benefit book, which normally takes about eight weeks to come across. In future, given that child benefit will not necessarily be a separate benefit entitlement, if there is a rotating relationship in which the child goes back to its birth parents for a few weeks and then, because the father or the mother may be an addict of some degree, goes back to the grandparents, at what point and for how long a period of continuous care are the kinship carers entitled to claim the child elements in universal credit? I do not know.

In those three cases—and I could elaborate another six on disability benefits that are becoming clear to us—I would not be able to advise somebody on what they should declare on their forms as being relevant for the consideration of UC. It would be natural for them in those quite complicated situations not to declare things that appear to work against them. They would not be doing it with an intent to deceive. They may think it is a perfectly proper statement of their position as they see it, yet under this clause they could be caught for negligence and fined. That is completely unreasonable.

The one piece of advice I would give the Minister is that whatever he does, whether he claims that this is needed as a reserve power or not, he should not touch it for at least three years until after the Bill has come into practical effect because of the bedding-down issues that it will have. The Minister has to make only one mistake, such as his department suing somebody for penalties for negligence when the department was wrong—and there will inevitably be departmental error; there always is when you introduce new systems—and the whole of the good will behind this Bill will disappear overnight.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, my noble friend gives some very good examples of how easy it might be to make mistakes, particularly when the universal credit is quite low. I remind noble Lords that on 24 October the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, told us how easy it is to make mistakes. When he applied for his retirement pension, he got it wrong. Was he being negligent? No. It was an example of how easy it is to fill in a form wrongly. It is not necessarily negligence.

Apart from that little reminder of how any noble Lord could easily make a mistake, I also wanted to pick up a point made by my noble friend Lady Drake about the expectation that 80 per cent of claimants will be claiming online. Recently a piece of research, Increasing Digital Channel Use Amongst Digitally Excluded Jobcentre Plus Claimants, found that one group of those claimants were what the authors call the “uninterested”. The researchers said that this group will,

“require persuasion or compulsion before they will use digital services, possibly with the threat of a benefit sanction for non-use”.

I would be very grateful if the Minister could assure the Committee that there is absolutely no intention to sanction people for not using online procedures. Some people have a mental block against using computers and we do not want yet another sanction in the system. I know that it was researchers who said this, and not the department, but if he could give us that assurance now, that would be very helpful.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Drake has made some very powerful points this afternoon, which the Government need to take on board or we will get into a mess when this is finally introduced. They should be indebted, too, to the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale. His point is that there is an implication that the person who makes this sort of mistake has been deliberately negligent. That would mark people out as trying to defraud the system. It puts them in the wrong to start with, when these things can happen by accident.

Noble Lords will forgive me if I remind them of a point I made in one of our earlier debates. When I sat in the other place, I had a constituent who came to see me because she had been overpaid a certain benefit, and the department was pursuing her strongly for repayment. When we got the papers, we discovered what had happened. There were some boxes she had to tick. One of the boxes asked, “Have you received income support?”. She ticked “Yes”. However, she had stopped receiving it about six months before, and so beneath her tick, she wrote, “But this stopped”, and she wrote in the date on which it stopped. When we got to the bottom of this we found that when the form was sent in to the department, its computer could not scan in anything that was not in the box, so it continued to overpay her. She was in a terrible state. A large amount of money was involved, and there was a huge problem as a result. It will go wrong.

Noble Lords will forgive me if I repeat something that I mentioned in the Chamber a little while ago. In the case of universal credit, a lot will depend on a new IT system. Every major IT system that the Government have introduced in recent years has gone wrong. I know, because I sat on the Public Accounts Committee in the other place for a number of years and we had to look at some of these issues as a result of inquiries to the National Audit Office.

My noble friend Lady Drake also made the point, as others have, about people filling in these forms online. Thirty per cent of the poorest families in this country have no access to a computer. It has been possible to claim jobseeker’s allowance online for 20 months. The take-up is 17 per cent. The idea that we are going to get to 80 per cent of people claiming benefits online will cause a huge problem for the system.

My noble friend Lady Hollis has just made the point that a lot of the good things that this Bill will seek to introduce will be damaged because of the kind of approach that this particular clause takes. The Government should really think again and take note of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake.

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, I, too, support the excellent contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Drake. I am sure that we all understand that if someone really has filled in a form negligently and as a result has received extra pay, that needs to be dealt with. My problem is how on earth you word such a clause. There are people who clearly are incapacitated and so cannot work things out—they cannot read adequately or have had to have some help from somebody else who does not quite understand their situation. You can imagine all sorts of situations in which things would go wrong, certainly when it comes to people with severe learning difficulties, major mental health problems and so on. Unless the official dealing with these things really understands the individual and how they might have come to make these errors, it seems to me that the most appalling injustices will result, which I am sure the Minister would not be happy about at all. Will he think about the wording of Clause 113 and try to generate wording that distinguishes between people who have in some way been negligent or perhaps on the edge of fraud but you cannot quite prove it? One can imagine a lot of people who might fall within that clause but who perhaps belong in a clause that relates to fraud. They are quite different from a large number of people who are struggling, whether with literacy or other problems. I am sure the Minister would wish to make that distinction clear and fair. It was helpful to have this amendment, and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Baroness Turner of Camden]

My Lords, I do not want to add much to what has been so well said already in support of the amendment. On the other hand, we have been talking about other Bills while discussing this one, and I note that some of the information that we have from, say, Citizens Advice, indicates that it gets a lot of applications from individuals who have no idea of their entitlement and need assistance with that. If people do not know what they are entitled to, it is easy for them to make mistakes in claiming. That may very well have happened in the cases that have been cited this afternoon.

Moreover, it does not say in the Bill exactly what the prescribed amount of penalty will be, so apparently in addition to giving back the overpayment a penalty would be involved. That would mean that somebody who is already very vulnerable and who has no money could be in difficulty on paying both the penalty and the overpayment. I suggest that the Minister looks at this part of the Bill as it could do with a bit of rewriting in line with what a number of Peers have had to say this afternoon.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Drake has opened an important probe on these provisions, and other noble Lords have emphasised some of the practical difficulties that they create. I hope that the Government will reflect on the intent, the wording, the timing and some of the practicalities that these provisions throw up.

I want to add to the questions in a modest way. The “appropriate authority” that can levy the penalties includes those that will administer council tax benefits. We know that in future several hundred authorities will be levying council tax benefits unless we can get some amendments to the Bill. There is a real issue of consistency and the systems themselves possibly being markedly different and administered in a different way. Precisely how is it proposed that consistency in council tax benefit will be achieved? What sort of value to engagement will there be with all those authorities? Indeed, is there capacity within the DWP to undertake that effectively?

I have two more questions. The briefing suggested that the penalty levy would be £50. What was that figure benchmarked against? Can I also have clarification of “due process” and whether rights of appeal are attached to this? It would be helpful to hear from the Minister. Subject to that, and to the many pertinent questions asked by my noble friends, I shall not raise further points. We have not heard the Minister’s amendments yet, so subject to that, those are my questions.

16:00

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, Amendments 104A and 104B, tabled in my name, are similar in intention to an earlier suggested amendment to Clause 102. These two amendments will ensure that where a claimant’s benefit is paid to a third party, usually a landlord, recovery of any civil penalty, along with recovery of the associated benefit overpayment, may be made by making appropriate deductions from that benefit payment. Currently, there is a slight difference in the wording used by this clause and Clause 102 when specifying that amounts are recoverable. This was unintentional.

Amendments 104A and 104B remove that difference and ensure a consistent read across. This will mean that, in the limited circumstances in which the third party benefit payment is the only one from which we can make a recovery, we can ensure that whenever a civil penalty is imposed, that penalty and the benefit overpayment may both still be recovered by deduction from that benefit.

In every civil penalty case there will always be an overpayment of benefit and we intend that the civil penalty will be added to the overpayment and recovered in the same way. Being unable to recover the civil penalty in the same way as the overpayment would mean that some claimants could evade the consequences of their negligence or failures to provide accurate and timely information and unnecessarily limit the methods of recovery available for civil penalties.

We want to make it clear that the civil penalty is always recoverable from the person at fault, even if in practice the claimant’s benefit is being paid to a third party. The process for recovery of the civil penalty needs to fit appropriately with debt recovery processes. Aligning the wording in new Sections 115C and 115D with that used in Clause 102 helps us to do that.

Amendments 104AA and 104ZA seek to prohibit the setting of targets for the civil penalty and limit our ability to impose a civil penalty to cases in which there has been a failure to provide information. The noble Baroness, Lady Drake, and my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale asked about negligence. We consider that the requirement of negligence in new Section 115C already implies that there is no reasonable excuse for the failure to take care of their award or claim. However, new Section 115C(1)(b) ensures that if reasonable steps to recover the error have been taken, the penalty will not apply. I certainly understand the possible ramifications if targets were attached to a penalty such as this. It is for exactly those types of reasons that we are not attaching penalties.

Perhaps I may update the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, on the figures in the impact assessment and the number of penalties. Last week, on 22 November, a revised impact assessment was issued that reflects updated estimates relating to the new civil penalty. We are assuming that the changes based on assumed overpayments of above £65, rather than the overpayment of £15, which was part of the earlier working assumption, has led to a substantial revision, and the number of penalties that we will consider moves down to 400,000 a year. We expect to make only half of those, 200,000, which is a substantial decrease on the figures mentioned by the noble Baroness.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I warn the Minister that that is one of the biggest elephant traps he is setting himself in the entire Bill.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I have to make clear that we are taking powers to do this. We do not have to use them.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Freud]

Let me make this absolutely clear. There were concerns that we would have a kind of speed camera situation here. This is about behaviours and making sure that people pay real attention when they are filling in their forms. The actual figures—

[The Countess of Mar]

The noble Lord referred to new Section 115C(1)(b), which states:

“the person fails to take reasonable steps to correct the error”.

Is this after the person has been told that there is an error, or must he find out that he has made an error in order to correct it?

[Lord Freud]

“Negligence” and “reasonable steps” are legally bound words. There is a huge case law about what they imply. One needs not to be negligent when filling in an application and to take reasonable steps to correct mistakes. If you do not know that you have made a mistake, you cannot expect to be able to correct it. That would not be a reasonable step. However, there is a legal framework around these words. I go back to the point I was trying to make about the incentives on the system as opposed to on the individual. On the penalty rates that I gave noble Lords, we expect that the amount collected in a year, for example 2014-15, will be roughly £9 million and the cost of delivering that system of civil penalties the same figure, £9 million, so there is no incentive in the structure to have unnecessary civil penalties. That is not the point. The point is to—

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

Will the noble Lord help me? Do the penalties accrue to the department or to the consolidated fund?

[Lord Freud]

That is as I would expect from the noble Lord. It is such a wicked question that I am baffled as to the answer. I think everyone is baffled. It is a magnificent question. It has bowled me out on my middle stump. I will have to find out the answer. I will not even hypothesise about where the different funds go. The right analogy for this is when you go to the dentist, having made an appointment, and you fail to attend. The dentist will charge you an amount in many cases in order to discourage that behaviour. When you are giving out a free good, it is very easy for the recipient to abuse it. You counterbalance that by making that somewhat expensive. When you go beyond a free good and you are giving out a positive good, that is even more the case.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, the point is that, on any reasonable analogy, the simpler it is for the individual to make an appropriate response such as telling the dentist they cannot come, the more reasonable it is to have a penalty if they fail to do so. The more complicated quantum of knowledge that they are expected to have about their entitlement, and therefore the easier it is to make a mistake or to have a misunderstanding, the more unreasonable it is to have a penalty. Would the noble Lord care to share with us an analogy in civil life as complex as knowledge of this Bill is for the complainant or applicant, rather than the dentist analogy?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I hope that it will be as simple as the dentist analogy. The whole point of introducing universal credit is that we get something as simple as saying yes or no with regard to your situation. The existing position is much more complicated than that. As some noble Lords will have seen when I did a presentation on the universal credit, we are trying to boil it down to simplicity. Where it is complicated, that is prima facie evidence that there is no negligence. The noble Baroness’s suggestion that we might take time to check out how the system is bedding in is not a bad one.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

Oh!

[Lord Freud]

Let us not bargain. It is not a bad suggestion. One of the things we want to do—

[Baroness Meacher]

The Minister said that if something is complex, you will not have negligence. Does he accept that what is complicated for one person might be not complicated for another? Certainly what is perfectly straightforward for somebody of average intelligence, for example, might be incredibly complex and difficult to follow for somebody with an IQ well below average. Is there any intention to check that sort of thing out? I know there is a later amendment on this, but it is relevant to this discussion.

[Lord Freud]

It is very relevant. One of the things that we are going to be monitoring as we look at the system is clusters of mistakes because, by definition, the system is not working properly where we are in that position. We will need to work this system in carefully. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, who is right on a lot of things, gives a warning, which is right. We cannot use this in an arbitrary way. We must have something, just as the NHS, HMRC and the train companies—I suppose everyone has boilingly paid the extra train ticket surcharge when they were on the wrong train—have systems to encourage people to comply with particular rules. It is particularly necessary where you have a system that is not even a free good. You are giving money out, so you have a positive incentive to shade a few inaccuracies without being fraudulent. We just want to keep people straight.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I thought it was very revealing when the Minister said the answers are yes/no. Most of these questions are binary—yes/no—but all the difficult ones, the ones people are going to appeal on, are not yes/no; they are shades of grey. When is a lone parent no longer a lone parent? Does a boyfriend stay one night, two nights or three nights? Does he contribute £20 for his weekend food or £50? Is he on the tenancy agreement? In that case, there is no question. That is a shade. It is a judgment call, not a negligence call. It is the same with the student son. It probably would not occur to parents in social housing that their son, who is at the local university and doing bar work at night, could be in the non-dependent adult deduction range. Why should they think so? It is a line, but they do not know where those lines are drawn.

The Minister is right that if somebody deliberately says, “I am not working and I want JSA”, but is actually earning £200 or £300 on the side in the building trade, that is a yes/no, but most of the issues that go to appeal—most of the difficult issues—are shades of grey, and many of us around this table would not be able to advise somebody. I really do not see how the client could possibly judge whether it was appropriate to tell the department or not.

[Lord Freud]

I do not think that we disagree on this. It would not be reasonable where there is clearly a lot of grey in the assessment, and I do not think a court in the land would allow us to say that someone was being negligent. That is not what negligence means. Negligence means not caring at all and just slamming down the wrong information or having information that you did not bother to put down. That is negligence. Getting something wrong on shades or “It didn’t occur to me” are not negligence and would not be construed as negligence in any court in the land. A lot of this is concern about things that the language does not support.

[Lord Touhig]

In my experience over years in the other place of dealing with cases in which people had been overpaid and the department sought to reclaim money, the department always took the line that the claimant was at fault and had been negligent. If we do not get away from that, we are storing up a huge problem. The line of the department has been that it is the fault of the claimant who has deliberately got this wrong, is in the wrong and therefore must repay some benefit they have had.

[Lord Freud]

I do not think that that is what is happening with overpayments, which are a separate category from these civil penalties. On overpayments, the department has taken the view that if people have received money they were not entitled to, that money should come back to the department, and there is no fault or blame attached in that requirement, so it is quite different from the civil penalty.

16:15

We have turned our back on targets in many areas, as your Lordships know, and I can assure noble Lords that for the civil penalty there will be no setting of targets either for the numbers or for the monetary value of the penalties imposed. The aim of the civil penalty is not to set targets for catching out claimants.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, referred to the question of encouraging people to use online services. I assure her that we absolutely will not use the civil penalty to encourage people to go online.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

Is that also the case with any other penalty, not just the civil penalty? Is it a benefits sanction?

[Lord Freud]

We absolutely will not do that. The noble Baroness drew a comparison with current levels of JSA usage. The online facility that we offer claimants is so markedly inferior that people would not want to use it. We need to make sure that people will want to use the online provision, and we are taking a lot of active steps to look at how to encourage and help people to use it. Indeed, this is one of the discussions that I am currently having with the various groups and charities that are trying to get the most disadvantaged in society online, because that is one way in which they become a full part of the economic life of the country, and indeed of the whole life of the country. They and I see that this could be an immensely powerful force for getting that inclusion. As I said, we will work very hard to encourage people to use it. One does not encourage people to do something that could be life-transforming for them through some of the things which the noble Baroness suggests I might be doing.

The aim of the civil penalty is to reinforce the importance to claimants of providing accurate information that we require in order to administer their claims and awards in advising us when they have a change of circumstance. It is a different issue when someone does something knowingly. That is fraudulent, and we will target that behaviour by looking at tougher punishments than the one for missing a dental appointment—I had better not talk about my teeth. We want claimants to take more responsibility for overpayments and to encourage a positive change in claimants’ future behaviour so that they take proper care of their benefit claims and awards.

The noble Baroness, Lady Drake, made an important point about mental health. We will take that into account. Indeed, that is why we require the claimant to have acted negligently and to have no reasonable excuse. The department must satisfy itself that the claimant has failed to take appropriate care. Each case will be considered individually by the decision-maker, and the penalty will not be imposed if a claimant’s state of health or mental health is considered relevant to the error that has been made.

Amendment 147ZA would mean that a civil penalty could be imposed only on those who failed to notify us of changes of circumstances and the failure resulted in an overpayment, while a claimant who incurred an overpayment by virtue of their negligence and who failed to take reasonable steps to correct the error would evade a penalty. We already help claimants in Jobcentre Plus and, as I have said, we will reinforce that. We believe that everyone should take responsibility for the accuracy of the information they provide in order to receive a benefit, whether that be at the start of their claim or during the life of their claim when there has been a change of circumstances.

As for the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, on legal aid, information on benefits and the conditions of entitlement for them is readily available to the general public. If claimants remain uncertain of which benefit is most applicable to them or have a question about their benefit entitlement, they can and should seek further advice from the department. New Sections 115C and 115D will therefore act together to remind claimants that it is just as important that they correctly report their circumstances at the start of the claim as well as report changes that occur within the life of a claim.

I will aim to answer the remaining three questions, having been bowled out on the fourth. On the ability of local authorities to impose fines, we consulted local authorities on the detail of the initiatives in the strategy and on our plans to implement them. Local authorities have provided input to the various projects that we have set up to implement the strategy. We have local authority staff collocated with the DWP and working on the strategy. That includes the sanctions and penalties project, which is doing the work on civil penalties. We will support local authorities in their work to implement the new penalty, which will include providing clear instruction and guidance on how to operate the new scheme. On the £50—

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

Perhaps that would not work. For example, in two side-by-side authorities, a family with two siblings lives with one sibling in each borough. One local authority may decide to exempt in such cases. They have to make 10 per cent cuts and are required to exempt pensioners, which would make 30 per cent cuts. One local authority decides to exempt disabled people all together, so they would have nil. The other does not and the matter is worked out on income. In that situation, how will two disabled siblings who live in two side-by-side boroughs work that out? How will the local authority work out what they should declare, what they should not and what the appropriate penalty could be? It is a complete minefield.

[Lord Freud]

Clearly, there are always difficult and special cases. I suspect that an old lady would not be eliminated entirely. The answer is that there is support for people with particularly tricky circumstances. We will work with local authorities that will be collocated in many cases, especially with the single fraud operation being set up. The shades of grey, which will start to rule out negligence, will be very evident in most of those cases.

In justification of the £50, that sum was chosen because we believe that this is a sufficient amount that will act as a punishment and make claimants more personally responsible for the overpayments they incur and encourage a positive change in their future behaviour. We have also set a significantly lower amount than the harsher punishments available for fraud offences, which reflects the fact that it is directed at the failure to take proper care of a benefit award and is not about fraudulent behaviour. Under the appeal process, the claimant will be able to appeal against the overpayments decisions, the civil penalty or both.

For those reasons, I urge noble Lords to reject Amendments 104AA and 104ZA.

[Baroness Drake]

I thank the Minister. Perhaps I may address some of the points that he raised because I still feel deeply concerned. I probably have slightly more concerns now than I did previously. I do not say that provocatively and I will try to say why. First, it should be made clear that this is a civil penalty that does not deal with fraud issues. There are separate clauses for that. The stated purpose of this civil penalty is to improve people’s behaviour in the accuracy of their form-filling. The concept of introducing the civil penalty worries me, particularly for a community of people with a greater concentration of the vulnerable and lower levels of numeracy and literacy, and when we are taking this means of a civil penalty to address behaviours, some of which are systemic and cannot be dealt with simply by handing out civil penalties here, there and everywhere—notwithstanding that the Minister said that that is not the intention.

The Minister said that Clause 113 goes on to say that there will be no penalty if you take reasonable steps to correct the error, but the point is that someone cannot take reasonable steps to correct an error if he does not know that he has made it. That is the problem. Someone could face the civil penalty before having the chance to put it right because he does not know that he has done something wrong. A concentration of people will be increasingly in the category of not knowing that they have made the error when filling out the form.

The Minister also said that I should not be worried about how the powers will be deployed, but he gave me one of the reasons why I am concerned. Quite rightly, and I do not disagree with him, he said that a civil penalty always comes at the same time as recovering an overpayment. If you issue a civil penalty, you have confirmed that there is an error, so it must follow that there is the recovery of an overpayment. If ever an incentive were articulated, that is it. You do not have to exercise discretion on overpayments; the awarding of a simple penalty puts you straight into going for that overpayment. No other considerations come into play. You make the easier decision to award a civil penalty because you do not then have to make the more complex decision about how to apply a discretion to an overpayment.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, let me make this absolutely clear. It is the other way round. You can charge a civil penalty only when there has been an overpayment and you would not necessarily charge a civil penalty when there was an overpayment unless you associated that overpayment with negligence.

[Baroness Drake]

That is my point. If civil penalties and overpayments are inextricably linked, you would not award a civil penalty unless there had been an overpayment. You can almost produce an incentive to put something into the category of an error attracting a civil penalty because it makes it easier to justify chasing the overpayment.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I must make this absolutely clear—it is my third go at this. An overpayment happens when someone is paid something they should not have been paid. A civil penalty will be charged only when there is both negligence and an overpayment. I forget the logical post hoc, or whatever. We need to get it round the right way.

[The Countess of Mar]

Let me get this absolutely clear. The department finds that there has been an error. Does it then tell the claimant that there has been an error, who says, “Oh dear, I’ll put it right”, and that is it, or does the department say straightaway that it is negligence? Is there a step in the middle when it goes to the claimant?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, in practice it will depend very much on the circumstances. Clearly, if one had a blanket rule it would be possible every time an error was uncovered to say, “Oh, just a mistake, I’ll put it right”, or, “It was negligence”. There will have to be occasions when it is pretty clear that there was genuine negligence. That will be testable and appealable on a set of definitions around what is negligent.

16:30

[Baroness Drake]

I am still not persuaded. I will stay with my point; I still remain concerned about targets. The Minister says that he has turned his back on targets. I accept that, but his assurance does not bind future Secretaries of State, who may not turn their backs on targets. Once this provision is in the legislation it is there for future Ministers and Secretaries of State to use.

I come back to the point that one cannot take reasonable steps to deal with an error unless one knows that one has made an error. This is the weakness with the example of the dentist appointment. With that example, you know that you have an appointment and therefore are in trouble for failing to meet that appointment. You do not necessarily understand, comprehend or know that you have made an error, or you may not necessarily have intended to make an error, in the form that you have filled in.

The Minister says that the Government have amended their figures by raising from £15 to £65 the level at which overpayment action would be triggered and that the number of penalties has been moved down to 400,000. I still think that that is a very large number. The Minister expects that penalties will apply to only half that number—to 200,000. I still think that that is quite a large number. That is his expectation, but once that power is awarded who knows what the figures will become, how the guidance in the department will be enacted and what the resultant figures may be? I do not think that noble Lords can be asked to express their approval or otherwise of a clause in a piece of legislation simply on the expectation of how a Minister would choose to deploy that power. One has to stand back and ask what the power is that the Government are taking to themselves. I am still left with concerns.

The Minister said that the Bill provides the powers but that you do not have to use them. That is not a compelling argument for not worrying about this clause. I am no lawyer, but I thought that one of the points of having rational legislation is that it protects the citizen against irrational political behaviour. An argument based on a disposition to use or not use a power at any particular time by a given set of Ministers does not really address the merits of whether there should be such a clause in the Bill.

The other issue is the £50 itself. The impact assessment says that,

“a £50 flat rate was determined as an appropriate starting point for benefit claimants to encourage better care of their claim”.

As that says, it is a starting point. Who knows how, over time, that level of penalty will evolve?

The Minister made the point that there will not be a scattergun approach to the civil penalty but that there will be clusters of mistakes on which the focus will be. That is good. If there are clusters of mistakes, it sounds dreadfully efficient to concentrate on them, but that is no reason for introducing a civil penalty; it is a reason for looking at managerial action or process or procedure, or focusing resources to address those clusters. Simply saying that every benefit claimant who does not fill out their form properly will now be subjected to the potential powers of a civil penalty seems a slightly over-the-top response to dealing with clusters of mistakes.

With all due respect, we have clusters of errors by the department and by local authorities. There are significant errors. I cannot believe that there would in the same way be penalties on staff who make those errors, and I would be completely opposed to that too. Errors often occur in the system for systemic reasons. That is different from fraud or from somebody knowingly tweaking their form or deliberately filling it in incorrectly in order to tip the benefit advantage in their favour.

[Lord Touhig]

Could my noble friend say—perhaps in response to the Minister’s answer to the noble Countess, Lady Mar, when he said that it would depend upon the circumstances, and following on the point just made by my noble friend—whether she thinks it would be helpful if the Minister, before Report, could provide us with the number of cases in which the department has accepted that an overpayment has been its fault and has not pursued it, and the number of occasions on which it has found that it has been the client’s fault and pursued that?

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I think that the power exists for tax credits but not for other benefits. At a briefing session, I asked one of the Minister’s officials— I shall not land that person in it—how often it had been used. Their answer was that they were not absolutely sure. I asked whether it was 20 or 2,000 times. Nearer 20, came the reply—in which case, I wonder where that figure of 200,000 would come from and whether it suggests that a lack of clarity is expected in the forms rather than negligence on the part of the people filling them in.

[Lord Freud]

Let me quickly pick up three issues. First, when I talked about clusters, I meant that, where there are clusters and mistakes, something is clearly going wrong with the way in which we are presenting universal credit. In those circumstances, we would look very hard at fixing that problem and we would not be able to accuse anyone of negligence.

Secondly, I shall look very closely at the run-in to operating the universal credit system. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, on lots of things. She is absolutely right that we cannot have a system that demonstrates problems in its run-in phase.

Thirdly, on targets, I need to write to noble Lords. I would not mind forbidding the DWP from ever using those targets in that way—and I could offer it as a deal any day—but a future Government might not want to be so constrained.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

I thank the Minister for his clarification about clusters. How many £50 fines would there need to be before there was a cluster? If it was then accepted in the department that the problem lay in universal credit or in the way in which the form was designed, would the department then consider paying back any £50 fine?

[Lord Freud]

No, I meant a cluster of mistakes. When we begin to see a cluster of mistakes around a particular set of questions, it clearly means that we have not got it right and need to do something about it. But we will know very fast.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

I accept and quite understand that, but the point is that, before the department realises that there is a cluster, a number of people might have been fined.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I buy the point about the delicacy of the run-in. I have a tool with which to monitor it very carefully. However, we must have a system that tells people that they must take care with their application. This is an application on which tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds are riding. It is no good people just putting in slapdash figures and not caring; this is really important information and it must be put down carefully. That is what we are trying to ensure with this relatively modest civil penalty.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I am very happy for the Minister to write to us on this rather than to spend more time today, because we need to make progress. This is about the practicalities. He has already indicated that the system could cost £9 million a year to operate. If a local authority seeks to collect both an overpayment and a penalty, the overpayment presumably reverts to the local authority. We do not know whether the penalty reverts to the Consolidated Fund or the DWP, but I presume that it is not to the local authority. The Minister will see that, in those circumstances, which may be quite common, one needs rules about how what is collected in respect of the two components is allocated between them. That presumably creates some administrative costs as well.

[Lord Freud]

I will need to write.

[Baroness Drake]

On the clusters point, clusters will presumably arise by type of error or a particular demographic of those filling in the form erroneously. I come back to my point that that issue should be dealt with not by civil penalties but by taking a more focused look at how one deals with those types of problem. I welcome the Minister saying that he is absolutely for the forbidding of targets. As to whether a future Government would be so constrained, no doubt noble Lords can argue with a future Government if they want them to be so constrained. We are trying to constrain this Government, so I certainly welcome any offers to constrain the way in which this civil penalty is used, although my preference is for it not to be there. I worry about the concept of a civil penalty and its deployment in the community of people whom we are discussing.

Finally, the Minister said that information is readily available, but you need to be able to understand it. No doubt he would say that if you do not understand it you should seek further advice from the department. However, I come back to the issues around the numeracy and literacy skills of this community of claimants. My point is that a new system of civil penalties is coming in. This partly goes to the point that my noble friend Lady Hollis made about trying to run a system of civil penalties when a new system is coming in. There will be less opportunity to find the people who this community of people normally approaches for support and help in filling out their forms because legal aid support through the advice system will not be there. We know that the local authority service will be run down, given the way in which benefits will be dealt with. We know that Jobcentre Plus venues are closing, and the jury is out as to how efficient a call centre system can be—certainly in the first few years—in supporting some of the vulnerable claimants who could be caught by erroneously filling out their forms. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 104ZA withdrawn.

Amendment 104A

Moved by

[Lord Freud]

104A: Clause 113, page 79, line 8, leave out subsection (4) and insert—
“(4) A penalty imposed under subsection (2) is recoverable by the appropriate authority from the person on whom it is imposed.”

Amendment 104A agreed.

Amendment 104AA not moved.

Amendment 104B

Moved by

[Lord Freud]

104B: Clause 113, page 80, line 5, leave out subsection (4) and insert—
“(4) A penalty imposed under subsection (1) or (2) is recoverable by the appropriate authority from the person on whom it is imposed.”

Amendment 104B agreed.

Amendment 104C had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.

Amendment 105

Moved by

[Lord Freud]

105: Clause 113, page 80, line 16, at end insert—
“(2) In section 190 of that Act (parliamentary control of orders and regulations), in subsection (1), before paragraph (za) insert—
“(zzb) regulations under section 115C(2) or 115D(1) or (2);”.”

Amendment 105 agreed.

Amendment 106 had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.

Clause 113, as amended, agreed.

Amendment 107

Moved by

[Lord Ramsbotham]

107: After Clause 113, insert the following new Clause—
“Means inquiry before sanctions, penalties and recovery of overpayments are imposed
(1) In respect of the imposition of an overpayment or sanction under the Jobseekers Act 1995 or any other provision or in the case of a penalty imposed under section 115C of the Social Security Administration Act 1992, the Secretary of State shall consider—
(a) evidence of the physical condition of the claimant and his or her state of health;(b) evidence of the psychological state of health of the claimant;(c) evidence relating to the means and income of the claimant;(d) evidence relating to the accommodation occupied by the claimant and the effect that the imposition of a sanction or penalty may have on the right to occupy such accommodation;(e) the family circumstances of the claimant and the impact that it may have on other family members and dependants;(f) evidence of the impact that a sanction or penalty may have on the ability of the claimant to fulfil obligations to third parties including those relating to the fulfilment of benefit entitlement conditions,before deciding whether to impose a sanction or penalty and shall only do so where, having considered all the relevant circumstances, it is reasonable to do so.(2) Regarding evidence as to means the Secretary of State must consider—
(a) the income of the claimant;(b) the capital of the claimant;(c) the expenditure of the claimant.(3) In order to facilitate the enquiry into the matters set out in subsection (1), the Secretary of State or authority may—
(a) arrange for a medical examination of the claimant;(b) obtain information from any agency holding relevant information on the income and resources of the claimant;(c) receive evidence from any other person or persons with a knowledge of the circumstances of the claimant.(4) A person who is subject to a penalty may appeal to a tribunal (lower tier) against the imposition of such a penalty.”

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, in many respects this amendment, which stems from the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust and 16 other organisations and groups, including Mind, Save the Children and the Church of England bishops, is complementary to the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, and the subsequent debate that we have just had. Its purpose is to propose that the duty on officials responsible for making decisions on sanctions or penalties against benefit claimants, or the enforcement of overpayment recovery, takes into account the facts and circumstances of the claimants in each case, and that that duty should be in the Bill. My list of what that evidence-gathering might include may seem long, but the facts and circumstances are as many and varied as the lives of the claimants themselves.

16:45

When a similar amendment was tabled in another place, the Minister replied,

“The more we prescribe and write into primary legislation and the more we say, ‘You have to take into account these 10 conditions before you decide whether somebody should be sanctioned or not,’ the more likely we are to end up with a decision that flies in the face of common sense”.—[Official Report, Commons, Welfare Reform Bill Committee, 24/5/11; col. 1161.]

Sadly, common sense is so lacking from many decisions on sanctions and penalties that I beg to differ. I have two examples of this. Last week the main concern expressed throughout the Second Reading of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill was its denial of access to justice, particularly—to quote the noble Lord, Lord Bach—by its decimation of,

“a system of social welfare law that over the past 40 years or so has cheaply and successfully helped many of the poorest people in our society to have access to justice and to resolve their legal problems”.—[Official Report, 21/11/11; col. 929.]

The possibility of similar injustice in sanctions and penalties enforced against poverty incomes in the Welfare Reform Bill begins unintentionally in Clause 14 with the claimant commitment and the work-focused interview requirement. Claimants are required to sign a commitment that includes the prescriptions that they must look for work and attend a work-focused interview. When the Minister replied to the debate on Clause 14 he said:

“Even for claimants who have work-related requirements placed on them, certain requirements are simply not open to negotiation. A claimant in the ‘all work-related requirements’ group must look and be available for work. A claimant in the ‘work-focused interviews only’ group must attend work-focused interviews. These very basic requirements are not open to negotiation”.—[Official Report, 24/10/11; col. GC 208.]

Workers in the field report that such a rigid requirement to attend work-related interviews, say once per week, whatever the facts and circumstances, is creating unnecessary sanctions that should be stopped now and not carried forward in the Bill.

The Minister told the Grand Committee that,

“On the issue of numbers, over the last year, the number of sanctions and disentitlements rose by around 270,000 from approximately 490,000 in 2009-10 to around 760,000 in 2010-11”,—[Official Report, 1/11/11; col. GC 419.]

which is probably explained by the change of regime in 2010. There will be those who regard such an increase as a success, but what about the victims of the unintended consequences of the clause?

My first example is Harry, who having recently left prison was desperate for work and finding it hard to make ends meet on an unemployment benefit of £67.50 per week. His record made finding employment difficult. He duly signed a claimant commitment requiring him to attend the jobcentre once a week, before he was taken on by a provider who sent him on a course. Attendance on this course meant that he could not attend the jobcentre as required, for which he was sanctioned by officials, against the advice of the provider and the police. He was fortunate that Zaccheus took up his case, appealed against the sanction and won, and his money was repaid. However, where was the common sense in the department’s official? Then there is the unnecessary expense of the appeal.

My second example is an ex-sergeant in the Royal Corps of Signals, not an ex-offender, who was similarly desperate for work. He was sanctioned when he forgot about his interview at the jobcentre because he was studying on a course that the self-same jobcentre had recommended. Again, where was the common sense?

I could give noble Lords many other examples that all reinforce my submission that reductions of statutory minimum incomes by the state, through the application of sanctions and penalties to poverty incomes by countless officials in jobcentres and local authorities, cannot just be left to their presumed common sense. What are needed, as with sentencing in the courts, are guidelines laid down to ensure that the standard of justice in the imposition of welfare punishments, and the enforcement of welfare debts, is no less than that required of the courts. My amendment is supported by the department’s own research, Perceptions of Welfare Reform and Universal Credit. One of its key recommendations about sanctions is that,

“The system should provide opportunity for claimants to explain themselves, and legitimate reasons should be taken into account”.

It is also reported that claimants saw it as important that sanctions struck the right balance between toughness and fairness and that they protected the innocent, such as children in a household, as well as taking account of the knock-on effects of increased crisis loans, family breakdowns and crime.

Concern about the enforcement of overpayments has been heightened by the Government’s abolition of the legal bar, which has existed since 1971, on enforcement when the claimant could not reasonably be expected to know that he or she was being overpaid. Again, something more than common sense is required to ensure that the Government’s commitment to the application of that rule, even though it is no longer a legal rule, is carried out in practice.

There is even greater concern about the hazards associated with the entry of real-time information about pay by employers into the IT system, as has already been mentioned, which will pay the universal credit. One slip by the employer or an IT failure could result in large overpayments that are in no way the fault of the claimants. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, has pointed out, this makes it even more important that all relevant evidence should be taken into account.

I put it to the Minister that an organisation as large as the department, with thousands of officials spread throughout the country dealing daily with vulnerable and impoverished people struggling to keep their heads above water, cannot afford not to lay down clear rules and guidelines to which they can refer when trying to settle cases of sanctions, penalties and overpayments. I suggest that the removal of legal aid from social welfare, as set out in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, to which I referred earlier, makes it even more vital that the duties with which those officials must comply should be set out in the Bill in the interests of maintaining the bare minimum process that justice demands.

I would be more than happy to discuss this with the Minister and his officials and look forward to his response. I beg to move.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I have happily added my name to this amendment because I think it is very important. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has moved it so ably that I wish to make only one point.

The Minister constantly evokes responsibility on the part of claimants and, similarly, everything that is written about the Bill emphasises the responsibility of claimants. The amendment would help to ensure that officials exercise their powers in a responsible manner. There needs to be a quality in the contract between claimants and officials. I am not suggesting that officials should be fined or receive a civil penalty if they get it wrong. However, the amendment would help to ensure that officials consider the impact on living standards and the knock-on effects of likely debt and exercise their power as responsibly as possible.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, there is, in my view, a principled reason for having something of this kind. However, I am not sure whether the noble Lord has necessarily got it right and obviously he wishes to discuss the detail with the Minister and his officials. For instance, I wonder whether the amendment would have caught the two examples that he gave. Subsection (1)(f) states that the Secretary of State shall consider,

“evidence of the impact that a sanction or penalty may have on the ability of the claimant to fulfil obligations to third parties including those relating to the fulfilment of benefit entitlement conditions”.

We are saying that before imposing a sanction you should ascertain whether the obligations to third parties,

“including those relating to the fulfilment of benefit entitlement conditions”,

prevented the attendance or whatever it was that is being sanctioned. It is not the sanction that does it; it is the fact that the sanction should not be imposed because of the obligations the claimant already had.

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, I would like to add just one point for the Minister to think about in his response. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, made a very powerful case. If the Minister does not like this way of doing things, could he help the Committee to understand how he can guarantee that his officials will undertake what seem to me to be the eminently reasonable strictures contained within the clause? If this is not the way, then what is?

Amendments moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and others in Committee have drawn the attention of the Committee to the fact that many of the people who will be receiving this benefit are living on the breadline. They are living on incomes which are so tight that what may seem to be relatively small sanctions can tip somebody into misery, as the classics will tell us. Could the Minister therefore consider how we in this Committee and in the House can have the confidence that nobody in that situation will be plunged potentially into despair by having a sanction applied without due consideration being taken of the impact on their physical and mental health, and indeed on the well-being of any children in their family, as described by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham?

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, as has been said by my noble friend Lady Sherlock, the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has made a powerful case in principle. Like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, I am not quite sure that the formulation set down here is quite right, as it lumps together sanctions, penalties and recovery of overpayments, and there might be arguments for unpicking those. It would be helpful, in any event, if, following this debate, we could have in writing a note as to what information decision-makers would routinely have in front of them when they make the decision with regard to each of those various categories. That would help us as we move to Report.

We debated issues around the claimant commitment earlier, as has been said. My noble friend Lady Lister made the important point again about that being more about co-production rather than something that is delivered and given to the claimant. That is an important point. As my noble friend Lady Sherlock said, we are dealing with people whose resources are, almost by definition, incredibly stretched. In many cases they are on the edge. If we are going to further reduce the means that they have, then we ought to be very clear that we do that in the knowledge of all of the circumstances and the impact on their well-being.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I agree that it is right and proper that a decision-maker gives full consideration to all the relevant facts provided by a claimant when deciding whether to impose a sanction or penalty. It is also important that claimants have appeal rights when sanctions and penalties are imposed. I believe that the amendments are unnecessary because we have adequate protections in place, but I am very happy to meet the noble Lord on this matter. Let us go through it, because it is important that we get it right.

The essential difference between us—although, as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie pointed out, we need to tease out three different things here—is that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, is looking for a specific process, whereas we are aiming, in the legal framework as it stands, at a general process of cover. The noble Lord will be aware that, if you have a whole load of specific things, you have a problem when you get the special case that is not covered, whereas if you have a general protection you are covered. I think there is a fruitful discussion to be had around that, and I would welcome a discussion to see that we have the right protections because, again, I do not think there is a huge difference between us here. We want to have the right protections for a vulnerable group. We do not want arbitrary behaviour; we want common sense. It is just a question of looking through. I will circulate the note on this matter to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, as well.

We are training decision-makers on a number of areas: retaining impartiality; identifying what constitutes evidence and where the burden of proof lies; on the concept of the balance of probabilities; and on an understanding of social security law. It is vital that we do this.

17:00

The starting point for overpayment recovery will be that almost all overpayments of working-age benefits within the scope of Clause 102 will be recoverable. This follows the basic premise that a benefit recipient should not be allowed to keep money which they should not have received. Future overpayment recovery will provide greater returns and better value for money for the taxpayer than at present. The code of practice that will support the application of the recovery provisions will ensure that decisions about when recovery action is taken will be consistent and considered. The department already has well established considerations in place about the maximum rate of recovery. If a claimant cannot afford the suggested repayment rate, DWP will discuss an alternative repayment rate, or exceptionally, where it is warranted, not pursue recovery. That will also cover a civil penalty.

Noble Lords sought an assurance around the appeals process for sanctions. There is a well established appeals process in relation to the imposition of sanctions which will be taken forward into the new regime. A civil penalty may be appealed against. Indeed, as it will be notified to the claimant at the same time as the overpayment decision, this will make it easier for the claimant to appeal against either or both.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I trust this information is reliable, but in today’s press there were quite a lot of stories about how long appeals are taking and that the department—or, rather, following Leggatt, the tribunals system—is having to appoint a further 85 judges to sit on appeals tribunals because of the backlog, which is up to 12 months. Can I have an assurance—I am sure that this must be the case—that, while waiting for an appeal, no interest is ticking up on sanctions, penalties, overpayments or anything like that?

Secondly, checking with the law on tax credit as opposed to what may be the case on UC, I think that nearly all the difficulties with tax credits were not at the initial point of claim but were changes of circumstance and nearly all of them were associated with childcare changes. Half of all lone parents had more than a dozen changes of circumstances in a year, the system never caught up with itself and the computer nearly toppled. How is this going to work in this situation? People’s childcare circumstances inevitably change over half-term, a Baker day, Easter and Whitsun. By the time you keep reporting them or not reporting them—or feeling that you do not need to report them because there has been no reply to the previous report—you could be in a complete mess. I do not see how the Minister is going to manage this.

[Lord Freud]

The answer to the first question is that interest is not ticking.

On the second question, I share the noble Baroness’s concern about how the present childcare system works on reporting, which is why we are producing an entirely new system with a monthly report and a monthly payment system. Basically, how the system will work is that you put in the receipt for what you have paid, and then that payment is repaid on a monthly basis. The problem presented by a change of circumstances will go. Roughly 15 per cent of problems are caused at the initial stage of the original application. It does not seem sensible to privilege one set of mistakes against another when it is a reasonably substantial proportion.

I am very happy to meet the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, to go through these issues in some detail, because I share his and other noble Lords’ concern that we get this right.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, if the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, agrees, might we join in with those discussions or reflections?

[Lord Freud]

I would be utterly delighted to invite noble Lords, but not too many. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, will give permission for the Official Opposition team to join him. If he does, I would be delighted to see you all.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

If there are invitations floating around, could I add my name to the list? Two things worry me that we have not touched on. I support the amendment. I do not think that any of us really understands the full consequences of localism as it is finally rolled out. In terms of the public purse as generally described, if we do not have sensible means inquiries within the DWP provisions, we may just be handing on costs, charges and families in distress to our local government colleagues. That does not take us very far.

Another obvious point is that the legal aid changes that are coming are very worrying. If we look at some of the wider context in any such meeting, that would be extremely valuable, too.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, I reassure my noble friend the Minister that I am not asking to come to this meeting, but, as somebody who has sat through long hours in Grand Committee, I would diffidently make the suggestion that both matters might be treated at the same meeting.

[Lord Freud]

Yes, my Lords. I think, actually, I withdraw my offer of a meeting, because, given the level of interest, it is probably not appropriate. We should rather have a little seminar where the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, is the leader, but I must welcome anyone who wants to attend that, because it does not make much sense to be too exclusive. Does that suit? Let us sit down and see whether there are any cracks in this, as some noble Lords are concerned about.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

Sorry, if somebody puts the same information into their applications for universal credit and for localised council tax and the information is negligent or erroneous, though not fraudulent in both cases, are they exposed to two penalties?

[Lord Freud]

No.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

Then who will get the money? Will it be the local authority or the department?

[Lord Freud]

When I have worked out the various recipients to the main fund and written, I will let the noble Baroness have a copy of the letter that I send to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

Thank you.

[Lord Freud]

I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I was not quite certain what we were going to end up with after all that. I was very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for pre-empting me in suggesting that others should come to that meeting, not just those who put their names to the amendment but also those who have spoken, because I suspect that there is quite a lot to be done. I think that it might be sensible also to include some of the groups that approached me in the formulation of the amendment to hear from them on the ground as they have a great deal to contribute. I found it encouraging that the Minister agreed that this was an issue that really has to be tackled so we all start from a common ground.

As always, I am grateful for the wisdom of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. I absolutely accept what he says and indeed, I have looked at this process in Grand Committee as being a way of refining what we were saying. It was getting something done that needs refining, which I saw as the purpose of the Grand Committee. I entirely take the Minister’s idea that we take this on with a seminar. It is too important an issue not to be explored in detail. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, has introduced the issue of localism, and so on, so there are other issues, as well as the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill on the impact on legal aid and access to justice, which should all be taken into account. On that basis, and in thanking everyone who has taken part, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 107 withdrawn.

Clauses 114 to 124 agreed.

Amendment 107A

Moved by

[Lord De Mauley]

107A: After Clause 124, insert the following new Clause—
“Information-sharing between Secretary of State and DPP
(1) The Secretary of State may supply social security information to a person specified in subsection (2) for use for a purpose specified in subsection (3).
(2) The persons referred to in subsection (1) are—
(a) the Director of Public Prosecutions;(b) a person appointed under section 5 of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 (conduct of prosecutions on behalf of Crown Prosecution Service). (3) The purposes referred to in subsection (1) are—
(a) the institution or conduct of criminal proceedings which relate wholly or partly to social security matters;(b) the giving of advice to any person on any matter relating to criminal proceedings, or criminal offences, which relate wholly or partly to social security matters;(c) the exercise in relation to social security matters of functions assigned to the Director of Public Prosecutions under section 3(2)(g) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985;(d) the exercise of functions of the Director of Public Prosecutions under Part 2, 5 or 8 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.(4) The reference in subsection (1) to the Secretary of State includes a person providing services to the Secretary of State.
(5) This section does not limit the circumstances in which information may be supplied apart from this section.
(6) In this section—
“social security information” means information held for the purposes of any of the Secretary of State’s functions relating to social security matters;
“social security matters” means—
(a) social security (including the payments and allowances referred to in section 124(8)), (b) tax credits, and(c) schemes and arrangements under section 2 of the Employment and Training Act 1973.”

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, this group of amendments deals with the sharing of data between the DWP and the Crown Prosecution Service on the one hand and the DWP and local authorities on the other. They build on the good practice and precedent that has been developed in the department and debated regularly by your Lordships to ensure that DWP information is used and reused efficiently, effectively, legally and securely.

Amendments 107A, 107B and 118A relate to data sharing between the DWP and the CPS and set out the legal basis for sharing information with the CPS in order for it to prosecute social security fraud. They also set out the manner in which the CPS can use that information. The DWP fraud and error strategy was published in October 2010 and the single fraud investigation service originated from that strategy. This will have two effects. First, it will bring together all elements of local authority, DWP and HMRC fraudulent benefit investigations. Secondly, it will result in an increase in the amount of DWP prosecutions handled within DWP’s prosecution division. This increase in the number of cases to be dealt with, the need for us to react flexibly to new requirements emerging from new social security benefits and provisions, and the emergence of the single service have led our prosecution division to review its capability. This in turn has led to the conclusion that the service would be provided more effectively if it were to be transferred to the Crown Prosecution Service.

Specifically, there are three data-sharing amendments that relate to this. Amendment 107A sets out what information may be shared and what restrictions will apply to the CPS when using that information. Amendment 107B places the same onus on CPS staff as exists for all DWP employees when handling personal data and imposes a penalty clause that may be invoked in cases of unlawful disclosure. Amendment 118A deals with the extent of the legislation in that the CPS operates only in England and Wales, so these provisions are not being extended to cover cases dealt with by the prosecuting authorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Examples of the information that will be exchanged between the DWP and the CPS include files for consideration for prosecution and the execution of those duties. However, the DWP has a very wide range of legal requirements that relate to investigating and prosecuting fraudulent offences. To bridge the information gap that arises because the work was previously wholly contained within the DWP, the staff currently employed in the department’s prosecution division will be redeployed into the CPS. I assure your Lordships of our continuing commitment to handling personal information with the same level of protection that is currently standard within DWP.

17:15

The provisions in Amendment 107B replicate the legislation in the Social Security Administration Act 1992 for all DWP employees and guarantees that the level of confidentiality with which the DWP handles the personal information of its customers is extended to those who will be handling and disposing of prosecutions on behalf of the DWP in the future.

In making these amendments, the DWP has consulted and negotiated with officials in the Attorney-General’s Office and the Crown Prosecution Service to ensure that the provisions are not unduly onerous. The CPS agrees that these amendments are necessary to provide it with a formal legal basis and to support the roles that each department will play in meeting the Government’s continued commitment to drive down fraud and error in the benefit systems.

The remaining amendments in this group, Amendments 108 to 112A, to Clauses 126 and 128, replace and expand existing data-sharing provisions between the Department for Work and Pensions, local authorities and others such as the service providers of local authorities. Current legislation allows social security data to be shared between the DWP and local authorities for housing benefit or certain welfare services purposes without requiring individual consent. By widening the category of welfare services, local authorities will be able to make it easier for those with particular needs, such as people on low incomes, or elderly and disabled people, to receive the services to which they are entitled. We intend to use this provision to share data in relation to schemes such as blue badge parking permits, disabled facility grants and the provision of domiciliary and residential care services.

As our thinking on new data-sharing arrangements has developed, it has become apparent that we may want to exchange information about any social security benefit, and so the amendments to Clause 126 will remove the need to list every individual social security benefit separately. By amending the definition of “relevant information” to include “any relevant social security benefit” it will be easier to understand the benefits that the new provisions cover and will avoid the need to make amendments in the future should the list of benefits change.

The amendment to Clause 128 removes the definitions of income-based jobseeker’s allowance and income-related employment and support allowance, as neither of these is required following the amendments to Clause 126. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, for moving the amendment. It is never quite as welcome as his normal Motion, which is that we should have a tea break.

There is nothing between us on the amendments. As the Minister said, and as was contained in the helpful note issued by the DWP, it is anticipated that the volume of cases that the DWP wishes to prosecute will substantially increase. What additional resources are being committed, first, to the CPS to enable it to deal with the substantial increase in prosecutions; and, secondly, to advice agencies, which will inevitably face an increase in demand as claimants seek to understand why they are being prosecuted and what their rights are in this area? Given the absence of legal aid in future for many such cases, as we have already heard today, such generic funding will be vital.

As the Minister said, the second group of amendments relate to information-sharing between the Government and local authorities and sensibly use the generic term rather than the specific ones for each particular benefit. However, can the Minister clarify whether there are any duties on local authorities to share information in the other direction—that is, with the department—because, as we have seen and has been mentioned again in the case of the benefit cap, understanding the amount of help with council tax that the claimant is receiving may be critical to ensuring that the system proposed can be made to work.

[Lord De Mauley]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her questions. In order to hasten things, may I write to her with answers to those questions?

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

Is it not the case that local authorities and the department very sensibly share information on the ATLAS project and therefore that this would follow from that?

[Lord De Mauley]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness. I think I will include that in the written answer.

Amendment 107A agreed.

Amendment 107B

Moved by

[Lord Freud]

107B: After Clause 124, insert the following new Clause—
“Unlawful disclosure of information supplied to DPP
(1) A person to whom information is supplied under section (Information-sharing between Secretary of State and DPP), or an employee or former employee of such a person, may not disclose the information if it relates to a particular person.
(2) Subsection (1) does not apply to—
(a) a disclosure of a summary or collection of information so framed as not to enable information relating to any particular person to be ascertained from it; (b) a disclosure made for the purposes of a function of the Director of Public Prosecutions, where the disclosure does not contravene any restriction imposed by the Director;(c) a disclosure made to the Secretary of State, or a person providing services to the Secretary of State, for the purposes of the exercise of functions relating to social security matters (within the meaning of section (Information-sharing between Secretary of State and DPP));(d) a disclosure made for the purposes of a criminal investigation or criminal proceedings (whether or not in the United Kingdom);(e) a disclosure made for the purposes of—(i) the exercise of any functions of the prosecutor under Parts 2, 3 and 4 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002;(ii) the exercise of any functions of the Serious Organised Crime Agency under that Act;(iii) the exercise of any functions of the Director of the Serious Fraud Office, the Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland or the Scottish Ministers under, or in relation to, Part 5 or 8 of that Act;(iv) investigations or proceedings outside the United Kingdom which have led or may lead to the making of an external order within the meaning of section 447 of that Act;(f) a disclosure made to a person exercising public functions of law enforcement for the purposes of the exercise of those functions in civil proceedings;(g) a disclosure which in the opinion of the Director of Public Prosecutions is desirable for the purpose of safeguarding national security;(h) a disclosure made in pursuance of an order of a court;(i) a disclosure made with the consent of each person to whom the information relates.(3) Subsection (1) does not apply in relation to information relating to schemes and arrangements under section 2 of the Employment and Training Act 1973.
(4) Subsection (1) is subject to any other Act or to an instrument made under an Act.
(5) A person who contravenes subsection (1) commits an offence.
(6) It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under this section of disclosing information to prove that he or she reasonably believed—
(a) that the disclosure was lawful, or(b) that the information had already and lawfully been made available to the public.(7) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable—
(a) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or a fine or both, or(b) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding twelve months or a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or both.(8) A prosecution for an offence under this section may be instituted only with the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
(9) In relation to an offence under this section committed before the commencement of section 154(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (increase in maximum term that may be imposed on summary conviction of offence triable either way), the reference in subsection (7)(b) to twelve months shall have effect as if it were a reference to six months.”

Amendment 107B agreed.

Clause 125 agreed.

Clause 126 : Information-sharing in relation to welfare services etc

Amendments 108 to 112

Moved by

[Lord Freud]

108: Clause 126, page 96, line 20, leave out second “prescribed” and insert “relevant social security”

109: Clause 126, page 97, line 35, leave out subsection (12)

110: Clause 126, page 97, line 45, leave out from beginning to end of line 2 on page 98

111: Clause 126, page 98, line 8, at end insert—
““relevant information” means information relating to—(a) any relevant social security benefit, or(b) welfare services;“relevant social security benefit” has the meaning given in section 121DA(7) of the Social Security Administration Act 1992;”

112: Clause 126, page 98, line 16, at end insert—
““welfare services” includes services which provide accommodation, support, assistance, advice or counselling to individuals with particular needs, and for these purposes “assistance” includes assistance by means of a grant or loan or the provision of goods or services.”

Amendments 108 to 112 agreed.

Clause 126, as amended, agreed.

Clause 127 agreed.

Clause 128 : Sections 125 to 127: supplementary

Amendment 112A

Moved by

[Lord De Mauley]

112A: Clause 128, page 99, leave out lines 27 to 30

Amendment 112A agreed.

Clause 128, as amended, agreed.

Clause 129 agreed.

Amendment 113 not moved.

Amendment 113A had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.

Amendment 113AA (in substitution for Amendment 113A)

Moved by

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

113AA: After Clause 129, insert the following new Clause—
“Social Security Advisory Committee
In section 173(5)(a) of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 for “coming into force of the enactment under which those regulations are made” substitute “enactment under which those regulations are made receiving Royal Assent”.”

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

My Lords, this amendment is tabled in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Thomas of Winchester. I think I can dispatch this with as much speed as possible. It is an important probing amendment to try to persuade the Government to clarify the position of the Social Security Advisory Committee beyond doubt in the context of this Bill.

As we all know, the Social Security Advisory Committee sheds light on some of the more obscure regulations and regulatory powers that flow from primary legislation and has an important additional duty to give advice and assistance to the Secretary of State. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Freud, who I think is the responsible Minister, is very careful in his duty to the Social Security Advisory Committee, which is welcome. It is welcome as far as the committee is concerned as well.

After Royal Assent, there is a process that has been going on for some time. Members of the Social Security Advisory Committee—they are technical experts, in the main—can self-refer pieces of secondary legislation where they feel there is an important point to make, to explore or to advise Parliament of. They sift every statutory instrument, and they use their discretion to self-refer. It all works rather well. As far as I can recall, until the Social Security Administration Act 1992 primary social security statutes were much more expansive and descriptive and most had their own time limit at which the Social Security Advisory Committee could take charge of regulations and self-refer. It was usually after a period of something like six months, but sometimes different statutes made different arrangements.

After 1992, there was an understanding that six months was the most appropriate period because Parliament could in theory be considered to have introduced all the salient facts, discussed them and come to conclusions that would not change much in six months. I think things have changed since then, because we are now dealing with skeletal primary statutes. This Bill is no exception. There must be up to 200 regulations in here. In the past we have seen some regulations being scrutinised by the Social Security Advisory Committee only after six months of the implementation of the provisions in the individual clauses.

This is a probing amendment. I hope that the Government will go away and think carefully about this. In this Bill in particular, because it is a significant change of direction, regulations will start pouring out of the department, so we will have many hours of happy discussions downstairs in secondary instrument debates almost as soon as this Bill gets Royal Assent. I want to be clear about exactly where the SSAC fits into the future of that. The implementation of the Bill and the rollout of provisions will, in any case, take a long while, so circumstances could change quite dramatically not just financially but socially, culturally and in others ways as well. I for one would feel safer if we had an assurance—even if it was in the Bill—that there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that, six months after Royal Assent and when the ink was dry after Her Majesty’s pen had scraped the official signature— if that is what happens these days—across the goatskin, the Social Security Advisory Committee would immediately thereafter have access to the regulation-making power that flowed from the universal credit and all the other provisions in this particular legislation.

Obvious questions flow from that. Does the SSAC have the discretion, authority or interest in picking what regulations to concentrate on? Speaking for myself, I trust its judgment in doing that. If, for every 10 secondary instruments that it looked at, it said that Parliament should look at two, I would be absolutely content to leave it to make that decision and use its discretion in that way. That is based on years of working with the committee and being confident that its members know what they are doing and have regard to the public interest, as well as having the depth and knowledge of experience that they have arrived at over many years. I can give colleagues comfort that they could do that properly.

I am not even going to ask for more resources. I would like to, but in these straitened times it would be hard to say that as we could double the workload we need to double the staff. I am not saying that. I am asking for clarity about when its remit commences. I think that we will all need help in trying to understand. I know that the Minister has done his best to provide the Committee with draft regulations as soon as they become available, but there are still huge gaps. We are taking a lot on trust. As legislators, we could feel more confident that we were on top of what was being done in Parliament if the Social Security Advisory Committee had unfettered access to discretionary self-referral of statutory instruments after six months after Royal Assent. I beg to move.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

My Lords, my name is also on this amendment. My noble friend has explained the six-month rule. I would say that the DWP has recently interpreted it creatively. The rule was originally brought in partly to allow for the quick implementation of regulations and partly to stop the wasteful duplication of the same evidence being produced for the statutory consultation undertaken by the SSAC as for the parliamentary debate on the Bill. It dates back to 1973 and the predecessor committee, the National Insurance Advisory Committee, but that reasonable rule has been stretched beyond reason when a year, say, after Royal Assent, whole sections of Acts can be activated, at which point the DWP starts the clock to begin the six-month exclusion period.

17:30

Not only is the SSAC barred from examining regulations brought in within the six-month period but the DWP itself is also exempt from consultation on certain matters, particularly those relating to pensions. This means that for many social security regulations, there is no consultation requirement with key interest groups at all, which is completely counter to best practice in governance nowadays. By this creative interpretation of the six-month rule, the DWP does not seem to mind that Parliament is in effect being kept in the dark about the most up-to-date evidence on the policy that it wishes to introduce by way of a statutory instrument, by preventing the SSAC from evaluating the pros and cons of the policy in the light of prevailing circumstances.

As my noble friend has pointed out, the SSAC is a statutory consultee, and it has proved its worth time and time again. Its reports on important social security regulations, for which it carries out a wide consultation with key players, are invaluable to parliamentarians and to the welfare sector in general, as are its occasional reports on other social security matters. Its independence from government is all important and is laid down in legislation. As we know only too well, the Government do not have to take the advice of the SSAC, and Governments of all persuasions from time to time have chosen to ignore SSAC advice. However, even if they do not accept all the recommendations of a report, they will very often decide to take some of those recommendations on board, and they have to give reasons for all the recommendations that they turn down.

My noble friend has dealt with the argument that this amendment might be no good simply because the SSAC might be overwhelmed by the sheer number of SIs that it will now have to examine. However, as he said, it does not choose to call for evidence on a lot of SIs now. It always has to make a judgment on the ones that it will look at and those it decides not to examine. At least under this amendment it will have a proper choice and will not be frustratingly barred from this judgment by the dodgy interpretation of the six-month rule.

I will finish with the report on The Management of Secondary Legislation: Follow-up in 2008 by the Merits Committee, of which I used to be a member. It was very critical of the whole six-month exemption. It said:

“The analysis of a consultation exercise is not an afterthought but should drive policy. The full analysis should always be available when the SI is laid, as should any other supporting documents”.

It also recommended the scrapping of both the SSAC’s six-month exemption from consultation and the DWP’s own six-month exemption where it still exists.

I hope the Minister will agree to take a fresh look at this issue, particularly as it will affect this Bill.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, we have a good deal of sympathy for the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas. My understanding is that draft regulations—or proposals for regulations—have to be submitted to the SSAC except in certain circumstances. One of them, which has been mentioned, is that regulations made within six months of the enactment of primary powers do not have to be submitted.

This amendment seeks to say that the six-month clock should start when the Bill becomes an Act, not when the particular provisions are drawn down. That could widen the scope of what the SSAC should review. I support that. It is sometimes uncomfortable as a Minister being on the receiving end of a report from the SSAC, but in a sense that is part of the process that we need to engage in. Clearly there would be issues of capacity if this change were to happen overnight, particularly given the Bill that we are now considering. It seems that Bills of this nature will inevitably be framework Bills. Our Bills were. There is always tension between working on the basis of draft SIs, trusting to luck or assurances as to what eventually comes through, and having a degree of certainty.

It is not our official position but it seems to me that one way round this would be for Parliament to be able to amend SIs. It would take us away from some of the debates that we have about trying to get stuff into primary legislation, but that is probably a debate for another day. We should take seriously the prospect of the SSAC looking at SIs more widely and not being pre-empted by the six-month rule. There is clearly an issue not only about the capacity of the SSAC but about its expertise. It is very important that that is maintained.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I am not alone, I know, in acknowledging the vast knowledge of my noble friend Lord Kirkwood in this area. He was, of course, chair of both the Social Security Advisory Committee and the Work and Pensions Committee in the House of Commons—I think I can say that now, if I am not pre-empting. His involvement in this important subject stretches much further than that. I welcome the probe and hope that I will be able to persuade him that the amendment is unnecessary.

The SSAC provides a valuable function and goes about its work very effectively. From my perspective and that of my ministerial colleagues, the relationship between the department and the committee is productive. We enjoy a similar relationship to the one that the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, had. More specifically, the SSAC is currently working on a major study of passport of benefits in the light of the impact of these reforms. As my noble friend acknowledged, this is really the most significant ad hoc study by the committee that Ministers have commissioned for many years. It is a wish to look at situations in the widest possible way.

The committee’s current remit does not include the scrutiny of draft regulations made under powers recently enacted by Parliament. As my noble friend pointed out, this is for a period of six months, beginning from the commencement of the relevant enabling power. The amendment would therefore set the clock ticking from Royal Assent in all cases rather than from the commencement of the relevant enabling power. It follows that if an enabling power was commenced at a point more than six months after Royal Assent, regulations under that power would automatically be referred to the committee. I believe that that would be unnecessary. Informal arrangements are already in place in this area. As I explained when we debated Clause 1, we will continue to talk to the SSAC as we move to the implementation stage of this Bill and use the arrangements that are currently in place and that allow us to provide it with information on new powers and regulations made within six months of the commencement of those powers.

Noble Lords are aware that when the Government implement major welfare reforms, the relevant primary powers are sometimes commenced at different times, reflecting the staggered implementation process that can apply in such circumstances. Under the amendment, some of the regulations brought forward in this scenario—those brought forward within six months of Royal Assent—would not be subject to the committee’s scrutiny, but others brought forward subsequently would be, even though Parliament would have approved the primary powers applicable to the reform as a whole. That inconsistency would be undesirable and we do not believe that adding to the committee’s former role in this way would be warranted. Implementing the reforms in this Bill is an enormous undertaking.

A huge number of officials in the department are working on it, and others are working on changes to a very challenging timetable. It follows that the weight of draft regulations following the reforms would place an unreasonable burden on the SSAC if the Secretary of State were required to refer all regulations to the committee made six months after Royal Assent. That point was touched on by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, and I need to confirm that this is an overwhelming process, particularly right now.

I have emphasised that we already have effective informal processes in place in this area. I also believe that the application of the affirmative procedure to, for example, the first core set of universal credit regulations is another safeguard, making it less necessary to consult the SSAC on a formalised basis in respect of those regulations in particular.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I think we would all accept that there is a difference between this Bill and, for example, a pensions Bill and its draft regulations, on which the Minister, his officials and his staff need to consult what I would call the professional organisations. These are quasi-technical and may be associated with the process; they have their own exchange and interchange of information and of what they flag up, and so on. In other words, there is a professional body of interested but skilled parties who can negotiate with a department on an equal base, and, as a result, draft regulations may be improved before they subsequently become full regulations.

The trouble with welfare reform and a Bill such as this is that, apart from the charitable organisations and lobby groups that have a wealth of expertise, for the most part there are not the bodies that the noble Lord and his staff would expect to negotiate with in the same way as he would expect to negotiate with business organisations or the NAPF about pension structures. Therefore, the very fact that there might be 200 regulations coming our way means that Members too find that they have no input from professional bodies that are equivalent to those pension bodies but that deal with welfare, in order to help shape our thoughts and give us an extra resource of experience.

This is not necessarily appropriate for Bills for which there are bodies that can serve that function, but for framework Bills and where bundles of regulation are likely to cluster in a particular field—housing here, or the benefit cap there—it would be very helpful for all of us seeking to scrutinise those regulations in due course to have had the input of the SSAC before we commence, because otherwise there is nothing between us, the draft regulations and the framework Bill, and we will not get the appropriate input that we need.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, what we are designing here is a massive undertaking. I know that I set a considerable challenge for the SSAC in the passporting arrangement alone. The noble Baroness and my noble friend ask whether adequate information flows are coming through to Parliament as we consider the regulations. We are in regular contact with the stakeholders on a wide range of issues. We have published a series of detailed policy notes. We are trying to have a very open process.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My issue is that there are no stakeholders as there are in other types of legislation. My argument hinges on that fact. In pensions legislation, and even in some of the disability legislation that is very specialist, such as the Disability Discrimination Act, which is a more legal framework, there are specialist organisations that can negotiate. We have no such organisations with this Bill. We have charities, but they are client-group representatives rather than bodies of equal professional standards, in the way that the Department of Education has teachers, the Department of Health has doctors and so on. The DWP has no equivalent.

[Lord Freud]

I accept the point. In practice, we face lobbyists and stakeholders, although one could argue that the pensions industry is also facing lobbyists, albeit slightly better resourced ones who are more interested. The core issue is what the SSAC can do with this Bill in its scale and size. The SSAC is a relatively small organisation. It has a secretariat of three or four, internal to the DWP. It has 13 or 14 members. When you look at the literally thousands of people who are creating this, it is very hard to imagine an ability to take this in its entirety, with all those regulations for the SSAC to deal with.

The SSAC has two functions. It deals with a regulatory rolling process, which is outside the major revolution that we are talking about. I hope that it will apply itself to particular issues on which we would really value its help. The first example is passporting. It was very much my own view that this would be a good way in which to start this process.

I think that noble Lords in this Committee underplay their own prowess in this area.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Freud]

It never failed in the past. They also underplay their ability to gather the views of stakeholders that have been coming and do come to them directly. I suggest that a major expansion of the powers of the SSAC, which this would represent in practice, is not appropriate. Any regulations for universal credit that rely on existing legislation relating to claims, awards, payments and joint claimants will still be subject to SSAC examination. I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

I do not know whether I am more frightened now than I was previously. I accept that there is a capacity issue, but I am looking for the comfort that I have heard in the past that significant matters will reach our desks as legislators faster. None of us can keep up with the flow of things. If you are just a guerrilla opposition Member, which I used to be, the default position was to table negative prayers against everything.

The Minister has to be careful that we do not get back to that safety default position where you could just give the Minister of the day a bit of a kicking at the Dispatch Box and go home. Sometimes you might hit lucky on something that the Government did not want you to know about, but that is not where we want to be. I absolutely accept that the Minister in particular has been transparent to a fault. You can see straight through him on things that are coming down the track. It is impossible to read it all, but I worry that he will struggle if these regulations come in in wodges and packages immediately after Royal Assent. I do not want people like me to be put into the position where I think, “Well, safety first. Let us just pray against it anyway”. That would not be sensible.

I would like the SSAC to say, “Of this batch, if you want to concentrate on anything, this is what you should concentrate on”. That would be massively reassuring to me. I would go home at the weekend thinking that I was earning whatever it is that we get to come here. Obviously, I will withdraw this amendment, but I hope that the Minister will reflect on that point. This is a probing amendment. I understand capacity issues and the importance of him using his expertise within the Government to get to a better place. I will read the record and try not to worry more than I did before I tabled the amendment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 113AA withdrawn.

Clause 130 agreed.

17:50

Sitting suspended.

18:00

Clause 131 : Supporting maintenance agreements

Amendment 113B

Moved by

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

113B: Clause 131, page 101, line 10, at end insert—
“( ) After section 1 of the Child Support Act 1991 there is inserted—
“Effective maintenance arrangements
(1) The main objective of the Secretary of State in applying the provisions of this Act shall be to maximise the number of those children who live apart from one or both parents for whom effective maintenance arrangements are in place.
(2) The Secretary of State shall prepare and lay before Parliament a report on a bi-annual basis giving details of the progress achieved under subsection (1) above in maximising the number of children who live apart from one or both parents for whom effective maintenance arrangements are in place.””

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

My Lords, given the hour and the fact that we are turning to a completely fresh, but very important, subject, perhaps I can be allowed to introduce skeletally the first clutch of four amendments. Amendment 113B, which stands in my name and the names of other noble Lords, inserts a new section into the Child Support Act 1991 to maximise the maintenance payment of money to children separated from their parents.

I would like to get to the second group of amendments as fast as we can. In trying to contrive a debate that made sense, it was necessary to tease out some of the important themes relating to child support, and the only way I could sensibly do that was with these four amendments: Amendment 113B, which deals with a duty to maximise benefit; Amendment 113C, which deals with the level of services; Amendment 113D, which looks at equality of treatment in gateway access; and Amendment 113F, which deals with legacy cases and how they relate to the new gateway. If we can deal with those expeditiously by way of introduction, we can then get on to some of the more apposite provisions in terms of charging. I hope that we will be able to do that in good order.

I do not know why I am so personally wrapped up in child support legislation. I think it is partly because I was around in 1991 when the first Act was introduced, and I have seen it through all its stages: the 1995 Act, the 2000 Act, 2007, 2008 and here we are in 2001—

[Noble Lords]

2011!

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

It feels like 2001. I beg the Committee’s pardon. It should have been 2011, and it may even be 2012 by the time we get there.

These two or three clauses have deep significance, and they have to be read. I took the trouble to reread them at the weekend. They differ quite substantially in tone from the rubric and narrative that the Government are advocating for this change. They insert quite dramatic hurdles, particularly for parents with care. They introduce a new level of fiscally driven tension between getting the savings that CMEC and the department are looking for and the maximisation of the flow of benefits to parents with care and their children.

This is the new, new CSA—CSA 2.5 or CSA 3—that we are heading for in 2012. I will go to the great Parliament in the sky a very unhappy bunny if this one goes wrong as well. It is not a question of allocating blame; I am as responsible as anybody. I thought that the provisions that were introduced early on were fit for purpose. However, there is a huge gap between policy creation and the implementation of this very difficult area of public policy. It is a deeply troubled area and we need to be very careful that what we are doing is apposite and right for the people it is designed to serve.

It is important to mention the staff who laboured under the introduction of these provisions. I think that the Minister in the Commons, Maria Miller, mentioned them rather glancingly in the Public Bill Committee. She said that the actions of the staff resulted in the measure not falling flat on its face, particularly around 2003 when everything was going wrong. If it had not been for the dedication of the professionals who ran the CSA centres and worked through the stuck cases that went into manual administration, the whole thing would have collapsed. I want to make clear that although I think that in the past the policy has been totally inadequate, I do not mean in any sense to criticise the professionals who were asked to administer it. By and large, they played a great game and without them we would have been in a much worse situation.

The background political context to this is slightly worrying as well. It would be helpful to be told why there has been no response to the Select Committee report that was published in July. As colleagues know, Governments have to respond to Select Committee recommendations within a two-month period, although there is a bit of a purdah period over the summer. For a set of important recommendations that are absolutely apposite to this group of amendments to be published and to have no government response is indicative of something: either something very good or something very difficult is happening.

My noble friend has now been invited to enter the trench of child support and maintenance. I cannot think of anybody more appropriate to man a trench than my noble friend Lord De Mauley. I welcome him to the task. I hope he is not considered to be expendable infantry—perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Freud, has neatly side-stepped the graveyard pass. Can we be told what is happening with the Select Committee report? Furthermore, the draft regulations were supposed to be made available to the Committee by the end of 2012. Perhaps we will get them soon, very soon or very, very soon, but there are only days left before these regulations are due. I am picking up in the corridors here at Westminster a general political unease—this unease crosses parties and is felt not just by one side or the other—about the family implications of some of these changes, particularly around charging which we will come to in a minute. Some of us are old enough to remember when a £44 charge was introduced in 1995, which did not last very long. I wonder what has changed. I think that that £44 charge lasted about 18 months before it was realised that it cost more to collect than it brought in and the whole thing collapsed, but here we are again with charging. I ask myself what is different.

My next question impacts on all four of the amendments we are discussing. Is the 2012 CSA 3 or CMEC 3—or whatever the new, new system is being called—on track? The annual report of the CMEC/CSA that was produced earlier this year noted that the major projects authority was asking some very searching questions, and raising doubts, about challenges that were being faced with yet another new computer system. I do not know whether the system is in Warrington or whether it is an agile system. I hope that it is both, but I hope that it works. If we could get an assurance about the readiness of the 2012 relaunch, it would be valuable in our consideration of all three groups of amendments around this policy.

I also want to ask about costs. I looked at the Work and Pensions Select Committee report on the rest of the comprehensive spending review period and am puzzled about what exactly the costs are. At paragraph 75, the report states:

“Noel Shanahan indicated that CMEC’s aim was to achieve at least a 30% reduction in costs, in common with other parts of Government”

over the CSR period. We all know that the previous annual report, for 2009-10, indicated that the CMEC was spending £572 million. At paragraph 76, Noel Shanahan is quoted as saying that the transition to the new system in 2012 would cost,

“in the region of between £150 million to £200 million in terms of additional costs”.

Could some clarity be introduced as to over what period that refers to? How is that money being spent and how does it measure up to the 30 per cent reduction that Mr Shanahan was talking about? I am not clear as to the spend profile and the business case for charging—we will come on to that later. A reduction of 30 per cent on a budget of £572 million will put immense cost pressures on the agency through 2012 and beyond. It is very important, in order to make sense of this group of amendments, to know what the Government are planning to spend and what the business case is.

We have all had the benefit of the excellent work that has been done by Gingerbread and other groups that have been briefing us. Amendment 113B would make sure that the principal objective available to CMEC in its previous non-departmental-public-body status, to maximise the number of those children who live apart from one or both parents for whom effective maintenance arrangements are in place, was enshrined in law. CMEC is being abolished as a non-departmental public body and being taken into an executive agency, and therefore does not have that objective. All we have now is assurances from Ministers. The Minister, Maria Miller, gave rather a weak assurance to the Public Bill Committee, saying that we could rely on ministerial assurances. I am sure that we can, but that is not my experience with all Ministers all the time. I should like to hear what the Government have to say about the prospect of trying to put back that basic overriding objective into the work of the commission. As a consequence, a two-yearly report on progress on meeting that objective would be valuable.

I wonder whether we could use Amendment 113C to ask the Minister to explain to us a little bit about how the new support services will be rolled out and, again, how much money is involved in their provision. A £30 million fund is available through the Department for Education, which oversees a range of grant-funded relationship and family support services.

18:15

However, of course, that funding runs out between 2011 and 2013. We need to replace that money by 2013; otherwise we might face an effective net reduction in the amount of money that is available. We know that £5.6 million a year is available through the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission’s option service. Will that be continued through the CSR and beyond, and how are we going to co-ordinate all the charities, the mediation services and the advice from family lawyers that currently exist into a way that makes sense? Can we, at the same time, understand—because I do not understand at the moment—what the differences and the relationships are between the gateway process and the co-ordination of the services? They are different functions and I do not understand how one will relate to the other in order to make sure that people do not get signposted to the wrong door.

Perhaps the Minister can give us a little background about the support services that are and will be in existence. A footnote in the briefing that I have seen refers to the long-term vision for the service being completed by 2020. I am in favour of these things being done in a deliberative way but this will start becoming critical to some of the households it will affect by 2013. It is a big gap to leave in place, particularly if Mr Shanahan’s estimates of the cuts he will face are to be found, so can we have some assurance on the funding?

Amendment 113D deals with evening up the treatment in the gateway between parents with care and non-resident parents. The way it is currently cast is unfair and there will not be a positive outcome for anyone.

My Amendment 113F deals with legacy cases. Everyone understands that the longer a case has been in operation—sometimes three, five or even 10 years—the more likely it is to have recourse to the statutory provision. Inviting all those legacy cases to opt in to the new service in 2012 is obviously a way of filtering out people who do not need the money or have lost interest, but that risks losing a huge amount of the £1.14 million case load in that category. We need to look at that issue very carefully. I would be much happier to leave such cases alone because the authorities already have all the information on the money that is in existence and would not need to go through the process of applying again and facing the charges and fees we will discuss later.

There are four or five important themes which are a precursor to the next group of amendments, which deal with charging, and if the Minister could give a brief indication to signpost what the Government and the department have in mind in relation to some of these important matters I would grateful. I am sure the Committee would like to share that information.

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, I rise to support and speak specifically to Amendment 113B, to which my name is attached. In doing so, I remind the Committee of the interests which I have in the Register, in particular that I was a non-executive director of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, having stood down from that position shortly after my introduction to the House. I am also a former chief executive of the National Council for One Parent Families, which has now merged with Gingerbread. I am very grateful to Gingerbread and other organisations for their briefing.

It is a huge disappointment to me that this issue has come at the end of the Bill because, along with the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and many other noble Lords, this is one of my favourite subjects. Frankly, I could happily talk about child support for a very long time. However, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, is looking sternly at me, I shall limit my remarks to only one of the amendments and then speed on to allow him to offer an infinitely more informed view.

The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, has explained why the amendment is necessary. In particular, it would re-establish the notion of the objectives that are currently the main objectives of the commission, which will disappear as a result of its being abolished and brought back inside DWP as an executive agency. No doubt in due course these will become objectives of the Secretary of State, but I want to explain why it will be a problem if they vanish altogether from legislation.

At the moment, the commission’s main objective is to maximise the number of children who live apart from one or both of their parents for whom effective maintenance arrangements are in place. There are two subsidiary objectives, the first of which would encourage the support and the “making and keeping” by parents of voluntary maintenance arrangements. The second would support the making of and compliance with statutory arrangements. A further objective of the commission is:

“The Commission shall aim to pursue, and to have regard to, its objectives when exercising a function that is relevant to them”.

Not only must it do that but it must also have regard to those objectives in deciding how it discharges its various responsibilities.

As the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, said, Maria Miller, in the House of Commons, as I may now say, has said that the Government remain committed,

“to maximising the number of effective … arrangements”.—[Official Report, Commons, Welfare Reform Bill Committee, 24/5/11; col. 1103.]

That is welcome but I should like to explain why it is not enough. When I was a member of the board, we discussed and debated the priorities of the commission, what we should do and how we should do it. We came back repeatedly to the objectives set out by Parliament. Those were very much in front of us at all times.

If we were tempted to forget them, the very able civil servants who worked for the commission and the department would remind us of them at relevant moments, which they were right to do. They carried considerable weight. In fact, they carried far more weight than the assurance of the Minister of the day—distinguished though he was, of course. It is right that the objectives set down by Parliament should carry more weight than the views of any Minister who happens to hold office on any particular day. That is what Parliament is for. There is a big diminution in weight in moving from having clear objectives set out in legislation to having simply the assurance, however welcome, of the Minister of the day.

CMEC was beginning to make some significant improvements. It was created in 2008. Last year, 970,000 children benefited from child maintenance, including more than 100,000 from private arrangements, which must be due considerably to the CMEC option service and the fact that the commission had a statutory obligation to go out and pursue private arrangements. In March 2008, the figure was 750,000, so there was quite a big jump.

The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, mentioned possible cost reductions of the order of 30 per cent. This is important because—I am sorry to bring this to the attention of noble Lords—there are people with suspicious minds who fear that the Government’s primary aim is to save money, rather than to move to a better system of child support. Like other noble Lords, I would not dream of having any truck with such a notion. But perhaps the Minister could help Members of the Committee to make sure that they are in a position to understand and to rebut these claims when they are made by people outside this Chamber.

It is important because, if there is no broader objective to maximise the number of effective arrangements in place, Ministers might feel that they have done their job simply by deterring people from using the statutory system of child maintenance. They do not have any obligation to make absolutely sure that those people are going elsewhere and making arrangements, rather than simply not making any arrangements at all. If the Minister were willing to accept that this is an important objective, he could reassure us all. In the absence of that, there is a very real danger that these charges will come to be seen—we will go on to discuss them in detail—not simply as a means of raising money but primarily as a means of deterring people from using the statutory system in order to save considerable amounts of money in administration to the state. Frankly, it is hard to see how savings of the order that have been described by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, can be achieved otherwise.

I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Freud, has given the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, the opportunity to step into the breach on so important an occasion. Should the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, hear at any point someone saying, “I am right behind you”, I suggest he takes a look behind him to be sure that that is true. I am delighted to see him at the Dispatch Box on such an important occasion. Perhaps he will take the opportunity to reassure the Committee, first, on whether the Government accept the content of the amendment. Are they committed to maximising,

“the number of those children who live apart from one or both of their parents for whom effective maintenance arrangements are in place”?

Is the principle acceptable? If it is acceptable, is he happy to put this into legislation? After all, it is likely that the Official Opposition are supportive since it was their Bill which brought these words into legislation in the first place. If we are all in agreement, perhaps this happy outbreak of unanimity can be celebrated by having an amendment accepted in Grand Committee. I look forward to that. If he is not able to do that, will he explain why not, what he believes the consequences will be and how else we can go out and give assurances to the cynics in that difficult world?

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 113B. In so doing, I declare an interest. I am currently the chief executive of Relate, which provides a wide range of services to separating families. I am also part of an advisory group of people from the voluntary sector which advises DWP Ministers on what a network of integrated support services might look like. From that point of view, it is important that that is clearly stated on the record.

I want briefly to support the case that has been put forward by my noble friend Lord Kirkwood as to why it is important that we incentivise non-resident parents to engage in the gateway process, as well as parents with care. There are two points I want to make. First, the gateway and the application charge—and I know that we will come to the charge in a later grouping—bite at the moment on parents with care wishing to use the statutory child maintenance system. The aim of this is to incentivise them to try to negotiate a voluntary agreement with the other parent instead. I support that. It is right and proper, where it is practical, that incentives to do so are built in. But there is no equivalent mechanism pushing the non-resident parent actively to engage in the process of trying to reach a mutually agreeable arrangement. As the legislation is currently constructed, it is only after a parent with care has paid an application fee of £100 and a statutory calculation has been made that any incentive will be given to the non-resident parent to reach a private agreement. That is basically very unfair.

My second point is a more positive one: the gateway stage is an opportunity for meaningful conversation between both parents. It aims to explore the scope for reaching collaborative arrangements, to assess what help either or both parents might need in order to arrive at such arrangements and to signpost and refer one or both parents—and, indeed, the children involved—to suitable provision and the help that exists for separating parents and families. Non-resident parents who are responsible for paying child maintenance should, I feel, be especially involved in this process.

I conclude by saying a couple of things that come very much from my experience at Relate. It is very important to children that both parents after separation continue to be involved as co-parents of those children. The relationship between the adults may be completely and utterly at an end, and indeed new relationships may well have been formed; but for that child, the active involvement—of course, where safe—of both parents is absolutely critical, emotionally, in practical ways, financially and in a range of other ways. It is critical that these new arrangements, however they are finally constructed, put the maximum possible incentive on both parents to see how they can discharge their responsibilities to be effective co-parents after separation—a responsibility which I think that most of us think is for life.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I, too, shall speak in support of Amendment 113B, although what I have to say is also relevant to Amendment 113DA in the next group. I, too, thank Gingerbread for its help.

I want to concentrate on how Clause 131 in particular, coupled with the wider government proposals to charge parents for use of the statutory child maintenance scheme, will disproportionately impact on women who, according to the Government’s own analysis, make up around 97 per cent of parents with care who are eligible for child maintenance. It seems very surprising that, at a time when the Government are worrying about the erosion of their support among women, particularly so-called C2 women, they should be proceeding with a policy on child maintenance which will unfairly impact on this group.

The Government say that the new gateway and the proposed charges are intended to drive behavioural change—yet again—yet in the brief circulated last week, the DWP acknowledges that a significant proportion of parents will not be able to collaborate and that there are circumstances where there will be no reasonable steps that they could take. Therefore, echoing a question I asked last week in relation to the benefit cap, what behavioural change are they trying to achieve in such cases? Is it really fair to subject this group to charges, particularly in the name of behavioural change?

18:30

The Minister for Child Maintenance, Maria Miller, said in the House of Commons that these new mechanisms are,

“about encouraging parents to take responsibility”.—[Official Report, Commons, Welfare Reform Bill Committee, 24/5/11; col. 1097.]

Yet there is a major and glaring flaw here in plans to encourage both parents—here, I reinforce the point already made so well by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield. The gateway stage—with its signposting to sources of family and relationship support—and the application charge will apply to just one party: the parent with care, almost always female. No equivalent pressure will be exerted by the Government at this stage; for example, a low-income working mother has to scrape together £100 to put herself within the statutory system to bring the father to the negotiating table and to get him to engage in sorting out an agreement to pay.

These proposals exhibit profound misunderstanding of the dynamics of child maintenance, where there can often be considerable inequality of bargaining power between the parent with main care of the children, in need of financial support towards the cost she has—both directly in supporting the children and indirectly in wages foregone as a result of their care—and the non-resident parent who has the money, and who has to make the decision as to how much to contribute, at what intervals, or indeed whether to contribute at all. This is another instance of the unequal gender power relations that we have discussed on a number of times in this Committee.

As the Prime Minister recognised in his well-known Father’s Day article, sadly there is a minority of fathers out there who are not prepared to accept their role in contributing in a realistic manner to what it costs to raise their children. A 2005 study carried out for DWP of non-resident parents who paid their maintenance via the Child Support Agency noted, for example, that many non-resident parents appeared to be unaware of the true costs of bringing up children; others felt that if a parent with care was being supported by benefits she did not need maintenance—conversely, if she was working, there was again no need; and some admitted that they would put the children they lived with in a subsequent relationship before their own children.

In terms of taking responsibility, arguably the Fatherhood Institute got it right when giving evidence to the Work and Pensions Select Committee. Its representative was clear that rather than putting pressure on a parent with care to sort out child maintenance for herself with the other parent,

“The one who matters in child support is the payer. The payer is the person they need to be talking to, in whatever ways they do it, to address his reluctance, his needs, his anger—whatever it is—his poverty that is getting in the way”.

In his Father’s Day article the Prime Minister did not shrink from calling pretty bluntly for society roundly to condemn fathers who refuse to face up to their obligations towards their children. Yet this sits uncomfortably with government plans to dissuade mothers from using the commission to enforce that very same responsibility by making them pay for the privilege and reducing the child maintenance that they would otherwise receive.

The Minister, Maria Miller, perhaps dismissed rather too lightly the plight of women left to bring up children without proper financial support from the non-resident father, when she wrote in the Guardian in defence of the Government’s proposals that,

“not every parent claiming maintenance is the stereotypical abandoned single mother”.

Of course they are not. However, while it may sound old-fashioned, there are in fact many hundreds of thousands of women in just that position, in the sense that the fathers are not prepared, unless we as a society insist upon it, to contribute towards their children’s upkeep. It is the mother abandoned when she is pregnant by a father who says he is not ready to have children; it is the mother where the father has started a second family and focuses his attention on his new children; it is the mother where the father has moved out, changed his address and phone number, and refuses to communicate. A number of noble Lords have probably received examples from Gingerbread which illustrate this. I just quote one of them:

“I have tried to talk to my children’s father about maintenance, he does not agree that my children need money, he will not even provide clothes or shoes for them if asked. I have asked for small payments of any kind to help with the things my 5 year old needs for school. I know their father is working and earning a good wage, so money isn’t a big issue for him. I have said to him that even 5 pounds when he has it would be better than nothing.”

This is just one of many examples that Gingerbread has given to noble Lords.

Of course, many fathers are there for the children, whatever happens to the relationship with the mother. However, there is an uncomfortable reality to the plight of such mothers and the children they are trying to raise, which the Prime Minister drew attention to, and which the statutory maintenance service is there to address.

That is why I also support Amendment 113DA, which would abolish charges for those with no alternative but to use the new agency, as well as Amendment 113D, which would at least force the commission to engage with the attitudes and resistance of those non-resident parents who were directly responsible for paying child maintenance.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, the speeches that we have heard so far have been extremely powerful and I very much supported the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. I shall refer to Amendment 113B in the name of my noble friend Lady Sherlock, as well as Amendment 113DA in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. I feel strongly that structures should follow the objectives and not that we should adapt the objectives to be the outcome of whatever structures we think we can best achieve, which is what is going on, I fear, in Amendment 113B. Amendment 113DA is simply wrong and I am frankly amazed that the DWP has come forward with this proposition. It is morally offensive and I do not know from where it has come.

Like others we have the CSA engraved on our hearts. The 1992 legislation was a catastrophe primarily because it insisted on overturning existing court objectives and becoming retrospective, which means that the new system never caught up even though it was entirely well intentioned. I remember defending our intentions on the 2000 legislation in front of the committee chaired at the time by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. We found it difficult to persuade the Treasury to budge beyond a £10 hand-back to women, so we could never get women to co-operate in setting the CSA on their old partners, as there was little in it for them.

The moves established by my noble friend in 2008 to allow women to keep all their maintenance was a triumph, but the problem with voluntarism, which also accompanied it, meant that it became a charter for bullies who did not want to pay, as indicated by my noble friend Lady Lister. We know that the people who pay are the men who need to pay most, not the men who need to pay least. They are the men who have been married, divorced, are older, earn more, have a profound attachment to their children and expect and want to pay. They are honourable and decent men and they are the ones who pay most. They pay and behave admirably. We also know, however, the ones who do not pay. They are the young, feckless men who have never actually lived with the child, who is perhaps the result of an overnight relationship, if we can dignify it with that term—a casual sexual act. They think that they were trapped.

There are the chaotic self-employed who never get their accounts right and never find the money to pay for their children. A group that surprised me are the men in uniform who are often very bitter, judgmental and followers of the language of fault—“She had an affair so it is her fault and I don’t pay”—with little regard for the children. Finally, there is the group mentioned by my noble friend Lady Lister—the men who have remarried, with second families whose new partner is often very hostile to any payment. These men change their address, their job, their name, and even their country to avoid paying.

Add to those problems a flaky computer and the problems of HMT, which is not only unwilling for women to keep their money but refuses to share key information so that NRPs can be tracked through their current records. We were not allowed to deduct even a £5 benefit payment at source. It would have been obvious for HMT computers to talk to DWP computers, but that was not possible either. It is no wonder that there has been a struggle ever since.

I fear that increasingly—with these measures, I am convinced of it—the concept of child support has taken a wrong turning in this country. Unless we accept the amendments moved so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and my noble friend Lady Sherlock, that wrong turning will become a highway down which the failure to pay child maintenance will rapidly escalate. I strongly believe that statutory payment should be not the last resort but the first. That is how we establish the appropriate level of money that should be paid; you establish a speedy pattern of payment. We know from Australia and all the international research that unless you establish payment early and ensure that it is paid regularly for at least a year, it dies within 18 months or two years. Establish payment early and get it paid regularly and there is a hope that you will get amicable contact arrangements. Then the whole thing becomes a virtuous circle.

Having voluntary payment in which the father can bully his way out of payment, as he too often has done, means that it never gets established. If instead we had statutory payment to begin with and then after six months or a year following regular, reliable payments the reward was voluntary negotiations, that would be wonderful. That would combine the best of all worlds. You would establish the pattern of payment, and then, if the father co-operates in that activity, you could allow that couple to make their own future arrangements. That way the child does not suffer. This way, I fear that the rights of the child to income and support from the father—it is the father in all but 3 per cent of cases—are going to get lost in what I have to say is the department pursuing cost cutting rather than ensuring adequate support for children.

We know that regularly paid maintenance is not only good for children in the signal that it sends from fathers about being committed to their children’s lives, but that it can be the payment above all—all the Alan Marsh research shows this—that lifts a lone parent with a couple of children from below the poverty line to above it. It can be transforming. It is like privatised, old fashioned family credit if it is paid and paid regularly. It will be so paid only if it is established early, and that means through a statutory system in which good behaviour allows you to go on to the voluntary path. I very much fear that in going down the path not just of voluntarism but of trying to get rid of CMEC, which at least was trying very hard to ensure that money was paid to children, we will lose the real benefits that are available to children through the poverty objectives and we will be overcome by the structural problems of seeking to reduce costs. That is highly unfortunate.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I apologise for not being here the whole time. I had to chair quite an important meeting on stalking, but that is another matter. I had not realised until just now that the amendment tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, to which I have put my name, is in this group.

[Noble Lords]

It is not.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

I am sorry. I will wait.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, for introducing this group of amendments and acknowledge his long-standing interest and expertise in issues of child maintenance. Like him, I pay tribute to the staff of the CSA and CMEC who, over many years, have stuck with the various iterations of child maintenance that they have had to deal with and sometimes struggle with.

My noble friend Lady Hollis gave us a brief history of child maintenance. It is right that one of the problems and the reason why the first of these amendments in particular—I support them all—is so important is that along the way the CSA has sought to be different things and to achieve different objectives. In 1991, it was substantially focused on the clawback of benefit, so no benefit accrued to children. The 2004 amendments recast that and focused the CSA on child poverty in particular, but, as my noble friend said, it was stymied to a certain extent by not being able to make progress on the disregards. I defend the 2008 changes—noble Lords would not expect me to do otherwise—for a number of reasons. It potentially gets round the problem of those who do not want to pay by the assessment being on the gross income of the non-resident parent, which is obtainable from HMRC. That has not yet been implemented, but it was a key issue in stopping non-resident parents messing up the system, which is what happened to the two previous systems. Voluntary it might have been, but there was an absolute right for either parent to make use of the statutory system with charges, which we are going to come to, that did not deter people on low incomes.

18:44

I agree with the analysis made by my noble friend Lady Lister. Generally, parents with care are overwhelmingly women and non-residents parents are overwhelmingly men. Sadly, too many non-resident parents do not see it as their obligation to support their children. In one particularly extreme case, a file crossed my desk in which a non-resident parent was arguing about an assessment. He was self-employed and said that if he had to pay at the level he was asked to pay in support of his children he would have to keep his Rolls-Royce for a second year rather than change it. I kid you not. That actually happened.

As we have heard, Amendment 113B would introduce into the Child Support Act 1991 a clear statutory objective identical to the objectives we set out for the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission in the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008. In short, it would maximise the number of children for whom effective maintenance arrangements are in place. We know that the demise of CMEC is planned under the Public Bodies Bill and that its function will be taken on by an executive agency of the DWP. Once CMEC is abolished, its objectives and functions will no longer be set out in primary legislation. Unless the Minister can direct me otherwise, the 1991 Act, so far as I am aware, does not have that as an objective. The Government have launched a consultation on their proposals to abolish CMEC and to transfer its functions to the DWP, but it would seem from the draft order that there is no intent to transfer the objective of the commission. Perhaps the Minister will confirm that and, as my noble friend Lady Sherlock said, tell us why.

As has also been mentioned, the 2008 Act contained two subsidiary objectives: one to encourage and support the making and keeping of voluntary arrangements, the other to support the making of applications under the statutory scheme and ensuring compliance therewith. Our debate at the time of the 2008 legislation was whether one of these subsidiary objectives took precedence over the other. We took the view—and continue to take the view—that where voluntary arrangements are appropriate, they should be encouraged and supported as they are typically more sustainable. However, there was a clear recognition that there should be an unfettered access to the statutory scheme and the obligation to ensure compliance therewith for those who wanted it. These are two components of the drive to maximise maintenance arrangements with, incidentally, an obligation on CMEC to promote child maintenance.

These matters are important in the current context because, whatever the debate at the time about the balance of the two measures, the thrust of this Government’s proposals will clearly pushig people away from the statutory system. The proposals for charging, the gateway, the NRP’s veto and the migration proposals from the old and current to the new system will obviously be debated in subsequent amendments. However, there is concern that, overall, these proposals will mean that the opportunity for maximising maintenance arrangements will be lost, particularly to the most vulnerable. In these circumstances, to have the explicit objective of maximising the number of children benefitting from maintenance arrangements should be supported, particularly for the reasons given by my noble friend Lady Sherlock.

We know that child maintenance can make a huge difference to the quality of a child’s life. We have heard also about the progress that has been made in recent years but there is still much to do. What will the abolition of CMEC’s main objective mean? A number of questions arise from the abolition of a clear and transparent obligation on the part of CMEC as an agent of the Secretary of State to apply the powers and functions available to it, with the clear overall objective of maximising the number of effective child maintenance arrangements. Although the Government have said that they will continue to have such a commitment, in practice that commitment may come under threat at a time of considerable pressure to reduce the statutory case load in order to reduce DWP expenditure.

As we have heard, the Minister told the Public Bill Committee that child maintenance was only one issue facing separating families. There is a risk that, by choosing to focus on the wider range of issues that affect families on separation, the Government could lose sight of the primary objective of the commission: getting money to children. The Government are confident that they will actually increase the proportion of children receiving child maintenance by creating a new infrastructure of family support services to enable significantly more parents to make and maintain collaborative, family-based arrangements. However, as yet this is very much work in progress with few detailed plans or investment details published.

We also support Amendment 113C, which calls for a regular report from the commission that looks at a range of information that should in effect underpin the approach of pushing people away from the statutory service and towards private or voluntary arrangements. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, we are thoroughly supportive of the proposal to build an integrated model of relationship and family support services that will help families to make their own lasting agreements, but given that engaging with such services is the gateway to the statutory system, and given the charging proposals, which will deter parents from accessing the statutory system, it is vital that we understand the level of need and the scope and capacity of the family support services that will be available. Can the Minister please tell us more about how this service is to be structured? Where will the ministerial responsibility lie? What budgeting provision is available? What is to be the future of the options service?

As for Amendment 113D, the Bill will require an applicant to the statutory system to take reasonable steps to establish whether it is possible or appropriate to make a private or voluntary agreement. However, this will require the engagement of the other party. We know how difficult it can be and, sadly, the lengths to which some will go to avoid their responsibility to children, which puts the onus on the PWC. That is not right. We support the right of automatic access to the statutory service if the other party does not engage. However, I wonder whether the 14-day period is a little too short.

We also support Amendment 113F. I think the original plan was that by 2013 there would be one statutory scheme based on the gross income of the NRP, with most of the information obtained directly from HMRC, as I said a moment ago. Presumably that could be real-time information now or very shortly. It is now proposed to close all CSA cases over a two-year period. They will be given three months and will have to go through the gateway. Some 1.2 million families currently in the system, plus new ones coming into it, will be affected by this. What is the capacity of gateway services to cope with these volumes? How is it to be structured? There is a suggestion that only those who cannot reach a family-based arrangement need apply to the statutory scheme, and there will be a fee structure to encourage this. Is that the same fee structure that it is proposed will be applied generally, or is this a special separate and specifically targeted fee arrangement? If so, what is it? This seems to us to be another example of seeking to force cases out of the statutory system.

The gateway will be in its infancy. Who will make the judgment and what will be the process? Will there be an appeals process or will people be forced out with no right of redress? Will someone who is denied access be able to start the process again and, if so, within what period of time? If family arrangements do not work, how long will it be before a fresh application can be made to the statutory scheme? As the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, said, cases may have been around for a very long time and this approach could revive old conflicts. Will both parents have to engage with the gateway? How long will that process take? We have no problem with advice, but at the end of the day people must have a choice as to whether or not they enter the statutory scheme.

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, it might be helpful, if noble Lords will allow, if I spend a little time setting the scene for this group and the next two groups of amendments. As noble Lords have mentioned, they are closely interrelated.

Let me say at the outset that one thing on which I am sure we can all agree is that the really vulnerable people in all this are the children. They are the people we most want to protect. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, and others who have made similar comments. It is our strong view that the best outcome for the children of separating parents is generally obtained when both parties can reach a voluntary agreement. Evidence from the Relationship Separation and Child Support Study in 2008 showed that more than half of CSA parents with care and nearly three-quarters of non-resident parents felt that they would be likely or very likely to make a family-based arrangement with help from a trained impartial adviser. So the central thrust of what we are trying to do is to establish a new system for reaching voluntary agreements. That system will work by providing parents with more information and support about how to establish an effective maintenance arrangement than they have had before.

Previously parents had to choose between the courts, the CSA, trying to work out how to set up a voluntary agreement or having no arrangement in place at all. All too often—in fact for half the children concerned—it has been the last of these. For the first time we will be offering real help to families to consider whether they can collaborate and establish a more effective family-based arrangement without heavy state involvement. We of course understand that reaching a voluntary agreement is not always going to be possible, although we think it could be achieved much more often than it is at present. Where it is simply not possible, there has to be a fallback option, and that will remain the statutory system.

The last Government introduced, through the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008—to which the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, referred—the concept of charging, and we turn to this in more detail in the next group of amendments. I take this opportunity to say that we agree with the last Government that the concept of charging is acceptable, but if people are to be asked to pay they are entitled to ask for a better service. That is why we will radically improve the statutory system with a stronger, more reliable IT system and a strong suite of enforcement measures.

The first part of Amendment 113B seeks to place an objective on the Secretary of State through the provisions of the Child Support Act 1991 to maximise the number of effective maintenance arrangements for children who live apart from one or both parents. This is the current statutory objective of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission. The commission also has a number of statutory functions, one of which is to provide the statutory service currently delivered by the CSA. When the commission is abolished, its functions will transfer to the Secretary of State exactly as they now stand. Its statutory objective will not, however, transfer to the Secretary of State as the objective was specific to the commission in a way that the functions are not. So the issue that noble Lords are raising is what will happen when the commission is abolished and its functions transfer to the Secretary of State.

The Government’s position is unequivocal, and I am glad to have this opportunity to reiterate for the record our commitment to the objective of maximising the number of effective maintenance arrangements for children who live apart from one or both parents. I hope that that satisfies my noble friend’s request for a strong assurance. When the delivery of functions has been given to an arm’s-length body, as is presently the case with the commission, then clearly good governance and clear accountability suggest setting the organisation an objective in statute against which it can be held to account. However, legislation is not necessary in order for the Secretary of State to work towards his own objective. The whole thrust of the Public Bodies Bill, of which the abolition of the commission is one instance, is to increase ministerial accountability.

19:00

The second part of the amendment seeks to place a duty on the Secretary of State to make and lay a report before Parliament twice a year giving details of progress made in achieving this objective. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is currently considering the measurement and reporting of success, which we agree is vital. In particular, we are developing plans for monitoring the number of effective arrangements across the whole population of separated families, including those who do not use the statutory service. I do not believe we need to impose this requirement by statute.

My noble friend Lord Kirkwood asked about the progress of the Government’s response to the Select Committee report. The Government believe that the strategic vision for the child maintenance system should place positive outcomes for families and, in particular, children at its heart. The Government are therefore determined to listen to and review all the inputs made by a range of stakeholders representing families and children as they shape final policy. All the questions raised by the Committee need to be answered fully, and the Government wish to produce an informative response from a strong position. The delay reflects this.

My noble friend asked when we will publish the draft regulations. I can confirm that that will be by Christmas. He also asked about progress with the IT system. We are determined not to repeat the problems of the past by introducing a new system when it is not ready. It is important to get a new system right before it goes live. We are not developing a system from scratch. We will use tried and tested commercially available software packages. We have learnt from the experiences of the CSA and aim to provide a system that puts the client first and provides value for money for taxpayers. We are confident that the new system is on track for its 2012 launch.

Let me now turn to Amendment 113C. This seeks to ensure biannual reporting on a range of issues relating to parents who are unable to establish effective arrangements and the services that might help them achieve this. Let me emphasise that we are fully committed to evaluating the impact of the reforms. The estimated impacts will be set out in the impact assessments that will accompany the draft regulations on charging and CSA case closure that will be consulted on next year. Evaluation could involve the use of current household surveys or the commissioning of specialist surveys aimed at the child maintenance population alone. However, these are very expensive to run. An annual survey could cost around £1 million. One large determinant of cost is frequency and another is sample size. The more we look for disaggregated results covering particular subgroups, the larger the sample size has to be for these results to be robust. So we will need to consider the trade-offs of frequency and robustness of different sample sizes against the costs. We also need to consider carefully the best formats for reporting progress when the commission’s functions are absorbed within DWP and how best to align with the need to report across the range of the department’s business. For these reasons, it would be unduly inflexible to impose requirements by statute.

If the underlying intention behind the amendment is concern about those children who are not covered by an effective arrangement and whose parents need some support to be able to establish an arrangement, then perhaps I can offer further reassurance. Prior to the commission, parents had only three choices: to use the CSA, to use the courts, or to go it alone. The commission introduced the child maintenance options service to provide information, support and signposting to other services. We want to build on this so that parents can reach their own family-based arrangements without having to go it alone. The options services will be replaced by the family support service and the gateway. The result will be an increased level of advice and support for parents building on the experiences learnt from operating the options service and taking on board recommendations from the expert steering group put together to advise on such matters.

[Baroness Sherlock]

I thank the Minister for explaining what will happen to the options service. I confess that I have had the opportunity to listen in to the options service in action in a previous role and, as I understand it at the moment, when a parent with care phones the options service to ask for advice and information, it would steer her towards making an arrangement—because that is the objective—but it would not try to steer her to make it in one direction or the other; it would give her the information she needed to make a choice. Is it the Government’s intention that these replacement services will steer that parent with care away from the statutory service and to another service, irrespective of whether the best interests of herself and her child might be served by it?

[Lord De Mauley]

No, my Lords. I shall come to that, if I may, in a moment.

The purpose of the “gateway” clause is to give all parents the opportunity fully to understand their range of choices and the support that is available to overcome barriers to family-based arrangements. It is in no way intended to prevent them accessing the statutory service if that is the best option for them. We simply want that to be a considered choice. Parents can come back to the statutory service at any time if a family- based arrangement does not work out.

The “gateway” will take the form of a telephone conversation with an agent who will simply explain the available maintenance choices to the prospective applicant and signpost them to any associated help they might need. At the end of that conversation, if the parent feels that the statutory service is the best option, they will be transferred to the statutory service to begin the application process. We will develop an analogous approach for parents wishing to apply online.

We are also aware that a variety of support services for separating families already exists in the voluntary and community sector. However, we all know that there is a multitude of complex issues to be addressed during separation and it can be difficult, especially at a time of distress, for parents to find the information and support that they need. The gateway will also help signpost parents to such support so that if, following the conversation with an agent, they decide that they want to try to establish a family-based arrangement, we can help them find the support they need to do so.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

Will the Minister explain the difference between what he has just described and the current options service, other than the related charges that come through? The charges will need to be explained before somebody can make an application but, apart from that, in terms of the support and information that are given, how does the new arrangement differ?

[Lord De Mauley]

I shall come back to that if I may.

With the right support in place to help parents collaborate better, more children will be able to benefit from effective family-based maintenance arrangements. Outcomes for children across a range of measures are almost always best when parents work together. We want to make it easier for parents to access support by ensuring that it is available in a more co-ordinated way.

We want the people who know families best to shape these plans. That is why we asked a steering group of academics and voluntary sector experts to help us develop proposals for better coordinating support at a local and national level and as to how most appropriately to measure success. I am pleased to be able to say that we will look to act on this advice and to commit increased funding as detailed proposals emerge. This could include, for example, a web portal or a helpline that would provide an entry point to the wide range of services which are already available but parents may not be aware of. The helpline might, for example, offer a “triage” conversation to help parents identify their priority issues and obstacles and then advise on how and where to get support on them. The web portal would provide a framework to help co-ordinate the wide variety of online services already available, ranging from interactive advice and support from experts to forums where parents can talk to others in the same situation to share learning and information. The steering group will also consider how best to co-ordinate face-to-face local services to offer help and support. We will also look to test which interventions are most effective in helping parents overcome any obstacles to collaboration. This will be critical in helping us to decide where best to direct funding.

Amendment 113D would appear to create a period within which the prospect of an application being made to the statutory service against the non-resident parent would act as a stimulus to the NRP to engage in conversation with the commission. The conversation would encourage the NRP to consider taking action towards a family-based arrangement. This is a welcome intention, but one drawback is that it would impose a delay on processing the application where there was no prospect of a family-based arrangement, which in turn would delay the flow of maintenance. The Government’s view is that it is preferable to get parents talking at an earlier stage in the separation process to maximise the chances of them acting collaboratively and to provide them with access to services that will help them overcome any barriers to doing this.

The commission also has the objective of promoting financial responsibility. It should not be only the threat of an application to the statutory service that forces non-resident parents to be mindful of their obligations. The commission will continue to work to produce the cultural change outlined in the Green Paper so that the statutory service is the last resort rather than the default option. This will not happen overnight but this rebalancing of approach away from state intervention to parental collaboration must be the right approach.

Amendment 113F would exempt existing CSA clients from the need to take reasonable steps before applying to the new statutory scheme. It is just as important that these parents consider the possibility of reaching a family-based arrangement as parents entering the child maintenance system for the first time, particularly as they will be treated as if they are making a fresh application. Research tells us that 51 per cent of CSA parents with care feel that they would be likely or very likely to make a family-based arrangement were they to receive the right help and support. In addition, many CSA clients were compelled to apply to the CSA as a condition of applying for benefit.

Therefore, it is surely right to give CSA client parents who feel that they can make an arrangement and who may have been required to use the CSA the scope to consider whether a family-based arrangement could work for them. I challenge the view that the only way to have an effective arrangement is to have the state manage it. That approach has been shown not to work. Our proposals will provide more support for family-based arrangements and more options for reaching effective arrangements.

My noble friend Lord Kirkwood asked about the costs of transition, which will be effected over a three-year period. Estimates of cost will accompany consultation on the regulations covering case closure and charging, which will set out the spending profiles. The policy has not been finalised, so costs have not yet been firmed up.

In the context of Amendment 113D, my noble friend Lady Tyler referred to there being no charge on the NRP, to which I will turn when we deal with the next group. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked how the gateway is different from options. The conversation is basically the same. The difference is that we would expect applicants to have the options conversation before applying to the statutory service. At present, they go straight to the CSA. Earlier, I mentioned that we want to make the statutory service more effective. He also asked whether there is capacity to cope with case closure and how support will be structured. Yes, there are no concerns about capacity and support will be structured along similar lines as CM options.

The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, also asked whether the same fee structure would be applied generally and, if not, what it will be. There will be one application charge only. He asked whether there would be an appeals process, if I understood him correctly. I think there is no need for an appeals service because the gateway is simply a phone call. He asked whether, if access is denied, an individual can apply again. Yes, they can. He asked how soon they can get on the statutory scheme. The answer is immediately. He asked whether both parents need to interact with the gateway. No, it requires just one telephone call, which generally is from the parent with care but both parents are free to seek advice.

With that rather lengthy response, I hope that I can persuade the noble Lord not to press his amendment.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

I am sure that the Minister wants the Committee to make progress. I have to confess that I am disappointed that we have not been able to get a quantification of the costs for the maintenance and support system to which the Minister referred. If I have understood what he said— I will read his words carefully tomorrow, as I am sure we all will, and I am grateful for his reply—it looks to me as if we are going to get to Report stage and the later stages not knowing what investment and what timescale we will be dealing with in terms of the proposed support systems in this new iteration of the Child Support Agency. We still do not know whether the families and relationships funding scheme from the Department for Education will be replaced in 2013. That involves a substantial sum of money, £30 million. If we do not get at least £30 million and then some, it could be construed as an effective cut.

19:15

This is very important stuff. If we do not get some comfort in terms of what we can expect in the roll-out and the resources invested in a system which presumably will last for the foreseeable future, then I do not think that any of us can really be confident that this change in legislation will do the job that it sets out to do.

Having said that, we will have other opportunities later on in other debates, and I am happy on that basis to beg leave to withdraw the amendment standing in my name.

Amendment 113B withdrawn.

Amendments 113C and 113D not moved.

Amendment 113DA

Moved by

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

113DA: Clause 131, page 101, line 19, at end insert—
“( ) In section 6 of the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008 (provision to allow charging of fees by the Commission), after subsection (2) insert—
“(3) Nothing in regulations under subsection (1) shall impose a liability on a parent with care for the payment of fees to the Commission where that parent has taken all reasonable steps to establish whether it is possible or appropriate to make a maintenance agreement (within the meaning of section 9 of the Child Support Act 1991), and where, having taken all such reasonable steps, it is either not possible or not appropriate for the parent with care to do so.””

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, in view of the Prime Minister’s speech, to which the noble Baronesses referred, I thought it right to write to him to give notice of the amendment which I am moving. I copied the letter to the Secretary of State, to Maria Miller and to my noble friend Lord Freud. I got a very substantial reply from Maria Miller quite recently, explaining to me first, that the Government’s point of view was to try to get people to reach agreement; secondly, that various improvements were to be made in the system for getting money off the recalcitrant parent; and thirdly, that the amounts likely to be charged to the parent in question in my amendment would be rather small. Unfortunately, on the main point the letter appeared to hold to the previous position, which is why I am moving this amendment.

So far as I am concerned, I am perfectly happy with an arrangement in which, in the words of the statute, before the commission or its substitute accepts a person as an applicant, the commission may,

“before accepting an application under those sections, require the applicant to take reasonable steps to establish whether it is possible or appropriate to make such an agreement”.

I am entirely in favour of that: the less that the CSA, or its successor, has to be used, the better.

Unfortunately, experience has shown that there are some people with an obligation to their children who are not willing to make such an arrangement. When I first became Lord Chancellor I distinctly remember receiving a number of heart-rending letters from people who had obtained decrees in the magistrates’ court and the defendant had disappeared. The people writing could not do anything about tracing the defendants. They did not have the necessary resources. It is difficult enough for a large international group to trace somebody who wants to hide. For a lady on her own—and usually it was a woman who was writing, although that does not necessarily follow—to try to find somebody who wants to hide from his obligations is an impossible task. That was one of the motivations I had in supporting, with my noble friend Lord Newton of Braintree, the 1991 Act which set the CSA on its rather troubled course.

The principle of it was perfectly reasonable. The only difficulty was to implement the full policy, because some additional policy considerations were put on to it, which made the formula and its application rather difficult. The situation we are in now is that the Government are supporting the view that, if possible, parents should reach agreement about their children. As I say, I entirely support that. It is the principle behind the Family Law Act 1996, which I was responsible for bringing to Parliament and which went on the statute book, but so far, as far as this part of it is concerned, remains unimplemented. I entirely agree with that. However, when a woman, as a typical example, has taken all reasonable steps and done all that she can to reach an agreement but cannot manage it, I do not agree that she should be charged by the CSA for her application. I entirely agree with the power given in the 2008 Act to require fees to be paid—that was perfectly reasonable and was to be done by regulation—but I want to make an exception to that power which would prevent fees being levied on a woman in the position I have just described. That is utterly unfair. If anyone is to pay for that, surely it should be the person who has caused the difficulty by trying to escape from his moral obligations. There is no question of the woman getting benefit from this—she is acting on behalf of her child.

In her letter, Maria Miller mentioned that they were raising the level of child support. So be it, but the last thing you would want to do with the enhanced level of child support—which, I assume, is considered necessary for the support of the child—is to use it to pay a fee to the CSA. I do not understand how this can be justified. It is purely a matter of justice and fairness and nothing else. It is a short point and very easy to state. With that, I move my amendment.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, I know other noble Lords have attached their name to this amendment but I crave the indulgence of the Committee for a few minutes. As my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay said, we were in cahoots on this 20 years ago. We are in cahoots on it today and I support him totally in what he has said and what he is proposing.

At one stage I thought it was a pity that this group of amendments had not been placed with the next group. I did not agree with everything that was said on the previous group, but I do not have the courage to say who I disagreed with and so I will keep my head down on that. I should like the Minister to explain to me sometime—not tonight—the overarching coalition philosophy that links the Public Bodies Bill proposition that Ministers should take all decisions and the NHS Bill philosophy which says that Ministers should take no decisions. He can think about that and come back to me at his leisure—which might be in about three years’ time.

I, too, am grateful to Gingerbread for some helpful briefing. I wish to cover some historical points, one of which indicates that I have some sympathy with one of the noble Baronesses facing me—namely, the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. My noble and learned friend has used characteristically more emollient language than I, but the original CSA proposals were made difficult by two things: one was that the Treasury wanted too much money out of it too soon; the second—and there have been echoes of this in the discussions today—was that the political classes, and I include myself in that, did not understand what they were dealing with.

There are four people in this Room who are former MPs—one of whom is in a Trappist position because she is the Deputy Chairman—my noble friend the former Member for the Cities of London and Westminster; my noble friend the former Member for—I forget what it was called but it was the Borders.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

Roxburgh and Berwickshire.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

Right.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

I think also the noble Lord, Lord Wigley.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

Yes. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley—he was lurking—and the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy. I am sorry. I had looked only at the Front Benches and included myself. They may care to chip in. If their experience was anything like mine when the CSA came into effect in 1992, for a lad who came from a middle-class 1930s family, it was a real eye opener. There are signs that one or two people who have been pontificating on the subject have not realised that this is a much more complicated world than they thought.

There are still those who seem to think that it is all a matter of feckless youths going out on a Saturday evening, or feckless male partners deserting women as single parents irresponsibly. It is hugely more complicated than that. I remember people coming to my surgeries who had children by multiple fathers and often did not know who they were, or were living in fear if they identified them. I seem to remember that Edwina Currie got into trouble for talking about a woman who had children by five different fathers. She made some critical comments. I do not know whether they went down well or not but they certainly struck a chord. We have to realise that it is much more complicated.

I have not too many more points to make. I share the general view articulated by my noble and learned friend, and earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, that it is much better to come to an amicable arrangement. I probably ought to acknowledge that I have been divorced and I came to an entirely amicable arrangement with my ex-wife 25 years ago, or more. It ought to be possible and it was possible in my situation, but there are many situations in which it is not possible which I have already touched on, and to which my noble and learned friend has referred. The notion that such an arrangement was either feasible or reasonable to expect in some of the cases in my surgery, and no doubt in others in the mid-1990s, is to live in a dream world. It is totally ridiculous. The proposition that my noble and learned friend is getting at, that if it is not practicable, people should be charged for getting justice and reasonable support for their children, is bordering on the indefensible.

That is about all I want to say but a question was put into my mind by what the Minister said. If there is to be no appeal against these decisions, which on the basis of what he said will be Secretary of State decisions, what kind of world are we living in? Did he say that there will be no appeal system? That stirs up all the worries I explored last week—unsuccessfully in the event—about the Government’s attitude to administrative justice and fair dealing between the citizen and the state. That needs looking at again or we shall have more trouble. I know that the Minister cannot answer all these questions tonight but I hope that he will look at them, otherwise he will have big trouble on Report.

[The Lord Bishop of Blackburn]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his amendment and for this group of amendments. Noble Lords will know that the Church of England has for many years keenly supported a just welfare system as one of the key building blocks of a civilised society. We have always been concerned to ensure that the welfare of children is maximised in any system of benefits and I believe that that must include times of economic challenge. Some noble Lords may know that in the consultation period we said that an effective and sensitive child maintenance system is one that should seek to help parents negotiate their parenting and financial responsibilities towards children. The system should also be operated in tandem with appropriate support services and not discourage people from using it by levying charges. If there are to be charges, surely those charges must apply only where parents can afford it and where maintenance is being paid. I have no difficulty over means testing if the end result is that the very poorest single parents will not face the £50 charge.

19:30

It is very easy for us—I say, with respect, particularly for those in the south—to forget just how desperately poor some of our people are, and are increasingly becoming. In my own diocese, which covers virtually the whole of Lancashire, between 2007 and 2010 the proportion of areas falling in the most deprived 10 per cent in the county rose from 15 per cent to 17 per cent, the gross median weekly wage in most of the county is some £40 per week below the national average and, even more frighteningly, one-quarter of children live in families where the income is 60 per cent less than the average income. Something like £10 a week in maintenance for these families can be, unbelievably, a lifeline. My newspaper bill is nearly £16 a week, but £10 a week will make all the difference to these families. If a parent has to pay the Government up to 12 per cent of this simply because the other parent refuses to pay their maintenance, once again children will be deprived because of the unreasonable behaviour of the non-resident parent.

I found some of the comments that Gingerbread has received from the thousands of parents who have expressed their concerns very moving. I refer to two in particular. One said:

“What people need to remember is that this is money for children—for their uniform, books, toys. People seem to think it is some form of alimony. It isn’t—it’s for a child who deserves better and the government is letting us down by putting through these charges”.

Another said:

“Maintenance is the difference between surviving and building a way out of poverty”.

They even spoke about saving a little for a rainy day, which we are always encouraged to do. The document went on:

“Surely his father owes him this? I try to do everything else. You are suggesting I lose out because his father won’t pay an agreed amount of his own volition”.

Our real concern must be to ensure that disadvantaged children do not lose out in the future.

If the average single parent family spends £43 a week on food and is asked to pay a £20 up-front fee and a further £30 application fee, where is it going to find that £43 to feed the family? As they say round our way, you must be having a laugh asking for that money. I think that that is the case. Such charges cannot be right. We must have a system that will safeguard the most vulnerable and not one that succeeds in discouraging low-income single parents, and those where the amount of maintenance likely to be paid is modest. If we cannot bring this about, the result will be that nearly half a million children still reliant on the statutory scheme to collect and, if necessary, enforce payment of child maintenance, will lose this vital source of income.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I was more than happy to put my name to this amendment because the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, seemed to be making the right point in this amendment. I am only sorry that my noble friend Lord Northbourne is not in his place because the important parenting responsibility of fathers is one of the areas which he has been pushing for years. As has been stressed, sadly, we are really talking about single parents, 97 per cent of whom are mothers, who are in this position. There was a hope that the citizenship classes which the previous Government introduced would be about your responsibilities to your future children, not about sorting out disputes between you and your own parents, and thinking that the responsibilities of parents ought to be shared.

I am not going to repeat everything that has been said, but I agree that it is wrong in principle to charge single parents, mainly women, who have no alternative, when the other parent refuses to pay maintenance. That is not only unjust; it is, as has already been said, indefensible.

Gingerbread has given us a considerable number of quotes. As the right reverend Prelate said, they are very moving. I shall end by quoting a letter that Gingerbread sent to me, for which I am grateful. The writer was clearly quite sympathetic, in theory, to the Government.

“While I can understand many of the government’s cuts and tax rises—a number of which will directly affect me—I cannot understand these proposals. If only you knew how driven single parents have to be to even apply to the CSA. When I first turned to the CSA five years ago I eventually gave up. It was in such hopeless disarray … Fortunately, a judge laid out maintenance in my divorce agreement and my ex-husband paid up. But two and half years ago he stopped paying and I was forced, with many misgivings, to turn to the CSA. Luckily for me it had been reorganised and was able to progress my claim second time around, although it still took months. When the payments finally started coming via the CSA—you cannot imagine the weight that was lifted off my shoulders. I finally felt I could plan ahead for school trips, clothes and other essentials. The relief has been immense. The truth is that the proposals will only penalise the children the CSA is meant to help. Women generally only turn to the CSA when they have exhausted all other avenues. It’s an act of desperation. Those in government who preach about mediation and private agreements mean well, but they have no idea how difficult some ex-partners can be—some years ago, I would never have believed it myself. My message to the government is this: you will be hurting the very people you are trying to help. And, I fear, partners who only receive small payments will just give up altogether. It will be their children who will suffer. For me it will mean the worry returns—I will have to cut back and I already know that negotiating with my husband is an impossible task. So I will face having money intended for my children taken from me by a government which I trusted to come to my aid, and incurring his wrath over the fees he in addition will have to pay”.

That says it all. It is sad indeed that, although so many of us around this table and outside, would agree “Yes, let’s get everybody to sort out their own arrangements if humanly possible”, there really are situations where it is not going to happen. Until we get education on early intervention going in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, hoped that one day we would be able to encourage the Government to provide for, I fear that we are going to have to fight arrangements like this. It is with that that I happily endorse the amendment in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern.

[Lord Wigley]

My Lords, I support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, in what seems to be one of the most important amendments that have come before this Committee in our long hearings. If it is not successful tonight—and no assurance is given—I very much hope that we will return to it on the Floor of the House on Report.

As the noble Lord, Lord Newton, said, those of us who had to deal with some of the Child Support Agency cases in the 1990s will know how desperately searing they were. It was not just one or two, but dozens, and sometimes even hundreds. I used to try to sort out problems with the local officers, either in Caernarfon or in the office that was administering the CSA in north-west England. It came to the point where I started writing to the Minister about each case because I thought that was the only way in which the message would get home. Poverty was referred to a moment ago. If one quotes the figures for the difference between south-east England and other parts, the average GVA per head in Kensington and Chelsea is over nine times that in Anglesey, and that is an average figure. Within Anglesey, there will be poorer people, as of course there will be in Kensington and Chelsea. It does not really matter where they are; it is what they are suffering. We want a system that can be sympathetic towards them; we certainly do not want a system which prevents people making appeals when things are going wrong. It must be our responsibility as a Committee to get that sorted out; if we cannot, then it will be decided on the Floor of the House.

[Lord Skelmersdale]

My Lords, my noble and learned friend has produced a very cunning amendment indeed. It is cunning because it follows and detracts, just slightly, from the worst effects of the Government’s policy announcement. However, is the Government’s policy announcement the right one? Who is the sinner in this situation? It is the absent parent. My noble and learned friend is absolutely right that to fine the parent with care who has done everything possible to get to an agreement is quite wrong. The real sinner in all this is the absent parent. Surely the charges ought to be reflected on him and it ought to be for the state to chase him, which has always happened through the CMEC arrangements. That would be my preferred solution.

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, I convey my thanks—and I suspect those of many other noble Lords around me—to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, for having brought this before the Committee and having done so in so eloquent, powerful and almost irrefutable a way.

I want to add only two things. One is a question to the Minister. We have talked a lot in this Committee about behavioural effects. I want to understand the point of this charging. If we think it through rationally for a moment, if the aim of the new system is to encourage absent parents to pay up, the logical thing to do would be to charge them if they do not. Why then would one charge the parent with care? The only possible reason to do that would be to deter them applying to the CSA in the first place, because as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, explained so clearly, the parent with care can do nothing to affect the outcome the Government say they want. Therefore to penalise her for failing to do so would obviously not be fair, so that cannot be the aim. Will the Government please explain to us what is the aim of charging the parent with care?

19:45

I want to discuss two other things. I want to share a quote I found from a former Minister who said:

“Government too must be concerned to see parents accept responsibility for their children. For, even though marriages may break down, parenthood is for life. Legislation can’t make irresponsible parents responsible, but it can and must ensure that absent parents pay maintenance for their children”.

I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Newton, will recognise that that was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, when she was Prime Minister, in July 1990 to the 300 Group at the Savoy hotel. She went on to explain why the Government were setting up the CSA in the first place and pointed out that only one-third of lone parents were getting any maintenance at all and that most of them were not getting it regularly, as I was aware from other sources. We have all heard lone parents say that if they could do private arrangements they would. The whole point of the agency is to deal with people who cannot make private arrangements. Therefore, if charging them 12 per cent of the money that currently goes to children and handing that over instead to the state does not deter them, what will?

I must in all conscience speak briefly to the amendment in my name in this group, which is specifically about exempting parents with care who have experience of domestic violence. I hope that this amendment will never be necessary because I hope that nobody in this position will be charged in any case. I simply give the Minister the opportunity to set out in his response some of the questions that have yet to be asked. The amendment was tabled to do three things. First, the Government have previously said that they will exempt from the initial charge parents who have experienced domestic violence. Can the Minister explain how the Government intend to define victims of domestic violence? I commend to him the definition in the amendment, which is the one used widely across government. If he does not like it, perhaps he could share another.

Secondly, will he explain—I am happy if he writes to me before Report—what parents with care will have to do, show or prove to obtain an exemption? Finally, will he explain why an exemption will be from the initial charge only and not from the charge for using the collection service? Having said all that, I hope very much that this is not necessary and that the considerable wisdom expressed around this Committee prevails.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

My Lords, just for completeness I shall speak to Amendment 113E. I will be grateful if the Minister will respond to the prospect of, if everything else fails, having a waiver system for low-income families facing some of these fees. I want to know whether the Government have thought about this carefully and looked at the operational and other implementation arrangements that might be necessary. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, I would like briefly to add a few comments to those that have been made so powerfully around this Committee. We have heard some moving quotes today, but the one I want to give is not from someone who has been part of this process as an end user but from Sir David Henshaw who, back in 2006, came up with the report that is often cited as being the genesis of the idea of charging. We have heard his name referred to on a number of occasions as his policy has been explained. Sir David Henshaw himself recognised the limits to charging when he said:

“I do not want to create a disincentive to use the service for those parents who have no other option for agreeing maintenance”.

We know, because DWP estimates tell us, that about half of all eligible families have no child maintenance arrangements at all. The danger is that even more children in poorer families will go without child maintenance as a result of the proposal to charge the parent with care. This is my final point, which I want to link to the one I made on the previous group of amendments. Not only will the children be worse off—we have heard some graphic and moving accounts of the real hardship that some children could be in—but more will grow up without a role model of a father who contributes, however modestly, to the cost of raising his own children.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, like all noble Lords, I am indebted to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, for tabling the amendment. His being in tandem with the noble Lord, Lord Newton, is an irresistible combination. I do not envy the Minister having to reply.

There have been some powerful and moving contributions. I should start by putting clearly on the record where we are in relation to charging. It has been suggested that what the Government are bringing forward is just based on the previous Government’s proposals, but that is not so. It is absolutely correct to say that charging is permitted under the 2008 legislation, which is supported by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. But that is enabling legislation like so much of this Bill. It certainly did not envisage proposals such as those advanced by the coalition Government. It should be recognised of course that there were charging arrangements under the original 1991 legislation, but I believe that that was stopped in 1995 because the CSA was not delivering.

Our position on charging is clear. It is reflected in the White Paper entitled, A New System of Child Maintenance, dated December 2006. It cites in part what the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, has just said and makes reference to Sir David Henshaw.  Paragraph 5.48 states:

“We recognise the importance of having a charging regime that does not dissuade vulnerable and low-income parents with care from seeking maintenance in the first place. Therefore, the future charging regime will be based on three clear principles. First, that the charging structure should incentivise non-resident parents to meet their responsibilities. Second, that the clear burden of charging should fall on the non-resident parent and not the parent with care. Third, that cost recovery for C-MEC should never be prioritised above payment of outstanding debt for the parent with care”.

Those provisions were not debated particularly extensively when we considered the Bill in 2008, although there was some discussion. At that time, we made it clear that it was for CMEC to advise and recommend to Ministers the detail of any charging regime but that such advice would be subject to CMEC’s overarching objective of maximising the number of children benefiting from effective maintenance arrangements, a point made by my noble friend Lady Sherlock a short while ago.

Although the clear focus on any charging should be on the non-resident parent, CMEC was not precluded from considering a small application fee to both non-resident parents and parents with care where voluntary arrangements might be more effective for them. We also made it clear that any charging structure should not commence until the service was fit for purpose and that this would not be before the launch of the new scheme then planned for 2010, which I think is now planned for 2012.

The Government have proposed a range of charges, including an upfront application fee of £100, which would be reduced for parents on benefits, and an ongoing collection charge on both non-resident parents and parents with care. The latter would be avoided for each if maintenance direct were used. However, whether maintenance direct is a secure and sustainable method of payment is wholly dependent on the non-resident parent. The Government’s proposals for charging fall foul of our criteria in a number of respects. An upfront fee of £100 is bound to act as a deterrent for lower-income households. It is payable not only in circumstances where a voluntary arrangement might be possible but in circumstances where it is not, for whatever reasons. That seems highly likely to increase the prospect of circumstances where no maintenance arrangements are entered into. Penalising parents with care with a collection charge, which depends on the NRP acting responsibly, is wholly unjust. The proposals allow for a reduction in the case of those on benefits but there is no exemption. Neither is any relief proposed for the collection charge.

That is why we are fully supportive of the amendment in the name of the noble and learned Lord. In short, it states that there will be no fees charged to parents with care where they have taken all reasonable steps to enter into a maintenance arrangement and it is not possible or appropriate to do so. There may be a multiplicity of reasons why it is not possible or appropriate to do so, some of which are particularised in later amendments. My noble friend Lady Sherlock has just spoken to one, as indeed has the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. In such circumstances, the only prospect of obtaining arrangements is the statutory system. There should be no charge which precludes this, which is what the noble and learned Lord’s amendment seeks to secure.

Amendment 113E, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, seeks to introduce a reduction or waiver of fees where the income of a parent falls below prescribed levels. We have already indicated why we consider an exemption to be appropriate, although we acknowledge that the scope of Clause 6 is already wide enough to accomplish this.

Amendment 113EA has been spoken to powerfully by my noble friend and sets down circumstances where voluntary arrangements would clearly be inappropriate. The Government, I am sure, will be sympathetic to this given that they already acknowledge that individuals experiencing domestic violence will by-pass their new gateway.

Government Amendment 114 prompts me to raise questions relating to issues of enforcement. Can the Minister give an update on the various measures contained in the 2008 Act, including the use of deduction-from-earnings orders; regular deductions from accounts; lump-sum deduction orders; orders preventing avoidance; administrative liability orders; disqualification for holding or obtaining travel authorisation; curfew orders; and disqualification from driving? Can he say which of these are in force? If it is about getting sensible arrangements, it is also about making sure that those people who are responsible non-resident parents meet their commitments. We put in place a raft of enforcement measures which should have facilitated that and I would be grateful for an update on their progress.

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, I start by addressing my noble and learned friend’s Amendment 113DA. This would exempt from any charges parents with care who have taken all reasonable steps to make an arrangement outside the statutory scheme. In the debate on the previous group of amendments I said that we are seeking to promote collaboration between parents and to encourage them to consider their child maintenance options instead of taking the statutory service as the default. Research shows that more than half of parents with care in the Child Support Agency say that it is likely that they could make a collaborative arrangement with the right advice and support. We believe that it is generally in people’s best interests to focus on developing family support services for separated parents to enable them to consider their options and access help in overcoming barriers to collaborating where this is possible.

The introduction of charging is fundamental to our reforms to encourage parents to consider their options. Of course, not every parent will be able to make a family-based arrangement and so some parents will need to use the new statutory scheme. We believe that it is reasonable to ask them to make a contribution to the cost of the service they receive. We have spent some time considering the issue of value for money in the context of an application and it is worth pointing out that the average yearly Child Support Agency maintenance award is around £1,800 and an average case can be expected to last nine years. This equates to more than £16,000 of child maintenance. It is also worth pointing out that, unlike the situation until quite recently—the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, mentioned this in the debate on the last group of amendments and I pay tribute to the previous Government for changing it—the receipt of maintenance does not now result in a reduction in benefits. I can confirm that this will remain the case with universal credit. Every penny of maintenance received is on top of whatever benefits the recipient has qualified for.

Noble Lords will, I hope, be able to see that, in the long-term, making some contribution towards the cost of the application in order to expedite this will be a good deal for parents given the significant on going financial benefit of child maintenance and the support offered if there should be any cessation of payment.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked whether the application charge will be used to discourage people from using the service. No. Our aim is that where relationships break down, both parents continue to take responsibility for the welfare of their children. This includes collaboration on issues of finance and, where appropriate, on going involvement of both parents in their children’s lives. We feel that it is fair for those parents who use the statutory service to reprioritise some of their spending towards the cost of their application and ongoing maintenance collection.

20:00

However, if people are asked to pay, they are entitled to expect a better service. The new statutory scheme will utilise HMRC tax data to help prevent non-resident parents delaying accurate calculations of maintenance. There will be annual reviews of cases to keep them up to date. These changes will be supported by new information technology which will deliver general improvements to the service.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

Could I therefore ask the Minister a question to which his noble friend responded on a previous amendment? If he is making a power to impose charges, would he at the very least agree that it would be unwise—as well as indecent, as some of us might think—to introduce them for at least two years or so, until the new system has settled down?

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, I take the general point that they should not come in immediately. We are in fact proposing to introduce the new service and run it for six months before we introduce charges.

The behaviour that my noble friend’s specific amendment would take into account on the part of the applicant is consistent with one objective of the application charge—pursuing alternatives to the statutory service before applying to it—so in that sense it is consistent with our thinking. I would argue, though, that there would be difficulties in collecting hard evidence to show that a parent with care had taken reasonable steps without an inappropriate degree of intrusiveness. However, the amendment does focus our attention on the fundamental issue of access to the statutory service for those who need it.

[Baroness Sherlock]

The Minister thinks it will be very hard to get evidence as to how an applicant had made reasonable steps. New subsection (2A) of Section 9 of the Child Support Act 1991, as inserted by Clause 131(1), says:

“The Commission may, with a view to reducing the need for applications under sections 4 and 7 … take such steps as it considers appropriate”,

and,

“before accepting an application under those sections, require the applicant to take reasonable steps to establish whether it is possible or appropriate to make such an agreement”.

How does he propose to enforce that?

[Lord De Mauley]

I agree that that is a good question. The Government will accept that making a phone call to the gateway is taking reasonable steps.

I said earlier that I agreed with the last Government that it is acceptable to charge for the statutory system. I am, however, very sympathetic to the concerns that have been raised today and I have listened very carefully to noble Lords’ views. What is critical is the amount that the applicant is charged to access the service. Concerns have been raised about the figure that has been mentioned. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, in the last debate, and the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, in this debate, mentioned a figure of £100. Both of them suggested that that figure is too high. I sympathise with this view, so I undertake to the Committee to have discussions with my ministerial colleagues and to make that point very vigorously. I thank noble Lords for their contributions today because they will strengthen my hand in those discussions. I also remind noble Lords that we will also consult in due course on our charging levels and debate the regulations in Parliament.

Amendment 113E explores the idea of relating the waiver or reduction of fees to the level of a parent’s income. In a simple way, this is already built into the proposed application charges, with a different, lower rate for those applicants on benefit. Rather than attempt to build further complexity into the IT system, I would prefer, as I have said, to take another look at the overall level of the application charge.

I understand that the matter of an ongoing collection charge is also a concern. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn referred to this. I will take this opportunity to point out to noble Lords that such a charge will be incurred only if maintenance is actually being received; by definition, therefore, people will have to pay for a service only if it is working. I have explained some of the improvements that we plan to make to the service. I am sure noble Lords will agree that it badly needs improvement.

Furthermore, collection charges can be avoided at any time if maintenance direct is selected. The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked whether victims of domestic violence will pay collection charges. I will come back to victims of domestic violence in a moment, but in the context of collection charges I must say that I do not think it is unreasonable to levy a charge for a service. What is important is the quality of the service and the level of the charge. I hope that I have gone some way to demonstrating that the service will be an improvement on what it has been.

Turning to victims of domestic violence, I reiterate that, as outlined in the Green Paper, Strengthening Families, Promoting Parental Responsibility: the Future of Child Maintenance, we are committed to exempting victims of domestic violence from the application charge. I reiterate that we will honour this commitment. Victims of domestic violence will not have to pay an application charge and they will be fast tracked through the gateway. We accept that applicants who have been victims of domestic violence cannot be expected to make family-based arrangements and so should be exempt from the application charge. However, we do not think it is unreasonable that they should make a contribution, as I have just said, to the cost of the statutory service once they are in it.

To assist them wherever possible to move into maintenance direct and so avoid collection charges and recognising that applicants in these circumstances will not want to have direct dealings with their ex-partner, we are developing a payment support service so that payment can be made outside the collection service without the parent with care having to divulge any personal details to the non-resident parent.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked about the definition of domestic violence. The commission has been working with the Home Office, which has the lead on domestic violence across government. In 2004, the Home Office replaced the 14 previous definitions of domestic violence used across government with a single cross-government definition. We will, of course, be using that definition.

We are still considering how the parent with care can prove that they have been a victim of domestic violence, but I can assure noble Lords that what is designed will not be onerous or burdensome.

Finally, I turn to Amendment 114. In the current child maintenance schemes, the Government have the ability to collect child maintenance by deducting it directly from the benefits of non-resident parents, which is an effective method. The purpose of this amendment is to enable us to continue to do this upon the introduction of universal credit. The amendment will allow, where necessary, for deductions in respect of child maintenance to be made from a non-resident parent’s universal credit award.

We envisage allowing most non-resident parents in the new statutory scheme the opportunity to pay their child maintenance directly to the parent with care—that is maintenance direct, which most noble Lords are familiar with. This should mean that in most cases use of the collection service and deductions from universal credit will be necessary only if the non-resident parent fails to pay by this method. In the current scheme, the ability to make such deductions is limited to where the non-resident parent is liable for the flat rate of maintenance, which could potentially rule out this option for a significant proportion of universal credit claimants who could be liable to pay more. The amendment will remove that restriction.

The amendment also makes clear the position in relation to charging. In the new child maintenance scheme, it is proposed that ongoing collection charges are payable by non-resident parents on top of the maintenance due where it is necessary for the maintenance to be collected using the collection service. The amendment ensures that any charges payable by non-resident parents can also be deducted directly from their benefit payments or universal credit, where this is appropriate. It also allows arrears to be deducted.

My noble friend Lord Newton asked about the appeals system. I should clarify that when I said there was no appeal with the gateway, it is because no one will be stopped from applying to the statutory service, so there is nothing to appeal against. The parent with care just needs to make a phone call and will be granted access to the statutory service.

The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked for an update on the powers taken in the 2008 Act. The Government remain committed to pursuing arrears and will continue to use all their expanded powers to this end while the Child Support Agency schemes remain open. We frequently use deductions from earnings orders, lump sum deductions and deductions from accounts. Parents who fail to pay now face tougher sanctions, including having money deducted directly from their bank account or having their home seized. Primary powers enable the Government administratively—without application to a court—to disqualify a non-resident parent from holding a driving licence or passport where we are of the opinion that the non-resident parent has wilfully refused or culpably neglected to pay child maintenance. These powers are not yet in force. Prior to any final decision being made to commence them, there would need to be public consultation on the detail of how they would work. If the noble Lord so wishes, I can write to him detailing exactly what powers we currently use and what we still plan to bring forward.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

That would be helpful, but could the Minister also indicate the extent to which those powers are going to be transferred to the Secretary of State?

[Lord De Mauley]

I shall include that in the letter I will send out. In the light of what I have said, I hope that I can persuade my noble and learned friend not to press his amendment.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

This is Grand Committee and therefore there is no other option open to me at present. However, I must confess to not understanding how it is thought to be just that an absent father’s neglect of his obligations to his children should be paid for to any extent by the children, which is ultimately what it amounts to. That is unfair in principle. I raised it with the Prime Minister—I could go no higher than that—as going against his own speech. As has been said, that speech was very clear. As I understood it, the Fathers 4 Justice people were inclined to think that it was extreme, but I think that its kernel was entirely justified. I cannot see for the moment—I expect to remain of this view—that it is fair to charge the children when one of the parents neglects his or her responsibility. The other parent is left with the children, looking after them, I am sure, to the best of their ability. I cannot see why they should be charged once they have complied with the Government’s new condition of going to the CSA.

I accept entirely that that is a very useful condition and I think that it is very reasonable. However, once it has been complied with, I cannot see that the person who has complied with it should, on behalf of her children, be punished by having to pay. I have no option but to withdraw my amendment tonight, but I think the noble Lord will understand that unless some change of heart occurs, I may raise it again. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 113DA withdrawn.

Amendments 113E to 113F not moved.

Clause 131 agreed.

Clause 132 : Collection of child support maintenance

Amendment 113G

Moved by

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

113G: Clause 132, page 101, line 38, at end insert—
“(c) the non-resident parent has not agreed to collection arrangements by the Commission under subsection (2A)(a), but has subsequently failed to make full payment of any maintenance due to the parent with care by the date it was due to be paid.(2B) Where subsection (2A)(c) applies, the Commission shall forthwith (and within no more than seven days from the date of notification of non-payment by the parent with care) make arrangements under subsection (2)(a) for the collection of the child support maintenance payable.”

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

My Lords, I still have the will and resolve to continue. Amendment 113G seeks to get fast access to the collection service when the non-resident parent fails to pay. I have a series of questions, which I hope the Minister will help us with, about what happens in these circumstances—they are clearly set out in the amendment—if the non-resident parent fails to pay. The suggestion is that the statutory system would kick in within a seven-day period. I think the Government accept that there could be a gap if that situation was not addressed with dispatch. Seven days might be too high a target to set by way of getting a quick response. Certainly there is concern that a gap, which could be as much as a month, would have a serious impact on the family’s circumstances. Indeed, the Work and Pensions Select Committee noted that,

“unpaid maintenance or late payments can have a devastating impact on parents with care and the wellbeing of their children”.

This amendment tries to identify the fact that there is a gap and tries to get the Government to think about ways of resolving it in order to protect children’s welfare.

I have three basic questions. How quickly does the Minister think that the commission will intervene in these circumstances? What verification of non-payment will they require, which is an important question? Finally, how will disputes be resolved where the non-resident parent argues that payment was made? They are not of the same order as the amendments with which we dealt earlier but it would give some assurance to colleagues if the Minister can say what the Government plan to do in these circumstances. I beg to move.

20:15

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I will be brief in saying that we support the thrust of each of these amendments.

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, turning first to my noble friend’s Amendment 113G, the Government are determined to ensure that non-resident parents meet their child maintenance responsibilities. That is why we have already committed to bring cases into the collection service as soon as we have evidence that payment has not been made through maintenance direct. Where a parent with care informs us that payment has not been received and the non-resident parent is unable to provide evidence to the contrary, such as a bank statement showing credits to the parent with care’s account, we will swiftly move the case in to the collection service and act quickly to ensure payment is reinstated.

This could include the use of enforcement tools where necessary, such as deduction from earnings orders, where maintenance is deducted directly from an employed non-resident parent’s earnings, and deduction orders, which enable deductions to be made directly from a non-resident parent’s bank account. Where the parent with care alleges that further payments have been missed during the maintenance direct period and there is no evidence to the contrary, we will ensure that these arrears are also paid when we bring the case into the collection service. It is unacceptable for non-resident parents to neglect their child maintenance responsibilities and build up arrears, which the Government are determined to tackle. To that end we will take a more robust approach to collection and enforcement in the new scheme and will use all avenues available to us to ensure outstanding arrears are paid and new arrears are not allowed to accrue.

We will not give up on cases. Following the introduction of the new scheme, the commission will continue to pursue non-resident parents for any arrears of maintenance that they may owe, which will include arrears from the schemes currently in operation. Where arrears have been accrued prior to the introduction of charging, no charges will be payable by either party in relation to these amounts.

On victims of domestic violence, as raised under Amendment 113H, let me put it on the record that we are committed to ensuring that victims are protected. They will be fast tracked into the statutory scheme; they will not be expected to make a family-based arrangement; and will not be required pay an application charge. Clause 132 provides non-resident parents with the ability to choose to pay their child support maintenance by maintenance direct within the statutory scheme. When designing this provision we considered carefully how to protect victims of domestic violence. Therefore, we will provide a service to enable direct payments between the parties without the need for any direct contact to be made or any personal information to be disclosed. This will be known as the payment support service. We will also provide appropriate support to help clients to use this service effectively where necessary.

We believe that the provision of this service and the support we will provide to clients in using it will ensure that victims of domestic violence are able to use maintenance direct safely, without any risk of harm to the parent with care or the child. As I have explained, as soon as we have evidence that payment has not been received we will bring the case into the collection service and take appropriate action to re-establish payment. With that explanation, I hope that my noble friend will agree not to press his amendment.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

Perhaps my noble friend will expand on one detail. The amendment seeks an expeditious response within a seven-day period whereas the Government seem to be working to a four-week response time. Is there any way in which I can persuade the Minister to think about at least setting some targets? A month is a long time in a challenged household. It is a gap that we have identified and it will exist. These things will happen. I might be being too ambitious with seven days but my noble friend is being very complacent if he is sticking to 28 days.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I shall be brief. I have a question that we should have asked on the previous group of amendments. What moneys do the Government expect to collect as a result of the £100 fee?

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, in answer to my noble friend’s question, given the admonishment of my noble friend Lord Freud in an earlier debate I can hardly utter the word “target”. I do not know where he got the figure of 28 days from—it is not familiar to me—but I will answer his question in more detail in writing.

Will the noble Baroness repeat her question?

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I was going through the impact analysis statement on the changes in CMEC and I cannot find the figures anywhere. We should have asked this on the previous group—it is our fault—but can the Minister tell us how much the Government expect to garner by way of the £100 charge?

[Lord De Mauley]

Given what I said in the debate on charging, I would prefer to write to the noble Baroness about that in due course.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

I am grateful to my noble friend for the offer of a letter and I am happy to withdraw the amendment on that basis.

Amendment 113G withdrawn.

Amendment 113H not moved.

Clause 132 agreed.

Clause 133 agreed.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes)]

My Lords, there is a misprint in the Marshalled List. Amendment 114, which is to insert a new clause, clearly must be put after Clause 133.

Amendment 114

Moved by

[Lord Freud]

114: After Clause 133, insert the following new Clause—
“Recovery of child support maintenance by deduction from benefit
In section 43 of the Child Support Act 1991 (as substituted by the Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act 2000), for subsections (1) and (2) there is substituted—“(1) The power of the Secretary of State to make regulations under section 5 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 by virtue of subsection (1)(p) of that section may be exercised with a view to securing the making of payments in respect of child support maintenance by a non-resident parent.
(2) The reference in subsection (1) to the making of payments in respect of child support maintenance includes the recovery of—
(a) arrears of child support maintenance, and(b) fees payable under section 6 of the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008.””

Amendment 114 agreed.

Clauses 134 and 135 agreed.

Amendment 114A not moved.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

Again, there is a technicality here in that Clause 136, on which the question will be that it stands part, has been grouped with Amendment 114B which, according to the instructions of 15 September, comes after Clause 136, so Clause 136 stand part cannot be grouped with that amendment. The question therefore is that Clause 136 stand part of the Bill.

Clause 136 agreed.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

My Lords, I apologise for my voice. I have nearly lost it.

Schedule 13 : Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission

Amendment 114B

Moved by

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

114B: Schedule 13, page 151, line 34, at end insert—
“( ) The Commission shall advise Ministers on how to eradicate child poverty within the UK.”

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I am going to apologise because I think that I now stand between the Committee and what I gather is the custom that the Minister buys drinks for the whole Committee at the end.

Despite the late hour, this is a really important issue that needs raising, but I fear that because of the hour we may need to return to it later. The Child Poverty Act 2010, which established the Child Poverty Commission, was passed with cross-party support, and we believe that there is now similar support for the proposal to expand its remit to deal with social mobility, a move which the Opposition certainly welcome. However, we have serious concerns about what will happen to child poverty in the coming years. It has been mentioned several times in the Committee. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has predicted that the number of children in poverty, which had fallen to its lowest level for 25 years by the end of the previous Labour Government, will now under this Government rise to its highest rate since 1999-2000 by 2020, by which time one in four children will be poor, measured in relative terms.

I am going to raise the main points. The main point is the duty. The potential rise in child poverty over the coming years makes the work of this commission essential. The debate about its function—whether it is simply going to help count numbers or whether it is going to give advice about the impact of the numbers—is crucial. If we look at the role of the commission, one of the most important things has been the proposal that it should have a duty to advise Ministers, but this is now to be taken out. It will therefore have no duty to advise Ministers on the preparation of their strategy. It has meant that this is only the responsibility of government.

Surely the commission should not just look at technical issues around the measurement of poverty and social mobility, but should also look at advising on the results of that measurement—to advise the Government on its role. If it was only measuring it, the commission itself would neither attract a high level of membership nor would it be able to do its role properly. We therefore ask why should there not be a requirement that it advise Ministers on the policy itself? Also, how can it be that this commission could be put together without a requirement that people so appointed should be expert in its field? The final question is that it should have to have the ability to get its own research otherwise it would be dependent simply on research from the Government, which it is meant to be scrutinising. I beg to move.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I will speak first to Amendments 114B, 114C and 114D, which would require the Government to consult the commission on the development of child poverty strategy, and for the commission to provide advice to the Government on eradicating child poverty.

We believe that unelected public bodies should be established only in cases where there is a clear need for their role to be carried out by an arm's-length body rather than within government. The new commission, with its remit to objectively assess government progress towards improving social mobility and reducing child poverty, is just such a case. A commission established to provide advice is clearly not. There are already a variety of consultation mechanisms by which the Government can obtain independent advice on child poverty and social mobility policy. Indeed, the consultation on the current child poverty strategy received 280 responses. Moreover, it is a fundamental principle of this Government that Ministers are accountable for the policies and strategies they put forward. These amendments put this principle at risk. They offer a degree of scope for Ministers to shrug off responsibility for any lack of success of their strategy.

Amendment 114E requires that the Government publish a response to each of the commission’s reports. By giving the commission the power to publish annual reports, we are actively ensuring that progress on social mobility and child poverty remains a priority for government. The legislation requires that the commission reports be laid before Parliament, providing the opportunity for parliamentary debate.

Amendment 114F reintroduces the requirement from the original Child Poverty Act that the commission should have a particular balance of child poverty expertise. This requirement has been removed because it is clear that the new commission will require a different balance of expertise. It will monitor progress towards both reducing child poverty and improving social mobility, meeting the child poverty targets and implementing the child poverty strategy. I can assure you that Ministers are fully committed to creating a commission with the right combination of expertise. To ensure that this is the case, the recruitment process for all members of the commission, including the chair and the deputy chair, will be carried out in accordance with the code of practice of the Commissioner for Public Appointments.

Finally, Amendment 114G would give the commission the right to request Ministers to commission research on its behalf. It would also require Ministers to provide a reason if they decide not to meet the commission’s request. We do not believe that this provision is necessary. This is because the commission’s new role means that there will be no need for the commission to be able to access new research as it will not be responsible for developing new policy or strategy. Instead, the commission will produce annual progress reports, and we would expect the vast majority of the evidence needed to fulfil this role to already be available either in the public domain or from the Government. If the Government need more and need to access new research to fulfil their duties, the new legislation already enables Ministers to provide the commission with such resources,

“as the Minister may determine are required by the commission in the exercise of its functions”.

20:30

The question of whether any new research is needed will be a matter for private dialogue between the commission and Ministers. This approach is absolutely appropriate for a public body. We believe that no family should be trapped in poverty and that all children regardless of background should have the opportunity to succeed in life. In the social mobility and child poverty strategies that we published earlier this year we set out our vision for a fairer society. To realise this vision we must ensure that the right accountability structures are in place. The Child Poverty Commission, established in law by the previous Government was an attempt to do that. We support it, and still support the concept of an arm’s-length body that can provide an external and independent challenge, but we do not believe that the commission, as provided for in current legislation, can adequately perform this role. That is why we are making the amendments, and I urge noble Lords to withdraw theirs.

As I shall probably not talk for very much longer, I wish to thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this Grand Committee. I have been deeply impressed and I am grateful for the astonishing level of commitment, experience and sheer intellectual firepower that has been brought to bear in the 17 sittings. Some extraordinarily powerful speeches have been made—quite a few of them have made me think seriously on particular issues. If anyone asks me now what is the point of the House of Lords, I will tell them to read the Committee debates in Hansard and what we have been talking about in these past 17 sittings. Thank you all very much. I might even get you a drink.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

The noble and learned Lord withdrew his amendment and said that he had no choice in Grand Committee. Because of the time, I will also have to do that. We will come back on Report as we have not made the case, particularly about the duty and the need to respond to the annual report.

Can I just say that it has been one heck of a learning experience for me? This is the first Bill I have worked on, and I shall take a moment’s indulgence to thank our leader. Being led by my noble friend Lord McKenzie is an extraordinary experience. In addition to thanking the Minister for his incredible patience at times, through him I thank the Bill team. They have been here night after night, day after day. We have had written briefings but also oral briefings—probably a bit above and beyond the call of duty. We thank them for that. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 114B withdrawn.

Amendments 114C to 114G not moved.

Schedule 13 agreed.

Clause 137 agreed.

Schedule 14 : Repeals

Amendments 115 to 118

Moved by

[Lord Freud]

115: Schedule 14, page 173, leave out lines 5 to 10

116: Schedule 14, page 173, leave out lines 21 to 27

117: Schedule 14, page 173, line 34, leave out “(b)” and insert “(a)”

118: Schedule 14, page 174, leave out lines 12 to 17

Amendments 115 to 118 agreed.

Schedule 14, as amended, agreed.

Clause 138 agreed.

Clause 139 : Extent

Amendments 118ZA and 118A

Moved by

[Lord Freud]

118ZA: Clause 139, page 104, line 5, at end insert—
“( ) section (Calculation of working tax credit) (calculation of working tax credit);”

118A: Clause 139, page 104, line 11, at end insert—
“( ) Sections (Information-sharing between Secretary of State and DPP) and (Unlawful disclosure of information supplied to DPP) extend to England and Wales only.”

Amendments 118ZA and 118A agreed.

Clause 139, as amended, agreed.

Clause 140 : Commencement

Amendment 118B

Moved by

[Lord Freud]

118B: Clause 140, page 104, line 16, at end insert—
“( ) section (Calculation of working tax credit) (calculation of working tax credit);”

Amendment 118B agreed.

Amendments 119 and 120 not moved.

Clause 140, as amended, agreed.

Clause 141 agreed.

Bill reported with amendments.

Committee adjourned at 8.35 pm.

House of Lords

Monday 28th November 2011 Lords Chamber

Monday, 28 November 2011.

14:30

Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of Liverpool.

ETA: Ceasefire

Monday 28th November 2011 Lords Chamber

Question

14:36

Asked By

[Baroness O'Loan]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking within the European Union to support the governments of Spain and France to secure peace following the declaration by ETA of a definitive cessation of all armed action.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Astor of Hever)]

My Lords, all EU member states including the United Kingdom agreed a statement at the October European Council welcoming ETA’s announcement of a definitive ceasefire as a victory for democracy and freedom and supporting Spain’s long struggle against terrorist violence. This is primarily a sovereign matter for Spain, but the UK Government would, of course, respond to any requests from Spain or France for further action.

[Baroness O'Loan]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his helpful response. I declare my interest as a member of the International Contact Group on the Basque Country, which was present at last month’s international conference that culminated in the declaration by Kofi Annan and others calling on ETA for this definitive ceasefire. British Governments have had extensive experience. I ask the Minister, in the light of that experience in the conduct of dialogue leading to peace and in particular to normalisation and more beneficial outcomes for victims, as well as to decommissioning, verification and monitoring, will the British Government respond positively to this situation?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, we have supported the Spanish and French Governments in their efforts to secure a peaceful and democratic future for the Basque Country, free of terrorism. Should we be asked for support, we would respond in any way that they would find helpful. We are aware of the work that the noble Baroness is doing as a member of the International Contact Group, and my noble friend Lord Howell is very grateful for her update last month.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, given the increasing evidence that cities and regions coming out of conflict do so successfully only if they have continuing external support after the cessation of violence, and that indeed such support often comes best from other cities and regions that have gone through the same experience, would Her Majesty's Government encourage Bilbao and the Basque Country to join the Forum for Cities in Transition, which includes cities such as Kirkuk, Beirut, Mitrovica, Mostar and indeed Belfast and Derry and which will meet again in Kirkuk next year, in order that Bilbao and its region receive the best support from people who people who, like them, have been through such terrible times?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, my noble friend makes a very good point. I am aware of the excellent work of the Forum for Cities in Transition and its help to other cities that have been in, or have emerged from, such conflict. This would be a matter for Bilbao, but I have no doubt that the Forum for Cities in Transition will be in touch with the Bilbao authorities.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, are we just waiting for an invitation? Should we not positively seek an invitation? We at least are independent in a way that neither the French nor Spanish Governments are, and we have very considerable experience in Northern Ireland, which we have used very positively in reconciliation in South Africa.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, the noble Lord makes a very good point. The situation is very fluid at the moment, with a new Government about to take power in Spain next month. We should wait and see how things turn out and then decide what to do. But it is essentially a sovereign matter for Spain.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister share my view that help is always defined better by the receiver than by the giver? Does he also recall the observation of CS Lewis, that if you hear about someone going around doing good to others, you can generally tell the others by their hunted look?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I shall certainly make a visit to the Library afterwards and have a look at that.

Gambling Commission: Health Lottery

Monday 28th November 2011 Lords Chamber

Question

14:41

Asked By

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment the Gambling Commission has undertaken of the contribution being made to good causes by the Health Lottery.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, the Gambling Act 2005 requires that at least 20 per cent of the proceeds of a society lottery go to the good cause that it supports. Each of the 51 society lotteries that are promoted under the umbrella brand of the Health Lottery must comply with this requirement. We understand from the Health Lottery that 20.3 per cent of the proceeds of each individual society lottery will go to the relevant good cause, addressing health inequalities in specific geographic areas of Great Britain.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

My Lords, may I ask the Minister two questions? First, is she aware of the great concern that has been expressed by the beneficiaries of legally run society lotteries in the health sector, which have benefited immensely from those local society lotteries, about what is seen as the unfair competition from the Health Lottery? Is she aware that the hospice movement is particularly alarmed, because it depends very heavily on society lotteries? In Worcester, for example, our two hospices receive £70,000 a year from the South Worcestershire Hospices Lottery, which pays 50p in the pound—not 20p in the pound—to those good causes.

Secondly, notwithstanding what the Gambling Commission may have decided initially about the Health Lottery’s legality, how can it be legal to have 51 community interest companies linked to the Health Lottery which have no independent existence, but which all have the same three directors and all operate out of the same virtual office? How is that legal?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, the noble Lord has great expertise in these matters. In his first question, he raises the concern about the hospices. We share the concern about the potential impact on society lotteries, although a number of existing health-related charities have been supported through the Health Lottery arrangements so far, and we will ensure that the impact on other society lotteries is monitored.

On the noble Lord’s second question, about the legality, he will also be aware that compliance with the requirements of the Gambling Act 2005 is a matter for the Gambling Commission, which has issued the necessary licences for the Health Lottery. As with any major scheme entering the market, however, it will work with the operator to ensure that what is delivered is actually compliant. We expect initial findings from that monitoring to be with us by next March.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, would my noble friend give some thought to the idea that charities which are created to allow a lottery to be organised might be against the spirit that was initially taken on in this field? If that is right, will she undertake that the Government might look at the whole legal framework? If it is against the spirit, we can change the rules.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My noble friend makes a very valid point that, so far, the legality has been in the matter of the fact of the law. However, as I have mentioned, there will be ongoing monitoring and, as he so rightly says, all these things can be changed if it turns out that the spirit of the law is not being respected.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, are the Government content with the system that they have in place for monitoring the operations of the Gambling Commission and, if not, what can they do about it? Are they content that Mr Desmond is a fit and proper person, given what was said at the Leveson inquiry last week and the failure of his organisations to associate themselves with the independent press commission, and that this is the way forward given some of the issues which now surround the operation of this lottery?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, as I say, it is for the Gambling Commission to look at this. We recognise all the issues around Mr Desmond and his other organisations, but those are not perhaps directly relevant to this. One thing that the Government have done is to merge the Gambling Commission and the National Lottery Commission, which we expect will make regulation easier and create cost savings but also help to produce a more robust form of monitoring.

[Lord Collins of Highbury]

My Lords, may I press the Minister on the issue of what I consider, as I think many would, an apparent loophole exploited by the Health Lottery with its 51 separate companies? Will she give an assurance that this loophole will be examined and perhaps closed by the Government, bearing in mind that the Health Lottery has a turnover of £510 million a year and is in effect an alternative national lottery, affecting funding not only for other health charities but for the arts in general?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, the noble Lord raises an important point about the issue of whether the Health Lottery will impact on the National Lottery. We are well aware of the vast amount of good work that the National Lottery does for the arts and a whole range of charitable organisations in this country. This is the first time that a lottery has been set up in this mode, with 51 society lotteries under an umbrella. It is a new model, which is why we are looking to the Gambling Commission to report back to the Government on how it is going to operate. Of course, the Health Lottery has been going for only eight weeks so it is early days as yet to see how it will pan out, but I hope that the noble Lord will rest assured that the Government are monitoring the situation.

[Lord Haskel]

Following on from my noble friend Lord Faulkner’s question, should the Minister not be speaking up for those charities that give 50 per cent of their income rather than those that give only 20 per cent?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I am sorry if I was not speaking up loudly. One indeed commends the society lotteries that give on average 51 per cent to good causes overall, which is a much more significant proportion than 20 per cent. The question remains whether this will be a form of raising additional funding for good causes, and only time will tell whether that is the case.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, is it not the case that the public assume that a much higher proportion of the money that they put into these lotteries is going to the good cause concerned? Should the Government not be looking to raise the 20 per cent threshold to a more realistic figure? That may then squeeze out those who see setting up these lotteries as a way of making extra cash for themselves rather than for the charities that they are supposed to be supporting.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, the raising of the threshold has been under discussion. We feel that at the moment, with the Health Lottery still so new, this is not the moment to change the thresholds for the lotteries as a whole. As I say, though, we are monitoring the situation since, as far as we are concerned, it is a new set-up in the lottery world. We shall wait and see, with the promise of a report of that monitoring early next year.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

When I had the privilege of moving the Second Reading of the National Lottery etc. Bill in 1993, I gave way 28 times in the hour it took me to complete my speech. It was perfectly clear at that time that scrutiny of the lottery was being carried out extremely effectively by Parliament. I hope that the amount of time that we need to scrutinise this new development will be shorter rather than longer.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I bow to my noble friend’s expertise over many years in this area. I share his hopes that the scrutiny will be shorter rather than longer.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

If the Minister reads the prospectus of the Health Lottery, she will see that in order for it to meet its targets of paying money to the 51 community companies it will need to raise something in the order of £250 million a year from the British public. Where does she think that money is going to come from? Surely it will be from existing charity giving, existing society lotteries and the National Lottery.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, this is one of the things that we shall need to look at. At the moment, the Health Lottery is raising £2 million to £3 million a week compared with the National Lottery which is raising somewhere between £150 million and £190 million a week. So the latter is still far and away the major source of public money in this area but, to pick up an earlier question, it is very important that the public are made aware of just how much of their money is going to good causes from the Health Lottery compared with how much goes to good causes from society lotteries and indeed the National Lottery.

Export Controls

Monday 28th November 2011 Lords Chamber

Question

14:50

Asked By

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consideration they are giving to provisions concerning the export and re-export of arms and to the export of software or technologies that can be used against civilian populations.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Baroness Wilcox)]

My Lords, the Government have set out their position on the issue of re-export controls on a number of occasions. The Government do not believe that statutory extra-territorial controls on the re-export of UK-origin goods would add to the effectiveness of UK export licensing. On the second part of the Question, the Government take their export control responsibilities very seriously and do not license the export of controlled equipment where there is a clear risk that it could be used for internal repression or human rights abuses. We take any reports of exports being misused overseas very seriously, and the extent to which export controls should apply to surveillance equipment is something that the Government are considering actively, particularly in relation to Syria and Iran.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that reply. Has she had the chance to read the testimony of the Iranian journalist Saeid Pourheyder, who was tortured and subjected to a mock execution? He had been identified by British surveillance technology allegedly sold to Iran by a company called Creativity Software. Will the Minister say what discussions her department had with officials from that company in 2009, and what was discussed during those meetings? Why was the 2010 European Union prohibition on all,

“equipment which might be applied to internal repression”,

in Iran not implemented in this case?

[Baroness Wilcox]

My Lords, 2009 was in the previous Government’s time, but I will look back to see if there is anything that I have missed. However, I can tell the noble Lord that at the moment, alongside our EU counterparts, we are supporting the progress of EU restrictions on surveillance software to Syria. All member states have agreed in principle to the prohibition on selling, supplying, transferring or exporting equipment to monitor the internet and telephone communications on mobile or fixed networks. However, surveillance technology is not controlled under our current export-licensing system as it has legitimate applications. For example, it allows companies operating in dangerous locations to monitor the location of staff, and parents to locate their children’s telephone if they are missing. So there are many legitimate uses for this technology. However, we are most certainly looking at it and will report back.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, is the Minister aware of the Foreign Secretary’s statement of 13 October, when he announced a proposal to introduce a mechanism to allow immediate licensing suspension of software and other export items to countries that are experiencing a sharp deterioration? In light of her answer about Creativity Software, have the Government had any discussions with the company since the Foreign Secretary’s statement on 13 October, with a view to suspending its ability to export these items?

[Baroness Wilcox]

I am afraid that, at the moment, all I know is that the company referred to is exporting quite legitimately, as far as we know. We do not know of any re-exporting involving that company, but certainly we are considering most actively the extent to which export controls should apply to surveillance equipment, particularly in relation to Syria and Iran.

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I think that most of us would agree with trying to stop arms exports that can be used for internal repression in countries that do not benefit from democracy. However, can the Minister explain which body, in this new technological world, actually decides which items can be used for internal repression and which cannot? This is surely a difficult area. How do the Government cope with that, and how do they decide on which side of the border a particular product lies?

[Baroness Wilcox]

My noble friend is quite right: this is very complicated. We live in a technological age that moves at enormously fast speed. We also do not wish to cause suffering to the innocent people of another country by restricting goods unless we absolutely have to and feel that it is right to do so. That is what we are doing at the moment. I wondered whether anybody would ask me where they could find out what is restricted and what is not. It is always very helpful to have this information. Trade data are available online at www.uktradeinfo.com if anybody would like to look that up. Information on export restrictions is available on the BIS website. It is the ministry of business that deals with this, which is why I am answering the Question.

[Lord Dubs]

What the Minister has said is welcome as far as it goes, and I fully understand the difficulties with surveillance technology, but I should like to ask her this. First, when does she think the Government will arrive at a firm decision on being more restrictive on the export of surveillance technology? Secondly, what about exporting to other countries which might then re-export to oppressive regimes? What can the Government do about that?

[Baroness Wilcox]

The Government do not want goods of UK origin to be re-exported for undesirable uses—of course not. However, the introduction of a statutory re-export control does not make our current export-licensing system more robust. We have talked this through with the European Union. The difficulty is that our law cannot be applied to another country to which something has been passed on. However, we make the questioning of anybody who is looking for an export licence from us very robust, particularly if it is for export to difficult countries, to make absolutely sure that we are clear about why they are doing it and where the goods are going. If, when they come back the next time, we discover that something has happened—that there has been a re-export—we will have an opportunity. However, it is most frustrating that we cannot do more. If anybody can come up with any other suggestion for us or the other members of the European Union, we will be only too happy to listen.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, the tension that occurs between promoting commercial interests and seeking the improvement of human rights overseas is highlighted by the UK’s role as a major arms-exporting country. We also need to consider the role of government agencies in the support and promotion of arms sales. In its role as a supporter of UK growth, does BIS regularly analyse the industrial and economic benefits of MoD procurement decisions so that a proper cost-benefit analysis can take place? If not, why not? Can we expect to see such analyses being published?

[Baroness Wilcox]

I think that the answer is yes, it does—I am sure that it does. I will check to make absolutely sure, as I am sure that the noble Lord will ask me about this again otherwise. I will return to this with the information that he has asked for, if I may.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

May I ask my noble friend what approach the Government adopt towards the export or re-export of arms or software to the Israeli army for potential use in Palestine?

[Baroness Wilcox]

The same rules apply as to any other country.

Unemployment: Young People

Monday 28th November 2011 Lords Chamber

Question

14:58

Asked By

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will appoint a Minister to deal specifically with youth unemployment.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)]

My Lords, the Government have no intention of doing this. We already have a Minister for Employment who has a clear strategy and robust policies to support young people into work.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

My Lords, I am sure we are grateful for the youth compact that was announced a few days ago and, wherever we sit in the House, wish it well in denting somewhat the 1 million young people who are looking for jobs. However, would it not be better to have one person with an overall view to look at the short-term and long-term problems of youth unemployment, and to co-ordinate the various departments and strands of policy that are affected by them?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, youth unemployment, specifically, falls within the context of overall unemployment or employment. In practice, it is more important to have integrated support for people to get back into the employment market than across government for youth. In that area, we have the Social Justice Cabinet Committee, which looks at supporting society right across the piece, including youth.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

My Lords, is the Minister aware how much the Government are failing many young people in the north-east? We have the highest rate of unemployment and of youth unemployment in the country. That part of the country is struggling to keep going. Given that the Government scrapped the Future Jobs Fund and the regional development agency, which was much engaged in these things, will the Minister give his personal commitment to look at what is going wrong in the north-east and to come up with specific answer for that region and those young people?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, without just saying yes, I will give that commitment, I want to point out that despite a growing economy some real structural problems have existed in different regions over decades, and certainly over the past decade. There are no easy solutions, but I will follow up the request personally and look at some of these regional issues. We are spending a great deal of time worrying about this.

[Lord Northbourne]

Will the Minister indicate what proportion of the 1 million or so unemployed young people have families where neither the father nor the mother is in employment?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I have actually forgotten that particular number, though I did know it. I will commit to writing with the precise number, which has fallen out of my head. I am sorry.

[The Lord Bishop of Liverpool]

My Lords, the Bishops very much welcome the development of apprenticeship schemes. However, is the Minister aware that small businesses very often lose out on the major apprenticeship schemes? Is he aware of the Apprenticeship Training Agency in Liverpool that brings together the Chambers of Commerce, the city council and the colleges in providing apprenticeships for small and medium-sized enterprises? If so, would he like to replicate that model elsewhere?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the point about the involvement of small and medium-sized enterprises is a very good one. Last week, we announced a subsidy to enable small and medium-sized enterprises to take on an extra 20,000 apprenticeships with an incentive of £1,500 a time. One of the issues with SMEs is that they need to have comfort that they can go on employing an apprentice for a long time. That is the key issue to get SMEs back into this particular support.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, as there is a real danger of a generation growing up without hope, would my noble friend discuss with his ministerial colleagues the desirability of having some form of national social service which all young people can undertake when they leave school?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we are, as a priority, looking at how to help youngsters back into the workplace. That is what our youth contract, which was announced on Friday, is about. It is about trying to do the important things, which are work experience, apprenticeships and getting people work through a subsidy to employers.

[Lord Walton of Detchant]

My Lords—

[Lord Davies of Coity]

My Lords—

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, there will be time for both Peers if we have the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and then the noble Lord, Lord Walton.

[Lord Davies of Coity]

My Lords, more than 50 years ago, when I was serving my apprenticeship, the industrial training boards had a levy and grant system that ensured that all small and medium-sized businesses produced apprentices or paid the levy if those businesses poached skilled men from the big companies. Why should we not reintroduce that system?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we clearly need to rebuild the apprentice structure in this country—or at least build it, as was never particularly strong compared with countries such as Germany. We are very actively looking at how best to do that.

[Lord Walton of Detchant]

My Lords, to follow up the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, is the Minister aware that the newspapers in the north-east reported over the weekend that properties to a value of £130 million owned by One North East, the regional development agency that is being abolished, are being sold and that the money derived from those sales will revert to the Treasury? Would not this money be better spent on doing something about youth unemployment in the north-east?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we have just announced putting in an extra £1 billion boost to youth unemployment and that money has to be found from somewhere. The Autumn Statement may be examined with great interest as regards how the money has been shuffled to get that support for youngsters, within an overall spending envelope that it is vital to maintain in order for us to keep low interest rates in this country.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, will the Minister go back to his Government and look at the question of education maintenance allowances? In the 1980s, under a Conservative Government and amid high youth unemployment, Lancashire County Council was one of the first areas to bring in education maintenance allowances. In high youth unemployment areas such as Skelmersdale, the staying-on rate for further education and training increased by more than 30 per cent. We in Lancashire were complimented by a predecessor Secretary of State, Sir Keith Joseph, who allowed us to create more tertiary colleges to do this. Why are the Government ignoring tried and tested policy?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, there was about 90 per cent dead weight in EMA, and we replaced it with a bursary system on which we are spending £180 million. That started this September.

UK Border Security: 30 November

Monday 28th November 2011 Lords Chamber

Private Notice Question

15:07

Asked By

[Lord Dholakia]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they propose to take to ensure that the security of the United Kingdom is not compromised on 30 November.

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask a Question of which I have given private notice.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, the security of the UK border remains our top priority. Contingency plans are in place and we are satisfied that security will be maintained. We started training additional staff for contingency arrangements in April and adequate resources are now available. Any staff deployed to the front line will have received the training required to operate effectively. Arriving passengers will remain subject to checks at the border by appropriately trained staff.

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, will the Minister confirm that none of the checks highlighted in the recent controversy surrounding the UK Border Agency will be relaxed for the purpose of reducing queues at the point of entry? Given that the UK Border Force has many powers, as defined under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, would a no-strike agreement with the force be appropriate on future occasions?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, as regards the second part of my noble friend’s question, that is obviously something we would have to consider after 30 November and after we have seen how we manage on that day. But I can give my noble friend an assurance that none of the checks he mentioned will be relaxed.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, the Government have sponsored speculation about what they will, may or might do to maintain UK security, especially at the borders, on 30 November—everything from bringing in the Army to the idea of staff from the Prime Minister’s Office manning passport control points. However, people need and deserve stability. If they have booked a holiday that day, they need to know whether they can get away. If businesses have important customers coming to the UK, they need to know that their businesses will not be damaged. I should therefore be grateful if the Government would publish, clearly and fully, for the benefit of the country as a whole, what in detail they intend to do on Wednesday in relation to border security.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am very sorry that the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition did not take the opportunity to condemn the strikes that are taking place on Wednesday, which would have been helpful. If all parties agreed that those strikes should not happen we would not have this problem. We shall be operating the appropriate checks with the appropriate people, appropriately trained to make sure that visitors—whether they are coming here as tourists, whether they are coming here for business or whether they are returning UK citizens—can get in without any disruption or with disruption minimised as much as possible. The noble Baroness will also be aware that this is an operational matter and for security reasons it would not be appropriate to comment in detail, as she wishes, on the arrangements.

[Lord Tomlinson]

Will the Minister comment on reports in today’s press that part of the police force is being drafted in to take over the role of the UK Border Agency at our borders and that their training is alleged to be merely 90 minutes? Is that adequate?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I would not believe—and I would recommend that the noble Lord should not believe—everything I read in the press. I can assure him and the House that everyone assisting on this matter will have the appropriate training necessary to do the job. Yes, some police will be involved but they will have the appropriate training to do the job that they need to do.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, the Minister said that staff started training in April. What were they training for in April?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, any sensible organisation, knowing there was a risk of such things happening—something which has still not been condemned by noble Lords opposite and I am waiting for that condemnation to occur—would make the appropriate arrangements. The border agency started that last April.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, given that the security of our country is not just dependent on border security but that unfortunately there are risks internally within our United Kingdom, can the Minister reassure us there will be no diversion of security resources to the border checks that will in any way diminish the other security measures that are necessary internally?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I can give my noble friend that assurance and he is right to point out that it is not just the borders we need to look at. No concerns have been expressed by the police and others that any diversion to the borders will impair our security arrangements in other matters.

[Lord Grocott]

Given that the Minister has repeatedly asked people on this side of the House to talk in terms of condemnation, can we take it as read that the Government condemn the cleaners, the dinner ladies, the low-paid workers and those threatened with a weakening of their pension entitlements and an increase in their contributions? Is the Government’s position that they condemn these people for trying in any way to defend their position?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I condemn the strike as it affects our security and the arrangements we are having to make. That is the condemnation I am still waiting to hear from the party opposite.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, can the Minister tell the House what assurances, if any, we have from schools about the protection of the safety of children, particularly when their parents are at work or may find it difficult to return from work because of the effects of the demonstration? Can he say whether there have been consultations with the Department for Education on this point?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am not aware of any consultations with the Department for Education. I will certainly make inquiries and get back to my noble friend later this afternoon. I am sure there will have been discussions for the very reasons my noble friend raises.

[Lord Davies of Coity]

My Lords, the Minister has repeatedly referred to this side of the House not condemning the strike. What I want to ask him is this—can he give a categorical assurance that the motivation of the coalition Government is security and not strike breaking?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, as I made clear in my original Answer, our first priority, our highest priority, our top priority is the security of the United Kingdom. If the noble Lord thinks that we are involved in strike breaking he should think again. We want to make sure that our borders are kept secure. We think that the unions are endangering that security by the actions they are taking. The offer is still open to talk to the Government and others and we wish they would take that up.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, of course our borders should be kept secure, but are the Government doing enough to negotiate with the unions on this point? Are the Government in fact making every effort to try to resolve this dispute rather than, as the Minister has told us, having been preparing since April for just this eventuality? Is it not that they actually wanted to provoke a strike, for whatever political reasons they may have?

[Lord Henley]

Come on, my Lords. The noble Lord knows perfectly well that the Government’s doors remain open and that the Government are prepared to negotiate. It is the unions who are being intransigent and it is the party opposite which is refusing to condemn an action that will possibly endanger our security. Because of the actions we have taken, and have been taking since April of this year, we think that we will be able to keep security at the appropriate level at the borders on Wednesday.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, is my noble friend not aware that most people in this country will be glad that the Government attach the highest priority to our national security?

[Lord Henley]

I am very grateful for the support of my noble friend. I wish I could get similar support from noble Lords opposite.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

My Lords, given that the Minister is so fixated on the possibility of getting the kind of statement that he would like to hear from these Benches, does he imagine that the people out there who are contemplating going on strike are mostly or even to a small extent members of the party I support? I submit that not only are they not, they are members of all parties and none, and what is preoccupying them is not the question of whether the Labour Party supports them but their concern for their future pension rights.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, the noble Baroness accuses me of being fixated on this issue and perhaps I am somewhat naive to be so fixated on this issue. I do not know in which way the members of the unions involved happen to vote. I happen to know that those unions support the party opposite. That is why we are still waiting for that condemnation from the party opposite.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that any strike is a demonstration of failure? Does he further agree that the Government themselves have failed to resolve this strike?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I totally and utterly reject what the noble Baroness has said and again invite her, as the Leader of the Opposition in this House, to condemn this strike.

Procedure of the House

Monday 28th November 2011 Lords Chamber

Motion to Agree

15:17

Moved By

[The Chairman of Committees]

That the 9th Report from the Select Committee (HL Paper 226) be agreed to.

Motion agreed.

Parliamentary Constituencies and Assembly Electoral Regions (Wales) (Amendment) Order 2011

Monday 28th November 2011 Lords Chamber

Motion to Approve

15:17

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

That the draft order laid before the House on 24 October be approved.

Relevant documents: 31st Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 22 November

Motion agreed.

Health and Social Care Bill

Monday 28th November 2011 Lords Chamber

Committee (8th Day)

Relevant documents: 19th report from the Delegated Powers Committee, 18th report from the Constitution Committee.

Moved by

[Earl Howe]

That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.

15:18

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)]

My Lords, before the House goes into Committee on the Health and Social Care Bill, I should like to take the opportunity to update noble Lords on the latest position with regard to the Department of Health risk registers. The House will recall that my department received a specific request under the Freedom of Information Act to release the transition risk register, which covers risks relating to the development and implementation of our health reforms. There was also a separate request to release the strategic risk register, which covers the most important risks the department faces.

We have taken the view that the information in both registers should be treated as exempt from disclosure under Section 35 of the Act on the grounds that the information contained in the risk registers is integral to government policy-making. Risk registers of this sort are a tool by which information about potential risks—both actual and theoretical—can be recorded in worst-case terms to enable them to be mitigated and managed. The Information Commissioner accepts that the information falls within this category of exemption. Following our decision not to release the registers, the two individuals who made the FOI requests lodged appeals with the Information Commissioner.

In early November, the Information Commissioner published his decision notices in both cases, deciding that the public interest lay, on balance, in full disclosure of both registers. Since then, as is allowed for under the rules, we have been considering whether we should appeal the Information Commissioner’s decisions. As I explained to the House previously, this was not a decision that the Department of Health could make on its own, as the issues which bear upon the decision have significant implications for every government department.

While the principle of openness is one to which we have adhered to the maximum extent through evidence given to the Health Select Committee in another place and the publication of impact assessments, it has been our firm view, and that of other departments, that for risk registers of this type to fulfil their function, civil servants must be free to think the unthinkable and record potential risks and mitigations fully, frankly and with absolute candour, confident in the knowledge that this information will not be publicly disclosed.

The logic of the Information Commissioner’s decision to order the release of information of this nature would entirely undermine the concept of safe space for these sorts of circumstances. The matter has accordingly been the subject of much careful consultation across Government, and a very clear and firm view has emerged that the publication of information in risk registers of this type would be likely, in the future, to undermine the very purpose for which a risk register of this sort is produced, and thus directly threaten the successful implementation of government policy. I can, therefore, tell the House that my department has decided to appeal both decisions by the Information Commissioner.

I would, however, like to respond to the request made on 16 November by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, by sharing with the House as much further information as I can about what my department’s transition risk register contains. On that occasion I undertook to examine whether there were any risks covered in the Department of Health transition risk register that are not already in the public domain and on which information could be provided without further ado.

While I cannot share the detailed breakdown of the information recorded in the risk register, or the wording, I am happy to set out for the record the broad issues covered by the transition risk register. They are as follows: how best to manage the parliamentary passage of the Bill and the potential impact of Royal Assent being delayed on the transition in the NHS; how to co-ordinate planning so that changes happen in a co-ordinated fashion while maintaining financial control; how to ensure that the NHS takes appropriate steps during organisational change to maintain and improve quality; how to ensure that lines of accountability are clear in the new system and that different bodies work together effectively, including the risk of replicating what we already have; how to minimise disruption for staff and maintain morale during transition; how best to ensure financial control during transition, to minimise the costs of moving to a new system, and to ensure that the new system delivers future efficiencies; how to ensure that future commissioning plans are robust, and to maximise the capability of the future NHS Commissioning Board; how stakeholders should be engaged in developing and implementing the reforms; and finally, how to properly resource the teams responsible for implementing the changes. I hope that this information will prove useful to noble Lords as the Bill continues its passage in Committee.

[Baroness Thornton]

I thank the Minister for that statement, of which I did not have more than two minutes’ notice. It is very disappointing indeed. Basically, the noble Earl is saying that the Government are choosing what they do and do not disclose to the Committee on this matter. It is an issue of trust—whether or not we can trust that we will know what we need to know to make judgments about whether this Bill will work.

I thank the noble Earl for the issues that he has decided that the Government can let us know about, but of course I am therefore concerned about what the issues are that the Government have decided that we should not know about. What are the risks that we cannot know about? That is a matter of grave concern to the Committee.

I shall be looking in detail at the Minister’s statement to the House and I reserve the right to return to this matter if I feel that we need to. For example, during the last two days in Committee I put two direct questions to the Minister about whether certain matters—one concerning children—were on the risk register and what the register said about them. I have not received answers to either of those questions. I shall continue to put my questions in that context and I suggest that other noble Lords do the same.

I am very grateful for the Statement as far as it goes but I do not think that this is an end to the matter. I can see why the Government might think that there is a cross-government issue here. However, no other department is in the position in which we find ourselves here—that of discussing a Bill that is going through the House right now. We need full information on this matter in order to be able to make proper decisions but I believe that we still do not have that. Therefore, I thank the noble Earl so far as this goes but I reserve the right to return to the issue in due course.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Perhaps I may ask the Minister a question. He gave us a list of all the areas which he thought it was not possible for Parliament to scrutinise in some detail. Did the Information Commissioner have access to all the document headings to which the Minister has referred, and did he have the opportunity to read all the documentation under those headings? If the Information Commissioner did have access to information on, for example, the handling of the legislation as it goes through Parliament, why did he, throughout the whole report, repeatedly say that these matters should be placed in the public domain? Again, is it not clear that the Government are trying to hide something from Parliament? The Minister’s first reference was to the handling of the legislation by Parliament. Why should not Parliament see what considerations took place within the department concerning how legislation should be handled as it goes through this House?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, my clear understanding is that the Information Commissioner had full access to the risk register so that he would be able to see for himself what it contained. I do not believe that anything material was withheld from him. The whole purpose of risk registers of this type is to record all risks, even the unthinkable and the highly unlikely actual risks, as well as potential risks—in other words, risks that may not arise in the future but which could be mitigated with action today. Such risk registers record mitigating actions so that the risks identified do not become a reality. In our clear view, exposing that kind of information could cause needless concern, set hares running and seriously undermine confidence in the programme of work. No Government of any persuasion have routinely made risk registers of this type public for the very reason that to do so would undermine open and frank discussion among policy-makers for fear that the policy would be made public before it was fully developed.

The department has published and discussed its proposals for reform at every stage of this process. It has debated them at length in both Houses. It has even released some detail about the associated risks and what it is doing to address these in impact assessments. Therefore, I firmly believe that the Committee has all the information that it needs to discuss the proposals in detail.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, the Department of Health will be aware that with a freedom of information request there are always considerable burdens on those who argue that the information should not be conceded. Has the Minister given any thought to the possibility of a limited redaction of the report rather than not making it available at all, or alternatively whether there are parts of it that he feels could be made available so that the House can consider more deeply the issues that are coming up? I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, that on the issue of how Parliament handles the legislation and the implications for the transition, certain things from the register might be useful, although I recognise that some extreme cases might be picked up by the tabloids and be changed into sensational reporting. Could the Minister possibly consider that qualification more seriously than we have been able to do so far?

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I would be grateful if the Minister could let us know whether the department considered the BMA resolution in council at the end of last week to now oppose the Bill and campaign against it, when the BMA was coming to its decision to appeal against the release of the information. If not, will it be considered in the next steps the Government take, given that it signals a major loss of confidence in the Bill by the BMA?

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

How long is it likely to take for the appeal and the decision? If the decision disallows the appeal, will the Government accept that?

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, the problem is not what may be contained in a particular risk register, as the Minister has said, but the precedent that it sets for all other risk registers. There may be nothing in this register that is particularly sensational or has not been released. However, once this case is conceded it will nullify the effect of all risk registers across government. If people think these risk registers are valuable it must be the case, as the Minister has said, that people look at the worst risks and do so frankly, and if they make them anodyne then the purpose of the registers is entirely lost.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, will remember those words when she is considering her next intervention on this matter. Bear in mind that what she says then will be taken as the yardstick of what any Government of her colour are expected to do when they eventually—one hopes at a great distance of time—take our place.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I understand there is a precedent—a Department of Transport one. Therefore, there is a discretion and the Government are in a position on this occasion and not on a further one. I do not really see that that case is relevant.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Butler, whose understanding of these matters is one that noble Lords will respect greatly. He is absolutely right—this is not an issue that solely affects the Department of Health: it affects all government departments. That is why the stance taken by the BMA to this Bill was not material in our decision. We regret that stance but it did not come into our thinking in any way.

On the question of precedent, I am aware that during the course of the last Government three separate recent requests were made to the Department of Health to release risk registers. All three requests were declined. I have the letter here that was sent when the right honourable Andy Burnham was Secretary of State, citing exactly the same kinds of reasons I have given.

I was asked how long the appeal would take. I do not know but my understanding is that the process should come to a conclusion reasonably early in the new year. I cannot be more definite than that because it is not up to us—it will be up to the tribunal to order its business as it sees fit. Will the Government accept the result? Clearly, we will have to take a view whatever the result; I cannot pre-empt the decision today. My noble friend Lady Williams asked whether we had considered releasing a redacted version—the decision before us was whether to comply with the Information Commissioner’s decision in full, or not to and appeal. We did not have the option of redaction but I am grateful to my noble friend for her suggestion, which I will take away and consider.

Motion agreed.

Clause 20 : The NHS Commissioning Board: further provision

Amendment 106 had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.

Amendments 107 to 109 not moved.

Amendment 109A

Moved by

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

109A: Clause 20, page 17, leave out lines 33 and 34 and insert—
“(5) In discharging its duty under subsection (1), the Board must publish guidance for clinical commissioning groups that includes the option to opt out and explains the extent of compliance with—
(a) the quality standards prepared by NICE under section 231 of the Health and Social Care Act 2011;(b) indicators included within the NHS Outcomes Framework; and(c) minimum standards set by the Board on patient related outcomes measures.”

[The Lord Speaker (Baroness D'Souza)]

My Lords, I advise the Committee that if the amendment is agreed to, Amendments 110 and 110ZA cannot be moved by reason of pre-emption.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, with the agreement of the noble Lord, Lord Newton, I move Amendment 109A, which stands in my name and his. I can do so briefly, although the amendment is important and, I hope, helpful. I declare an interest as the chair of King's Health Partners, an academic health science centre. Part of the centre's mission is to accelerate the translation of research into patient care—getting a faster process from bench to bedside. It is in that capacity that I move the amendment.

The focus in the Bill on outcomes for patients is very welcome. It is also welcome that Clause 20 gives the Commissioning Board a duty to promote compliance with the quality standards prepared by NICE, as well as guidance published by the Secretary of State. There may be circumstances in which there are good local reasons why NHS providers should not comply with NICE guidelines. One such circumstance may be where there are innovative treatments that have been approved but with which NICE guidance has not yet caught up. We do not want the clause to stifle the introduction of such initiatives, which the creation of AHSCs is designed to promote and which are greatly in the interests of both British industry and patients. For this reason, Amendment 109A introduces an element of flexibility through a comply-or-explain regime. It will give providers the opportunity, in cases where there are good reasons why they should not comply with the NICE guidelines, to depart from them provided they can explain their non-compliance satisfactorily. That is all I need to say about the amendment. I beg to move.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, I chip in briefly in support of the amendment. I hasten to assure my noble friends on the Front Bench that this is a probing amendment and that I have no intention of pushing my luck. I have been so open and transparent as to share with the Minister every word of the briefing that I received and that led to the amendment. He knows what it is about. Therefore, I am looking for a measured, constructive and well informed response. I have no interests to declare except the public interest. The healthcare industry—the interests of which underlie the amendment—is important. It contains a lot of small and medium-sized enterprises of a potentially and actually very successful kind. We ought to encourage them, and I hope that the Minister will do his best.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 110ZA. In tabling the amendment and Amendment 343A, I was mindful of information from the Prostate Cancer Charity, which I strongly support, and from members of the Epilepsy Society. Of course I am aware that many other people with different chronic diseases, and those who care for them, are concerned about these issues.

As noble Lords are aware, prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK. In England, 30,000 men are diagnosed with it every year, and there are 215,000 men living with and beyond the disease. Ten thousand men die from prostate cancer every year. Currently, clinical nurse specialists for men with prostate cancer have to care for a worryingly high number of new patients compared to nurses for people with other common cancers. I am therefore worried that the financial pressures on the NHS and the cost of reform will threaten those already overstretched specialist nurses, who are so vital in driving up the quality of care for people with cancer.

Access to a clinical nurse specialist improves the experience of people with cancer at every stage of their journey and ensures that they have access to the vital support and information they need. This has been evidenced by the results of the 2010 National Cancer Patient Experience Survey. If patients are to have more control over decisions related to their care and report a good experience of care, they need the clinical and emotional support, information and expertise that a clinical nurse specialist can provide.

As the noble Earl will be aware from his association with the epilepsy organisations, NICE guidelines state that epilepsy specialist nurses should be an integral part of the medical team providing care to people with epilepsy. Even with investment made under my Government, 60 per cent of acute trusts and 64 per cent of primary care trusts did not have an epilepsy specialist nurse in 2009. SIGN guideline 70 states that,

“all epilepsy care teams should include an epilepsy specialist nurse”.

There are around 150 epilepsy specialist nurse posts, with a further 250 to 300 nurses who have undertaken training but are not in a role due to the shortage of posts.

As all noble Lords will be aware, specialist nurses save the NHS money by releasing consultants’ time, reducing A&E admissions, enhancing patients’ adherence to treatment and reducing the use of hospital beds. Therefore, I am proposing two amendments that would place duties on the NHS Commissioning Board to have regard to the continued access of patients to clinical specialist nurses. The first would support the board’s existing duty as to the improvement in quality of services and the second would create a new standalone duty. I trust the Minister will be able to accept my amendments.

[Lord Walton of Detchant]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 109A. There is no doubt at all that for many years now the work of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, NICE, has made a major contribution to the National Health Service. There is a widespread feeling in the public at large that NICE deals with nothing other than whether or not to recommend the approval of certain drugs for the treatment of disease within the NHS. However, NICE’s commitment spreads much more widely than that. It examines procedures; it examines complicated interventions of all kinds; it examines the introduction of new and innovative techniques, new instruments and other procedures in the NHS. Its remit is exceptionally wide.

I know full well that the noble Lord, Lord Newton, says he is not going to pursue this amendment to a vote, but it is important that we have some assurances from the Minister. As my noble friend Lord Butler says, it is clear that, although NICE guidance in general terms is something with which health authorities and health bodies of all kinds will be expected to comply, there are clearly circumstances, particularly at a local level, where, for the reasons he gave, such compliance would be inappropriate. The amendment takes full note of that as being an important issue.

However, we must be sure, in implementing the recommendations of NICE, that we do not overlook the crucial importance of ensuring that the national Commissioning Board will have a duty to promote innovation in its annual report. It is also crucially important, when we come to look at innovation tariffs much later, in Amendment 288H, to see that the tariffs system will not act as a counterincentive to the adoption of innovation and of new technologies. These are issues upon which it is important to seek assurances from the Minister.

Perhaps I may also add to what the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, said. The work of specialist nurses is extraordinarily important to the NHS, and not least in my own field of neurology, where nurses who are specialised in multiple sclerosis, Parkinsonism, epilepsy and many other conditions have made an outstanding contribution to the clinical care of patients. In many instances, their work and advice have prevented unnecessary admissions to acute wards of patients suffering from these conditions. They are invaluable. Unfortunately, over the past five or six years, we have identified instances where cash-strapped health bodies of various kinds have diverted some of these specialist nurses into standard nursing care. I hope that the Minister can give us an assurance that the role of specialist nurses in the NHS is going to be enshrined in the Bill and that the Government will recognise that such nurses are there for a special purpose, not to provide general nursing care in hospital wards and out-patient departments.

15:45

[Baroness Cumberlege]

My Lords, I have tabled three amendments in this grouping: Amendments 110C, 131A and 190C. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Patel, for supporting the amendments because they concern maternity services, and I do not think I could have anyone more distinguished than the past president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, although of course the noble Lord is also involved in many other things, not least this Bill. These are probing amendments, the first of which seeks a commitment from my noble friend the Minister that the Government, through commissioning at the national and the local level, will give women and their partners real and informed choice in maternity services. The second amendment would ensure that there is less variation in the quality of services provided, and the third concerns maternity networks, including independent midwives.

The variation in maternity services across the country is quite startling. Sometimes the poor performance is a reflection of a lack of resources or priorities, but one of the reasons for this is that maternity services have been overwhelmed by the rising number of births, including more complex cases. This is partly due to the increase in the number of older women giving birth. Last year the number of women giving birth aged over 40 was the highest since 1948, the post-war period, and we can surmise about that. In the past 10 years in England, the number of births overall has risen by 22 per cent, which means that more than 10,000 extra babies are born every month. There has been a modest increase in midwives, and we should be grateful for that, but they are being run ragged by this record-breaking baby boom.

The Bill seeks to ensure that the quality of NHS services will improve by using new and increasingly much more sophisticated commissioning systems. If this key objective is to be realised, it will require commissioning of a very high quality. Pathfinder clinical commissioning groups are beginning to get a grip and to understand the health needs of their local populations, but inevitably others will lag behind and we will see variations in commissioning. One of the ways to address this is through a NICE quality standard, as already discussed by the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and my noble friend Lord Newton. But as the noble Lord, Lord Walton, said, even when these standards are produced, advice from NICE is not always adhered to, and I understand that the queue for these quality standards to be produced is very long, with maternity services some way down the line.

On quality, proposed new Clause 13E(1) states that the NHS Commissioning Board should improve the quality of services in three areas: prevention, diagnosis and the treatment of illness. On prevention, however powerful the board is, it is going to find it a real task to prevent wanted pregnancies—even Solomon in all his glory failed to do that, and he knew quite a bit about babies. On diagnosis, I do not think there is much problem in diagnosing pregnancy, as it is usually pretty obvious to those concerned. On the treatment of illness, certainly most women who are pregnant are not ill; on the contrary, many take enormous care of themselves and are extremely fit and so will not need treatment for illness.

Looking at those three criteria in that subsection, I think that they do not fit with maternity services. Therefore, we have a lacuna, which I am trying to fill with my first amendment. I suggest that the Commissioning Board keep a watchful eye on the situation in England and use a means—possibly a specification or some other mechanism—which would act as a guide to enable commissioners to buy services from NHS trusts at a set quality, until NICE has produced its quality standards.

My second amendment concerns choice. I apologise because I think it has been positioned rather wrongly in the Bill, but it is another probing amendment.

“Pregnancy is a long and very special journey for a woman. It is a journey of dramatic physical, psychological and social change; of becoming a mother, of redefining family relationships and taking on the long-term responsibility for caring and cherishing a new-born child. Generations of women have travelled the same route, but each journey is unique”.

I wrote that in the foreword for Changing Childbirth, which was a government policy document that I produced many years ago. It is because each journey is unique that women and their partners should have as much choice as possible, because we know choice is empowering. Giving birth can be wonderful, but it is also very traumatic and the start to a new life can have long-term consequences for the baby as it enters childhood and later adult life.

New Clause 13I, places a duty on the board to enable patients to make choices in the services they receive. Pregnant women and their partners have four main choices when considering where to give birth: at home, in a free-standing midwifery unit, in a midwife-led unit situated alongside a hospital or in a hospital led by a team of obstetricians. This is the theory, but it does not actually work in practice. Delivered with Care, a national survey of women’s experiences of maternity care in 2010, undertaken by two very respected researchers in the field, found:

“Many women (80 %) were not aware of the four possible options for … birth”.

Therefore, how can potential parents choose when they are not even aware of the options? Why do health workers, especially GPs, seeing a woman at the first booking, not tell them what is available? The majority only tell them where to go, and that is hospital.

In a joint statement the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Royal College of Midwives, in their introduction to a paper on home births state:

“The rate of home births within the UK remains low at approximately 2%, but it is believed that if women had true choice the rate would be around 8-10%”.

It is part of government policy to give choice, including birth at home, to every pregnant woman. In Somerset 11.4 per cent of births are at home, whereas in Wansbeck the figure is just 0.1 per cent. Of course there may be a range of factors affecting this—I suspect housing and other conditions also play a part—but this discrepancy is so great that I am sure it is partly due to the fact that mothers were not even told what was available. I would like to ask the Minister how he sees the NHS Commissioning Board addressing its duty in new Clause 13I as to patient choice in maternity services. I appreciate this is quite a minority sport so the Minister may like to write to me on this issue.

My third amendment concerns maternity networks. Neonatal and cancer networks, where they work well, have proved to be highly effective. It is a model that those in maternity services wish to adopt. They believe that effective, inclusive and supported maternity networks have the potential to ensure that all women, within the network locality, are able to access the full range of services from pre-conception to early years. The networks would be able to promote choice within these services and work with all providers to ensure that women are offered and are able to exercise informed choice. The existing networks have received funding for their infrastructure, which has enabled them to be effective. Will my noble friend consider a similar commitment from the Government to support the development and sustainability of maternity provider networks and ensure that they are properly resourced?

Part of the network should be the care offered by independent midwives, who give a highly specialised and personalised service, accompanying the family through this wonderful but often stressful time in their lives. There are around 130 independent midwives in the country, but there are about 800 who would choose to work in this way if they could get professional indemnity insurance. Currently that is not the case because of market failure to provide for it.

The EU Council of Ministers has issued a directive on patients’ rights on cross-border healthcare that requires member states to ensure that systems of professional liability insurance are in place for treatment provided on their territory. The Government ratified this directive on 28 February this year, which means that all midwives in independent practice in the UK will need to be able to access this insurance from September 2013 in order to be registered with their regulatory body, the NMC. Without registration, they will not be able to practise midwifery legally; independent midwifery will disappear, unless a solution to the insurance conundrum is found. Can we really afford to let this happen when the maternity services are in such desperate need of experienced, skilled midwives?

The clock is ticking and the issue is urgent. I ask my noble friend, who is well aware of this difficult issue—we have met in the past to discuss it—to tell me when the Government are planning to publish their proposals and when independent midwives and other non-NHS bodies will be able to take up the NHS clinical indemnity arrangements planned for by the Government.

[Lord Mawson]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 131A proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege. My wife and I have three children and have experienced some choice as to whether they were born at home or in hospital. I must admit that this was not a matter to which my wife and I had given a great deal of thought when we had our first child 31 years ago. Then we naively assumed that having a child in hospital was fine and the normal practice. The doctor would look after us. However, the truth is that it was far from normal for a young married couple. We discovered later that everything that was done seemed to be focused not on the well-being of the patient—my wife and child; some would say the customers—but on the interests and timetable of the consultant. Medication was given that was not really needed to ensure that the child was born to fit some preordained hospital schedule, a timetable that I think had more to do with the consultant’s golfing schedule, I discovered later, than the interests of the mother and child. The experience left some scars.

Our second child was born at home in Tower Hamlets, under a new home birth scheme that was quite radical at the time and which was set up by Dr Wendy Savage. I must say that this experience was completely different. We all felt so much more relaxed and in charge of events, as best you can be on such occasions. It all happened rather quickly and in a relaxed atmosphere and was an experience of great joy for us all. The effects of this experience on mother and child, with a competent midwife present, were quite different. I must say that even I felt quite competent in making the tea. The first experience in hospital had all been about a culture of illness at the most important moment of parents’ lives; the latter was about health and well-being.

16:00

My wife was 46 years of age when we had our third child, who is now 11. There were concerns about the patient’s age, so she was called in early for a caesarean section. On this occasion, we arrived in the maternity ward in Hackney to be greeted by a man sitting in front of a locked door with two keys for two locks. This felt more like an establishment concerned with the security of nuclear weapons than one responsible for childbirth. Eventually, we gained access and were left in a room with a broken cupboard and rubbish on the floor for two hours, before my wife was eventually shown to her bed. The next morning—the day of the operation—an unknown doctor appeared, hours before the delivery. He came to the bedside and asked: “What did Doctor So-and-so say was going to happen to you today”. No previous records from the usual consultant who my wife had seen were apparently available. Initially, the experience felt as though no one was actually in charge of either the case or the facts. I sat there as an entrepreneur who was quite used to intervening in events, but in this case I was quite out of my depth. Eventually, an external midwife arrived who was apparently on the list for that day. She immediately took charge of events and there was quickly a sense of confidence and well-being. She was fantastic.

Our family’s three experiences of childbirth are sadly not unique; what is on offer in our hospitals’ maternity services is quite varied. It is really important that the interests of the mother and child are paramount and centre stage at this important moment of life, and that they have real choice in the provision of maternity services. My colleagues and I created one of the first LIFT companies in the United Kingdom, in east London. It has now built 10 health centres in the East End. One of those new health centres, on the Isle of Dogs, has a birthing suite in it and the quality of care that the midwives give to mothers is excellent. Indeed, the then chairman of the LIFT company reminded me recently that one local East End mum had described the birthing suite, based in a local East End community, as being like a “bleeding hotel”. This is the quality and choice of services that patients deserve and for this reason, I support the amendment.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, perhaps I may speak to the amendments in this group which are in my name. First, Amendment 110A concerns NICE guidelines and is very much like that tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Newton and Lord Butler. In fact, theirs may be even better than mine so I intend to say no more than that we are interested in the Minister exploring this issue, because those noble Lords both more than adequately covered the points that need to be made in that regard. I am also very pleased to support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Royall and to put my name to those, because the role of specialist nurses is extremely important.

Amendments 118, 119 and 120 concern the duty of the board to reduce inequalities. Proposed new Section 13G of the 2006 Act states that the board must,

“have regard to the need to—

(a) reduce inequalities between patients with respect to their ability to access health services;

(b) reduce inequalities between patients with respect to the outcomes achieved for them by the

provision of health services”.

This seems a rather narrow definition concerned solely with health services, which I assume flows from the continual and overriding responsibility of the Secretary of State for tackling health inequalities. I would be grateful if the noble Earl could confirm to the Committee how the Secretary of State intends to tackle health inequalities—what information he will need, where he will get it from and how those decisions will then be moved through the proposed structures of the National Health Service Commissioning Board, the CCGs and so on.

Surely, the health and well-being boards would want to have some involvement from the NHS on health inequalities, so Amendment 118 seeks to ensure that the board has health inequalities in its remit. I particularly refer the Minister to the letter from the NHS Future Forum to the Secretary of State on 17 November where it devoted much attention to the NHS role in improving public health and made its claim that the NHS must design its services in a way that both promotes good health and prevents poor outcomes. It is thus important that the legislation provides sufficient leeway to allow the NHS Commissioning Board to do this and that legislation relating to health inequalities is not confined solely to the provision and commissioning of services.

What is also important, in coming to my Amendment 119, is that funding to the clinical commissioning group reflects the deprivation levels within its area. Can the Minister tell the Committee whether there has been a risk assessment on the issues of funding? What risks has the department found that go with the levels of funding that might be made available on the basis of deprivation levels within areas?

Of course, the decision of the Secretary of State not to make clinical commissioning groups area-based is a serious problem in ensuring a population base for commissioning, but it will be doubly important to ensure that clinical commissioning groups with large numbers of deprived patients receive financial support. I would be grateful if the Minister could spell out the intended principles behind the funding associated with clinical commissioning groups.

On Amendments 110B, 127ZA and 190AA, which concern maternity services, the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, has adequately covered the major concerns about those services and we would be keen to support her amendments. I am grateful to the Royal College of Midwives for its briefing on these amendments. My only questions are about maternity networks and the recognition of their potential contribution to the type of maternity care and providing clinical commissioners with expert guidance and advice on driving up standards.

The Committee will be very pleased to hear that I do not intend to share any birthing stories. On the other hand, I am concerned. Without a national standard for maternity services, how will the new commissioning arrangements avoid significant variations? We know, for example, that there is a significant variation between trusts in the number of home births that take place. We can explore the reasons for that, but I would like to know how the new structures would deal with such variations and how that would be reflected in the work of the National Health Service Commissioning Board.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, I have Amendment 112 and 113 in this group. I have a comment regarding the excellent speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, and would like the Minister to reply to it. NICE has suggested that all women expecting babies could have the right to consider the possibility of a caesarean birth. Before the choice is finally made, will that be associated with advice from doctors indicating that caesarean births are certainly not as straightforward as some people believe them to be, and for cosmetic reasons may be deeply regretted afterwards? I was a little worried that NICE had given this green light, as it were, to caesarean births without associating it with any form of counselling to the mothers concerned, not least because, as many people in this House will know, the outcomes in terms of morbidity and infant mortality are not as good as people imagine them to be in comparison with a normal birth. Perhaps the Minister could say something about that. Perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, could also say something about it when she responds on her useful and important amendments, to which I hope the House will give an extremely warm welcome.

Amendments 112 and 113 are about strengthening the language about health inequalities. On that issue, we have had a helpful letter from the noble Earl, Lord Howe, dated 24 November, in which he sets out in detail some of the steps that will be taken, not least the creation of the Institute of Health Equity, to deal with health inequalities. My question is rather a big one but it boils down to the old problem of how one ensures that these worthy and excellent intentions are actually carried out.

The House will remember that new Section 13F of the 2006 Act proposed in Clause 20, which deals with the autonomy of clinical commissioning groups from the Commissioning Board and restricts the board’s actions in terms of having to bear that autonomy in mind, was put into a different set of considerations—the consideration of the whole of the responsibility of the Secretary of State and the responsibilities of the boards—under the headings of Clauses 4 and 10.

All of this means that we are still debating these issues without being clear about where responsibility for them ultimately lies. I do not propose to go over that ground again, but it is appropriate for this debate to notice that the whole set of duties that are laid out in detail—and to which this debate will undoubtedly add as it lays down further duties for clinical commissioning groups and the board as a whole—in a sense therefore depends upon the outcome of those discussions about the constitutional structure. That matters because we need to bear it in mind all the way through our consideration of the duties that are laid upon clinical commissioning groups.

What makes me, to be honest, even more concerned is that I recently read the discussion paper The NHS: Developing Commissioning Support, which was quite improperly, no doubt, leaked on the internet. My attention was drawn to it by a couple of doctors who had access to the internet. The paper sets out in detail the ultimate objective of moving towards a commercial market in the health service and sets it out under a considerable number of different headings. For example, there is a specific mention in this report that,

“Clinical commissioning groups will have a statutory freedom to secure the commissioning support from wherever they want”.

It goes on to say that the commissioning support should be given in a vibrant, commercial market. What worries me about all this is that I am not at all clear—and never have been in our long debate on health—about what the ultimate goal is. I suspect that we are discussing two things at the same time. One is the attempt to keep improving the existing NHS, sometimes by an extraordinary degree of micromanagement—from this House, I have to say. The other is the determination of many people in this House to ensure the safety and continuation of the NHS which is free at the point of need and which is available to people regardless of their ability to pay. Somewhere along the line and at some point, we really have to be clear what we are talking about. I do not know whether others taking part in this debate share my sense that we are walking in without knowing the constitutional responsibilities and quite where we are going.

I commend my two amendments. They both strengthen the words on equality of health outcomes. I congratulate the Government very much on establishing the Institute of Health Equity and carrying forward the detailed research we are now doing on lifestyles and many other things, which are important and which I am sure the whole House will applaud. However, I have to raise the big question about destinations. I hope that at some point before we abandon the Committee stage, we will have a clearer view about the Government’s ultimate destination: whether it is to retain an NHS; whether it is to make it more open to innovation and other contributions from the private sector, with which many of us would certainly not disagree; or whether the ultimate outcome is to move towards a commercial market system, this being essentially a transitional stage.

[Lord Turnberg]

My Lords, this is a disparate group of amendments. I support a number of them. Some seem to be counter to others, but I hope that they will come together at some point. Amendment 110A seeks to strengthen the need to take into account the guidance from NICE. From time to time, NICE faces someone complaining about the way it goes about its business. Sometimes patient groups suggest that it is taking its time or is working against their best interests. The pharmaceutical industry complains from time to time that it takes too long and maybe gets things wrong—perhaps that is a good thing on behalf of NICE. Others complain about the methodology that NICE uses, using QALYs—quality-adjusted life years—as its measure of whether a drug or treatment is effective. Despite all that, I believe that NICE does a marvellous job, as do many who know what it does. It makes sure that the suggestion of treatments is based on clear, independent evidence of their effectiveness. Its approval is something of a kitemark for the standards that GPs and PCTs should follow and the system is envied across the world. There are others trying to emulate NICE.

16:15

This amendment makes it clear that the boards must work in accordance with NICE guidance. My question to the noble Earl is: why have the Government seen fit seemingly to weaken the role of NICE by making its advice be just that—advice—without any of the teeth that it previously had? There is a subtle difference between what its guidance means now and what it will mean in the future. It would be good to have that clarified.

I support Amendment 109A, in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Butler and Lord Newton, because it provides a little get-out clause. It definitely provides NICE guidance but it also provides the possibility for a new treatment, which has not been tried or looked at by NICE, still to have an opportunity to be used and looked at under very specific and controlled conditions. Therefore, the two amendments can be looked at together.

Amendment 110ZA refers to specialist nurses, who of course do a marvellous job. I owe them some personal gratitude, although I will not enlarge on that to noble Lords. The specialist nurses who are threatened are those in the community, who work across the community-NHS divide. They include specialist diabetes nurses, stoma care nurses, psychiatric nurses and a range of others. They do a fantastic job but, unfortunately, they are threatened. I hope we can see our way to making them unthreatened by ensuring that their joint funding, which comes partly from the local authority and partly from the NHS, is encouraged by the board and takes place. Will the noble Earl try to ensure that the board can promote this idea?

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I have put my name to several of the amendments in this group—namely, Amendments 112, 113, 115, 186, 187 and 189—all of which are aimed at reducing inequalities. The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, has spoken about this. I will not repeat her arguments, other than simply to say that my reason for adding my name to these amendments was that it struck me that the words “act with a view to reducing inequalities” were not strong enough. Unless commissioning must have regard to the need to reduce inequalities, we will not improve the health of the nation.

Perhaps I may make a comment on Amendment 109A, which is a probing amendment and refers to NICE. I just want to place on record other areas of standard-establishment, such as the National Prescribing Centre and the audits and independent service reviews that are undertaken by the medical royal colleges. These are available and can be very informative. The service accreditation standards that they have produced are aimed at driving the equality improvement agenda and draw to the attention of the Commissioning Board and clinical commissioning groups the role of audits and the information that they can receive from audits, which are intended to drive up equality and reduce inequalities in service provision.

I also have in my name Amendment 299C, which seems to be almost an orphan amendment in this group but is there. It relates to private work. My reason for tabling it is that for a long time there has been confusion over what is private and what is NHS. The Bill also highlights a complexity about what is private and what is third-sector provision. Until now, third-sector services outside the NHS have generally tended to be lumped together in regulation. We will be facing different models in the non-NHS sector ranging from for-profit, through not-for-profit, to the voluntary sector as we know it today. One of the difficulties is making sure that patients are not recruited into the private practice of an individual who sees them during an NHS consultation. The fine balance between information-giving and recruiting should be clarified in guidance. Patients may ask what the waiting time is and whether they could have their intervention, investigation or whatever done more quickly if they went privately. I am concerned that the way the information is given may skew the patient’s perception of it and the patient can then feel they actually ought to go privately. This may be for the profit of that individual practitioner but not necessarily make a great deal of difference to the clinical outcome of the patient.

It is, therefore, a very difficult and fine line, but unless we begin to address it now, we will run into the same problems as we have had, for example, with top-up payments, where we had a lot of debates leading to the establishment of the Cancer Drugs Fund across the UK. We will be facing the same situation, but more so, with many other drugs that come along for non-cancer diseases. The new biologics are very powerful drugs which can be extremely effective but are extremely expensive. I am concerned that a commissioning group might decide that one of these new biologic drugs, even though it goes through all the benchmarking standards required, is something they are just not going to pay for locally. Private sector provision will, therefore, be driving patients who cannot afford to access these treatments, who are not privately insured, and whose quality of life is so severely undermined by their illness—because it is only for severe disease that these drugs are indicated—that they will not be able to work or earn without accessing them. They could therefore find themselves in a double bind.

My amendment is, of course, a probing amendment and I would not intend it to be anything more. If the Minister does not want to respond to these points today, I would nevertheless urge him at least to consider them in the guidance produced for the Commissioning Board and providers on the interface between the public and private sectors.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

As this is Committee stage, I hope my noble friends will forgive me if I play Oliver Twist and seek a small second bite. I promise to be brief and make only three points. The first picks up on maternity and the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, about consultants versus patients, if I may put it that way. I remember, in the far-off days when I used to sign 18th birthday cards to prospective or actual constituents, noticing a remarkable bunching. If you checked back 18 years you would find a correlation with Fridays and particularly the period in the run-up to a bank holiday. Secondly, nobody else has followed up the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, about specialist nurses. I have an interest to declare here as—there are probably other things as well—president of the Braintree Parkinson’s Disease Society and the Braintree Multiple Sclerosis Society. The importance of specialist nurses in some of these areas is both extremely great and underestimated. I hope that we will therefore not lose sight of the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, in her amendment, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton.

Thirdly, to assure the noble Lord, Lord Walton—who I thought was at one stage going to accuse me of being a wimp for not pressing this to a vote—I do not rule out returning to the matter on Report, unless the Minister is really nice to me.

[Lord Patel]

My Lords, I shall speak to several amendments to which I have put my name, but I shall start with the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, to which I have also put my name. The noble Baroness is well placed to talk about maternity services. She has championed their cause, particularly regarding choice, for nearly two decades. It is she who should be credited for getting us to where we are now, whereby choice of where to have their babies is available to all would-be mothers.

The noble Baroness covered most points, and I support them all. The one on which I should like to expand relates to maternity networks. It appears that both the Prime Minister and the Department of Health have accepted that maternity networks are the way to improve maternity services, and I agree. Maternity networks have the potential to increase clinician involvement and service-user engagement in the planning, delivery and, where necessary, reorganisation of services. They also have the advantage of being able to scrutinise the performance and outcomes of all maternity providers within the network, thereby helping to drive up standards and reduce unwarranted variations in outcomes. This will help to develop shared services across the network. Thus a home birth service provided by a modern maternity unit could be made available to maternity units in areas where the home birth rate is very low.

I know that a current review of clinical networks is being undertaken for the Commissioning Board, and is due to report soon. Perhaps the noble Earl can tell us more about it. I hope that the review recommends that maternity networks be established to cover all maternity services in England. The concern is that if providers are expected to self-fund networks, there is a risk that some providers, especially foundation trusts, will not engage in networks, thereby reducing their effectiveness. For this reason, I hope that the Government will accept the case for providing some funding and support for maternity networks in the same way as neonatal networks and cancer networks have been able to access central funding and support.

One other issue that will improve the quality of maternity services, no matter where that care is delivered, is the establishment of maternity dashboards. They are a good way of auditing the outcomes on a daily basis and establishing whether the clinical guidelines have been achieved. I therefore strongly support the noble Baroness’s amendment.

The amendment in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Newton of Braintree and Lord Butler of Brockwell, is saying “comply or explain”, whereby if you do not comply with NICE guidelines you must explain why. I agree. Not all standards should be complied with, because there may be reasons why they are not. If you do not comply, you have to explain why. However, you also have to explain why the outcome for patients will be the same or better, because if the outcomes through not complying are not the same or better, you should not be allowed to fail to comply.

I understand that there might be good reasons why certain NHS bodies do not comply. Another way could be the establishment of an alternative compliance system in which organisations and clinicians are required to justify why they have not complied with the standards or, for that matter, innovations that will aid delivery of the best clinical practice. The Commissioning Board, in conjunction with senates and by way of patient pathways, could develop a compliance regime that measures, monitors and incentivises the use of innovation or compliance where these will improve standards of care. So I support the proposal, and I know that we might return later to the issue that my noble friend Lord Walton raised about innovation, tariffs and the innovation tariff. That is the other side of the coin regarding non-compliance and going beyond the standard of care laid down by NICE.

16:30

I also support Amendment 110A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, which states that in discharging its duty,

“in relation to specialised services, the Board must exercise its functions in accordance with current NICE guidance”.

This amendment is related to that tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Newton, and I would cite in relation to it the specific example of rare diseases. The amendment seeks to ensure the adoption of clinical guidelines developed at a national level, a point which applies particularly to rare diseases. I would cite the example of treatment for brain tumours and other cancers of the central nervous system, which is commissioned nationally through specialised commissioning, which is due to become part of the NHS Commissioning Board. Rare diseases are currently defined by the specialised services national definition set—which is commonly known as SSNDS. In the case of brain and CNS tumours, the specialised cancer services definition explicitly cites NICE’s brain and CNS improving outcomes guidance as its reference.

I am concerned that some elements of the current framework for the treatment of rare diseases will be jettisoned in the name of streamlining. The danger then is that the link between NICE guidance and commissioning formulas used by the board will be broken. This could undermine the quality of services provided by the board to take care of people with rare diseases unless we insist that the national Commissioning Board must adopt NICE standards and that the choice of “comply or not comply” is not available for rare diseases. It is a completely different argument from the generic one put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Newton. We could have a discussion about that but my view is that a different kind of compliance is required for rare diseases.

I come to my Amendments 144 and 145, which relate to information provided by the health service on the safety of services, which is dealt with in proposed new Section 13Q on page 20 of the Bill. I wish to talk about how learning from information related to patient safety should be available to all NHS organisations; forgive me if I take a couple of moments on this.

Before I start, I should like to pay tribute to two remarkable ladies who established and for two years ran Patient Safety First in England: Vin McLoughlin, who died at the age of 55 of pancreatic cancer; and Karen Woo, a young doctor qualified at University College, London, and fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, who was in charge of safety procedures and developing surgical safety. Karen was killed on one of her visits to Badakhshan in Afghanistan with nine other members of her medical team. I pay tribute to these two remarkable ladies who promoted patient safety in England. Many of the successes, particularly in surgical safety, are due to them.

Patient safety is a global problem. On average, around 10 per cent of admissions to hospitals worldwide are associated with some sort of unintended harm to patients. The World Health Organisation set a global challenge for member organisations to improve their patient safety. In the past the Minister has said that the Government give patient safety high priority and wish to see it embedded in all aspects of NHS care, and I believe it.

Over the past decade, our understanding has grown. It is now seen as a core focus for many in healthcare, but there are barriers. The barriers are: variable leadership at board level and among clinicians and managers; a blame culture that drives problems underground; defensive communication; limited patient safety education; not enough emphasis on building high-performing front-line teams; and a superficial approach to incident investigation which often fails to identify the underlying causes and system weaknesses.

Most of these errors are system weaknesses. Even today there are up to 3,000 reports daily to the NPSA in England and Wales. Most of the incidents do not result in any harm, but 1 per cent are reported as causing severe harm, which is often permanent, and less than 1 per cent are reported as causing death. The reporting and learning system, which I know that the Government intend to set up as part of the national Commissioning Board, uses national data to detect and understand sources of risk by spotting clusters of incidents arising from individual reports that are not often identified until data are analysed at a national level; identifying the most urgent risks by reviewing all serious incidents and deaths and providing extra points; alerting the NHS to potential for harm quickly by providing recommendations, advice and guidance to ensure that the right information gets to the right person; extracting learning by identifying key trends and patterns in incident reports and providing analysed feedback.

The work of the patient safety division of the NHS Commissioning Board, as it would be, relating to reporting and learning from serious patient safety incidents will be crucial, but as the Bill states:

“The Board must make information collected by virtue of subsection (1), and any other information obtained by analysing it”—

in relation to safety—

“available to such persons as the Board considers appropriate”.

My amendment states that it should be available not as the board considers appropriate but available to all NHS bodies and the public. That is the only way that we can embed learning that might come from one part of the NHS into all parts of the NHS and reduce the harm.

I could give examples, such as the establishment of surgical checklists, which has reduced damage and errors relating to surgery many times over; the incidence of intravenous-related infection and central venous line infections; infection rates in neonatal care; and many others.

The key messages are that both senior managers and senior clinicians need to demonstrate that patient safety is their top priority. They will do so if they are obliged to report all incidents and take note of the learning that comes from the national learning and reporting system. I hope that the Minister will accept that the amendment is apt. If he can convince me that without it in the Bill, we can achieve the same, I would be grateful.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames]

My Lords, I start by adding my support for the amendments that change the duty to reduce inequalities by strengthening the wording from having “regard to the need” to reduce such inequalities to “acting with a view” to reducing such inequalities. Those are Amendments 112 and 113, in relation to the board, and Amendments 186 and 187 in relation to clinical commissioning groups. I do not want to add a great deal to what the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said in that regard, except merely to observe that the commitment to reducing health inequalities in the Bill is one of its great advantages and will be one of the great advantages and achievements of the legislation, if it is passed. I suggest that saying it loud and clear and imposing the stronger duty on the board and the Secretary of State would be the better way to achieve it.

I want to address the other amendments to which I have put my name, Amendments 153ZZA and 153ZZB, which concern the permitted disclosures of information by the board in proposed new Section 13Z2 on page 24 of the Bill. It is important to observe that the starting point for this clause is proposed new subsection (2):

“This provision has effect notwithstanding any rule of common law which would otherwise prohibit or restrict the disclosure”.

This proposed new subsection is about permitting disclosures by the board of information whose disclosure would otherwise be unlawful, which from the wording I take to include any disclosures that would be actionable either in tort or in contract. My concern is about how far this provision would sanction a breach of confidentiality owed to patients or others.

Most of the examples or circumstances outlined in proposed new subsection (1) are anodyne or obviously called for. The first, for instance, is that the information is already in the public domain; the second is where the disclosure has to be made pursuant to regulations, and so forth. However, the amendments are concerned with two sets of circumstances that are, I would suggest, entirely too wide. The first is under paragraph (d), where the suggestion is that disclosure should be permitted where,

“the disclosure is necessary or expedient for the purposes of protecting the welfare of any individual”.

As drafted, paragraph (d) is without regard to the wishes of the individual concerned or, in the case of an individual suffering from incapacity, to that individual’s care. I would suggest that that smacks of a certain arrogance that ignores the rights of the individual to choose whether information about him or her is released by the board. It is for that reason that our amendment suggests that the words,

“and is made with the agreement of that individual or of a person having legal responsibility for that individual’s care”,

should be placed as a qualification to the unfettered right to disclose based on the board’s view of what is,

“necessary or expedient for the purposes of protecting the welfare of”

that individual.

The second area where we say that the disclosure provision is far too wide is under paragraph (f), which suggests that disclosure should be permitted where,

“the disclosure is made for the purpose of facilitating the exercise of any of the Board’s functions”.

That permissive subsection would give the board an overall right to disclose any information it chose, notwithstanding that it was otherwise unlawful, on the basis that it was,

“made for the purpose of facilitating the exercise of any of the Board’s functions”.

It does not even go so far as to say that it would have to be necessary for the exercise of those functions. In the view of those of us who have put our names to this amendment, those lines should go. They are an unwarranted intrusion into the confidentiality of the individual, and they give far too wide a discretion to disclose information whose disclosure would otherwise be unlawful.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

This is an extraordinarily wide group of amendments—I think there are 27 in this group. I sympathise—well, almost sympathise—with the Minister in terms of how he will respond to them.

I wish to comment on just three of the amendments. The first is Amendment 144, which the noble Lord, Lord Patel, has just spoken to, about the importance of sharing information collected on the safety of services provided by the health service. Particularly in the context of what I think we will see as a fragmentation of the service, where a pattern becomes apparent that suggests that particular practices or processes challenge patient safety, it is important that that information is disseminated.

16:45

To save the noble Earl time, no doubt his brief—should he be able to find it in the mass of papers that he has in front of him—will suggest that Amendment 144 is unnecessary because the present form of words in the Bill talks about sharing information with persons with whom it is appropriate to do so. The advantage of the wording of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, is that it spells out some of those with whom this information should be shared—the CQC, Monitor, all commissioning groups, Healthwatch England and health and well-being boards. That is important because these bodies may well be aware of practices that are taking place in local facilities or they may need to be aware of what is considered to be less than safe practice. That is why it is important that the information is disseminated widely and that the organisations listed are included. Otherwise, there will be a danger that, for example, the matter might be seen as entirely technical and not worthy of distribution or as something that is circulated only to those who have an immediate requirement to know, rather than to a wider group of organisations, some of which will be locally based and may be monitoring the situation. For example, providing the information to Healthwatch England may well mean that local healthwatch organisations will be able to pick up a particular issue and advise the board on its importance.

The second issue on which I want to speak is Amendment 153ZZA. I am pleased that I gave way to the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, because I thought that this amendment was not going to be spoken to by any of those who had put their names to it. It concerns the disclosure of information for the purposes of protecting the welfare of any individual and says that this disclosure should take place only with the agreement of that individual. I think that the amendment might be misguided because the health service has a particular duty regarding the welfare of individuals and there may well be circumstances in which the disclosure of information is necessary as a matter of urgency to safeguard the right to life of that individual. For example—this is informed by the work that I do as chair of the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody—the board will, I think, have responsibility for commissioning medical services for prisons and custody services. Where an individual may be transferred from one entity to another, repeatedly and at short notice, it will be potentially unwise to expect that individual to have given prior approval of the disclosure of information which may be important for their safety, either because of their medical condition or because they are at risk of suicide.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames]

If the Minister were inclined to concede our amendment, subject to a proviso dealing with emergencies of the sort that the noble Lord has suggested might be important, would that meet his objection to the amendment?

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

No, the reason being that it may not be an emergency situation; it may be that an individual is being passed from one agency to another. The point at issue is a risk and the mitigation of that risk. The risk may be that an assessment has been done suggesting that a person is at risk of suicide. They may well not commit suicide; there may well not be an emergency; or there may well be things that the receiving agency can do which will reduce that risk. However, there is no emergency so there would not be circumstances in which you could say it is in response to a particular situation; it is to avoid a situation arising. I am sure that there could be a form of words which would both deal with the concerns the noble Lord has highlighted and permit the sensible passing on of information to safeguard the right to life of that individual. I do not think Amendment 153ZZA quite deals with that point, and the Minister may want to respond to that when we get to that stage.

The final amendment I wish to speak to, very briefly, is Amendment 299C in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff. I, too, think it is extremely important that NHS services explicitly in the Bill must not use NHS business to recruit private patient business. In a context where again we will see the fragmentation of services, the arrival of all sorts of new providers and the possible blurring of distinctions between NHS provision and that provided privately by NHS practitioners, this needs to be made explicit. It is already an issue. I will cite my personal experience. The last but one time I visited my general practitioner—I think it was the first time for some five years—he declined to make the referral for secondary care I wished to have, saying that I probably had not looked after myself as well as I should have done, but then he pushed across the table a card advertising his Chinese medicine service. I thought that was extremely inappropriate—disregarding whether it was an appropriate treatment; as far as I am concerned it is non-evidence-based medicine.

Under any circumstances for there to be a blurring of the NHS responsibility of a practitioner and their private concerns seems extremely dubious. It is important it is made explicit that this is not permitted. In a previous series of exchanges the noble Earl has said it is quite clear what should happen under those circumstances. However, it does happen and what is permitted becomes increasingly confused. Even if medical practitioners are not abusing their position, or there is no blurring of those lines and everyone has been quite proper, it is perfectly feasible that patients will be confused and will not be clear as to what is happening, and that will colour future relationships they have with people providing medical services to them. It certainly coloured my relationship with that GP because on the last occasion I saw him I was extremely dubious about receiving any advice from him. I confess I referred to him as being patronising. This was perhaps inappropriate; it was certainly unwise as he was about to perform a rectal examination. None the less, it certainly coloured the relationship we had. In the interests of both patients and medical practitioners the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, should be in the Bill.

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I do not intend to follow that in a similar style. I support Amendment 144 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, to which I have added my name. I do not want to go over the ground covered by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, but I just wish to share with the Minister in particular and the House in general my own experience from introducing near-miss reporting in the NHS when the National Patient Safety Agency was established. In those good old days the figure was around 800,000 a year. The current figure, as my noble friend Lord Patel said, is of the order of 3,000 a day; it is on an upward incline.

The issue at stake in those days was not the principle of trying in effect to copy the airline industry and improve safety by having people come clean about near misses—some very serious, some less serious. No one disputed the merits of trying to learn from those experiences. Where everybody got a little concerned was around the making public of the information. I will not delight the House with some of the discussions that took place in Richmond House about whether the first lot of information should be made available, because who knew what the Daily Mail would do with it? Noble Lords will be pleased to know that the Daily Mail behaved in a predictable manner and ran screaming banner headlines about how near to death 800,000 people came each year.

The important point was that one was beginning to change the culture of the NHS, which knew that the information was being put in the public arena. The problem with the Bill is that it leaves to the board the decision about how to disseminate information. We as citizens would be better off putting in the Bill the specific organisations to which the information should be disseminated—which is what the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, does. I strongly support it and hope that the Minister will give it very careful consideration, and will carry on the publication and dissemination of the information on an agreed basis.

I will make a couple of remarks in response to the concerns expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, about a market in commissioning skills. I have no particular wish to promote a market in commissioning skills. However, as a former Minister responsible for the performance of primary care trusts, I say that many trusts seriously lacked commissioning skills. These were lacking particularly in areas such as collecting information, analysing it and using it to establish need and to procure services to meet those needs. We should not in the Bill do anything to limit the ability of the new clinical commissioning groups to receive and acquire the skills to enable them to do their job effectively, wherever the skills may be located. That is a very important part of introducing successful new arrangements for clinical commissioning.

I pray in aid of that approach the history of Dr Foster. The dear old NHS had been collecting data for decades but was unable to use them effectively to improve performance. It took an outsider coming in—Dr Foster—to use the information and turn it into something that was useful to the NHS in terms of improving its performance. We should not be too hung up on precisely where clinical commissioning groups get their skills from to do their job.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I forgot to speak to my Amendment 137A. I will make three points. The first is not about my amendment. I say how much I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, on the issues that are the subject of all the amendments to Clause 20, and of the debate and discussions that we are having in the Chamber and outside it about the mandate. I also say to the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and my noble friend Lord Harris that there is clearly an issue about information and confidentiality that must be addressed before the Bill leaves the House.

I will also say how much I agreed with the orphan amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. Mine, too, is something of an orphan amendment but is rather important. Amendment 137A states:

“The Board must ensure that in relation to its duties under sections 13C to 13N, those persons in the private sector contracted to provide health services must contribute in the same way as public providers towards the achievements of those duties”.

Those duties are to do with the NHS constitution, effectiveness, quality, reducing inequalities, patient involvement, patient choice, innovation, research, integration, and the impact of those services. It is very important that we have clarification that all providers have a duty to promote those.

17:00

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and my noble friend Lord Newton for prompting this debate, which brings us back to a key theme in this Bill: namely, the extent to which we can reconcile central prescription with local flexibility.

Our White Paper, Liberating the NHS, set out the case for change, and with the help of this Bill we will put patients at the heart of everything the NHS does, focus continuously on improving patient outcomes and empower and liberate clinicians to improve the quality of healthcare services. In doing so, we will build on the successful quality framework pioneered by the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, including the quality standards programme that plays such a central role in providing robust evidence for quality improvement under this Bill.

I am naturally sympathetic to the spirit behind the amendments in the name of my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Butler. First, I can reassure them, and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Walton, that the Bill does not impose blanket requirements to implement NICE quality standards or any other NICE guidance, or to comply with indicators in the outcomes framework—nor should it. The board will have to have regard to NICE quality standards, including in relation to those services it will be responsible for commissioning. CCGs will similarly be required to have regard to the board’s commissioning guidance, which will be based on NICE quality standards and other accredited evidence. That is a strong duty. It means that they must consider that guidance and if they do not follow it they have to have a good reason why not. I will be coming on to an explanation of the duty to have regard in a moment. The guidance will explain rather than dictate how to improve quality, efficiency and fairness.

I will just say to the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, that when it comes to NICE technology appraisals, the Government have undertaken to ensure that the NHS continues to fund drugs that have been recommended in NICE technology appraisal guidance and to maintain the effect of the funding direction in the new arrangements for value-based pricing. So there will be no weakening of NICE’s role here, as the noble Lord suggested.

In this way, the Bill gives us a framework to improve outcomes through recognising and rewarding high-quality care based on evidence of what works best. That comes from encouraging innovation and balancing the independence that is desirable for achieving good outcomes with the responsibility to improve, which I think is the intention behind my noble friend’s amendment.

On this occasion, I am afraid I cannot agree with the noble Lord, Lord Patel, that quality standards should be mandatory for rare diseases. We strongly believe that it should be local areas that lead in setting priorities for their own patient population. Making all quality standards for rare diseases mandatory would essentially cut across that approach. We feel that a more effective way to improve quality is to provide commissioners with all the necessary support and evidence that they need to plan how best to meet the needs of their local population.

I can sympathise with the intention behind Amendments 110ZA and 137B. The Government absolutely acknowledge the important contribution that nurse specialists make to patient care, and the value that patients, their families and indeed other members of the clinical team place on having their specialist expertise and support. I am of course well aware of the value of specialist nurses to people with epilepsy and I also completely understand the close interest of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, in prostate cancer specialist nurses.

Under our proposals, commissioners will have the freedom to commission pathways of care designed around the patient and delivered by a multiprofessional workforce that includes specialist nurses. Of course, they will have the benefit of commissioning guidance on best practice, but in the end we are committed to empowering clinicians and giving them the freedom to determine how best to meet the needs of their patients. This will include decisions about which member of the healthcare team should deliver which aspects of care. These decisions are complex and we believe that they are best made by local clinicians and commissioners working in partnership, so although I have sympathy with much that the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, said, I do not agree that the board should have the sort of role envisaged in her Amendments 110ZA and 137B. We think that they are too prescriptive.

Turning to Amendments 144 and 145, I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Patel, that safety is a key domain of quality, and I have outlined before our intention to embed a culture of patient safety in the NHS by giving the board responsibility for managing the systems for reporting and learning from patient safety incidents that are currently operated by the National Patient Safety Agency. However, I agree that it is important that information which can inform and enhance patient safety in the NHS should be made available to all those who would benefit from it, as he suggests. The NPSA currently shares information with a number of bodies with a particular role in relation to patient safety, such as the MHRA and the CQC, and this will continue to be the case. Indeed, if it did not make important information available to those who it thought could reasonably benefit from it, the board would be in breach of its duty.

In addition to NHS bodies, the information is currently also used to develop products for use by non-NHS organisations, by the devolved Administrations and by international organisations, for which the board may determine it appropriate to charge a fee. It is for these reasons that we have framed the duty to share information in broad terms, and we would not want it to be more prescriptive or restrictive than that. This is the perennial problem of trying to insert a list in a piece of legislation.

Where the board does disclose information that relates to an individual, it is essential that their confidentiality is respected whenever possible and that information is disclosed only where there are compelling reasons to do so. I can reassure my noble friend Lord Marks that disclosures would be subject to the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Human Rights Act 1998, so any disclosures of personal information would need to involve the minimum amount of information necessary to serve the purpose. To ensure that this is clear, it may be helpful to my noble friend to know that we are working with the BMA on issues to do with confidentiality and the application of the common law in relation to the board and other bodies. We intend to bring forward any necessary changes to the Bill on Report.

[Lord Walton of Detchant]

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for confirming that the Government are working with the BMA. Is it not also very important, in relation to confidentiality, that they should also work with the General Medical Council which, after all, has provided very detailed advice to doctors about confidentiality issues?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the noble Lord is quite right, and my understanding is that we are doing that as well. Meanwhile, I can tell my noble friend Lord Marks that we will consider the provisions highlighted by Amendments 153ZZA and 153ZZB as part of this process.

My noble friend also raised the issue of inequalities. In earlier debates I highlighted the very significant departure made in the Bill that, for the first time ever in this country, the Secretary of State will be legally obliged to have regard to the specific need to reduce health inequalities, whatever their root cause. The board and the CCGs will also have this duty, which clearly emphasises our commitment to equity and fairness across the health service. We believe that the phrase “have regard to” completely captures the intention of the legislation; that is, that the board and the CCGs must consider the need to reduce inequalities in every decision they take. That, I hope, addresses the essence of Amendment 118. This is consistent, as I think it should be, with the public sector equality duty, which is phrased in exactly the same way. As the board already has a responsibility for all patients in the population, its general duty on inequalities also applies this widely.

Under Amendment 119, the board would have to have regard to the duty on inequalities in allocating resources to CCGs. We recognise fully the importance of ensuring that allocations give CCGs the resources to meet the distinctive needs of their local population. Again, our preference is not to place particular weight on one factor or set of factors in legislation. In fulfilling this duty, the board will also need to work in collaboration with health and well-being boards and local authorities. We have already debated the various duties on the board to participate in certain activities of health and well-being boards.

On Amendment 137A, of course it will be important to ensure that all providers contribute to the fulfilment of these duties. Some public sector duties, such as the duties under the Equality Act, already apply to anyone exercising a public function, which includes private providers who supply NHS services. The specific duties in the Bill are placed on the board and CCGs, and they remain responsible for exercising them even when they contract with another body to provide services. It is, therefore, incumbent on them to ensure that these commissioning arrangements, and the ongoing monitoring of services provided under them, support the fulfilment of their duties.

I am not sure whether the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, spoke to her Amendment 343A, but if I cover it briefly, it may be helpful to her. The amendment probes how long it will take NICE to produce the full range of quality standards. As the noble Baroness probably knows, the ambition is to create a core library of NICE quality standards that covers the majority of NHS activity, and supports the NHS delivering against the outcomes in the outcomes framework. The programme is ideally placed to deliver a steady stream of quality standards over the agreed timescales and this will lead to a comprehensive library of quality standards within, we hope, about five years. Therefore, I am afraid the timescale envisaged in her amendment is too short.

I turn now to the group of amendments introduced by my noble friend Lady Cumberlege on maternity services. I am grateful to her and, indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for giving us the opportunity to consider this question. I hope I can provide some reassurance that the new commissioning arrangements will provide a very secure basis for quality improvement in these services. Women should always expect—and always receive—excellent maternity services that focus on the best outcomes for them and their babies, and which optimise women’s experience of care. Getting maternity care right from the start can help tackle the negative impact of health inequalities and begin to improve the health and well-being of mother and baby.

We are committed to improving outcomes for women and babies, and for women’s experience of care. Three of the improvement areas in the NHS Outcomes Framework for 2011-12 focus on improving maternity services, by reducing perinatal mortality, by reducing admissions of full-term babies to neonatal units and by improving the experience of women and families of maternity services. My noble friend spoke of variation in services and that was the theme of the very powerful speech by the noble Lord, Lord Mawson. We are committed to ensuring consistency in the quality of maternity services. From April 2012, a maternity experience indicator will be introduced as part of the NHS outcomes framework. It will allow us to chart a woman’s experience of care through antenatal care, labour, delivery and postnatal care.

To support the NHS in improving outcomes in pregnancy, labour and immediately after birth, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence is developing new quality standards based on the best available evidence on antenatal care, intrapartum care and postnatal care. It is outcomes and quality that matter, and the NHS Commissioning Board will be publishing a commissioning outcomes framework for clinical commissioning groups. The commissioning outcomes framework will rely on the national outcomes framework set for the board and NICE quality standards. On top of that, the NHS Commissioning Board could decide to include guidance on the matter in the commissioning guidance that it must publish for CCGs and to which CCGs must have regard.

17:15

Women tell us that being able to make informed choices that enable them to personalise their maternity care is important and that the choice of where to give birth is most important. The birthplace in England study published last week provides evidence for the first time that women with straightforward pregnancies can choose whether they would like to give birth in a hospital obstetric unit, a midwifery unit or at home, knowing that giving birth is generally very safe. But there are some important differences between these birth settings in benefits and risks for mother and baby. This study will help NHS organisations around the country to design excellent maternity services based on what women want and need.

We made extending choice of maternity services a key priority for the NHS, as reflected in the operating framework, so that women have access to a full range of services close to home. As recommended by the NHS Future Forum, the Secretary of State’s mandate to the NHS Commissioning Board will set clear expectations about offering patients choice—a choice mandate. This could include expectations relating specifically to choice in maternity services.

Finally on maternity networks, we heartily endorse the important role that clinical advice will play in supporting the board to fulfil its duties and carry out its functions effectively. We will explore with the NHS Commissioning Board over the coming weeks how to ensure that maternity networks can provide the expert clinical advice that commissioners will need in a flexible way, responsive to local arrangements. I would, of course, be happy to write to my noble friend with further detail on that subject.

My noble friend asked about indemnity in relation to independent midwives. Current membership of the NHSLA schemes is open only to NHS bodies. We are currently looking at reforming NHS indemnity arrangements in the context of this Bill. We remain committed to ensuring that all providers of NHS care have access to NHS indemnity arrangements in future and are pleased that One To One (North West) Ltd has secured indemnity for independent midwives. We hope that this solution will work for other groups of independent midwives as well.

On the question of maternal request for caesarean section, NICE guidance makes it clear that caesarean section is a major operation and that women who request it should consider all risks with the healthcare professionals, including midwives, obstetricians, anaesthetists and others, if appropriate. If, after having advice, a woman still wants a caesarean, her request should be honoured.

I turn to Amendment 299C, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. I shall of course consider the points that she made, as I always do. However, for elective services, patients already choose their NHS services—or NHS care in a private provider, if that is what they want—before they even attend as out-patients. It is a little hard for me to see how they could be poached by foundation trust staff for private work; there would be no incentive for patients to pay for something which they are already in line to receive on the NHS. Using NHS business to recruit private patient business would be against accepted professional practice; it could lead to a charge of misconduct, handled by the profession’s regulator, which would put professional practice in jeopardy. Foundation trusts could also view such practice as a breach of contract, since poaching their patients would lose them money.

On the issue of conflict of interest in referrals by GPs, we will not allow a situation to arise where profits can be made at the expense of patient care or choice. Clinical commissioning groups will not be directly responsible for commissioning services that GPs themselves provide—that will be the responsibility of the board. CCGs will be commissioning organisations; they will not be able to provide services in their own right. The NHS Commissioning Board will be responsible for commissioning primary medical care and holding contracts with individual GP practices in their role as providers. Through GMC guidance doctors will be, as they are now, under a duty that any commercial interest that a GP may have in a company must not affect the way that they refer or prescribe for a patient. The proposed reforms to NHS commissioning arrangements do not in any way alter the existing duties of GPs, as clinicians, to provide high-quality primary medical care to meet the needs of their patients, as required under their contracts.

My noble friend Lady Williams asked what the destination was for these reforms. I reassure her that the destination for our modernisation of the NHS is to safeguard the values and principles that the NHS is based on. That is the case now; it has always been the case and will remain so. On my noble friend’s specific point about commissioning support, clinical commissioning groups will not be able to delegate their commissioning function but they will need support. Commissioning support is the assistance which commissioners, both CCGs and the board, can draw on to help them deliver their functions. Good commissioning support will help CCGs and the board to concentrate better on the clinical and locally sensitive aspects of commissioning to make the best use of resources available to the NHS. That support could come from the talents of their own employed staff or, if they choose, from outside bodies. We are talking here about things such as data analysis, back-office functions and other areas.

It is important to recognise that PCTs can and do currently hire independent sector support for their commissioning functions. That is not commercialisation or privatisation of commissioning but using the available resources to get the best support. It will be for GPs and their colleagues to decide which commissioning activities they do for themselves and which, if any, they choose to buy in from external organisations. It is entirely up to them. I hope that what I have said provides additional clarity and, indeed, reassures the two noble Lords, and that it will enable the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and my noble friend Lord Newton, in particular, to withdraw their amendments.

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, can I ask the noble Earl a couple of questions, on which I would be grateful if he could write to me and to any other noble Lords who are interested? I found two of his answers a bit unconvincing. The first was on Amendment 144, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Patel. I would really like to know how the Minister will ensure that the board will disseminate this information on patient safety and put it in the public arena to a wide group of people. At the moment, as the Bill is, it is left totally to the discretion of the board as to how it will behave. Secondly, I did not find the Minister’s answer on rare diseases and mandatory guidance very convincing. I would really like to know what discussions have taken place with those such as the Royal College of General Practitioners and clinical commissioning groups, about their appetite for making local decisions on these very rarefied diseases without the kind of mandatory guidance that the noble Lord, Lord Patel, spoke about. I do not expect an answer now but I would like some more written guidance on that.

[Baroness Cumberlege]

My Lords, I was heartened by a lot of what my noble friend said about maternity services, but it seems that the variations will be reduced through NICE quality standards. I understand that NICE has a very long queue of services to be considered for quality standards and I wonder whether my noble friend and the Government have any influence over which services have priority to have their standards set early and which will have to wait. As maternity involves a tremendous number of women who are giving birth, it is really important to get it in the front of the queue, as far as possible.

[Baroness Barker]

My Lords, can my noble friend tell me where in the legislation it is made clear, if a CCG were to have a conflict—that is, a disagreement—with the commissioning support organisation, where and how that conflict would be resolved?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, in the interests of time I suggest that I write to noble Lords on those questions, and I am happy to do so. However, I say to my noble friend Lady Cumberlege that I recognise the particular importance of the maternity quality standard. I will try to find out for her what stage NICE has reached or is likely to reach within a certain timescale, and if I can provide her with any further information I will be happy to do so.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his comments in response to Amendment 109A and I thank the other noble Lords who have supported it. The noble Lord, Lord Newton, said that this is a probing amendment. As the Minister has said, there is a question of balance here: we want the Commissioning Board to be an effective promoter of standards, but on the other hand we do not want the arrangements to put an unnecessary brake on innovation. I am sure that the noble Lord will consider carefully what the Minister has said. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 109A withdrawn.

Amendments 110 to 120B not moved.

[Lord Patel]

My Lords, the amendments in my name are about patient and public involvement, and accountability to patients and the public. They would amend new Sections 13H, “Duty to promote involvement of each patient”; 13I, “Duty as to patient choice”; and 13J, “Duty to obtain appropriate advice” by the Commissioning Board, in the 2006 Act. I shall also speak to Amendments 141A and 206A. The latter is in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, who unfortunately had to leave for another engagement but will return later.

All these amendments are about the requirement for the NHS Commissioning Board and all clinical commissioning groups to engage in meaningful and substantial consultation with users of services, particularly with regard to ensuring that commissioners commission services and pathways that are navigable and coherent.

The current requirement to be placed on the board and the clinical commissioning groups is that they must make arrangements to secure that individuals to whom the services are being provided are involved. It is not enough for the suggested means of doing this to be quite as open-ended as the Bill suggests. The Bill implies that this consultation is really aimed at representatives of patient groups, and I would like clarification from the Minister that both individuals and groups of patients should be able to make representation. It is quite easy to conceive of a situation in which a patient is consulted or provided with information and yet is none the wiser and no more involved in the services that they receive.

17:30

Within this amendment is the implicit recognition that different patient groups may need to be treated differently when it comes to getting advice or consultational services. Providing a consultational service that adopts a “one size fits all” approach would be cheaper than one which took the needs of individual groups into account. I use the example of my noble friend Lady Hollins and the Royal College of Psychiatrists about adequate consultations with users of mental health and learning disability services, where individual patient consultation would not be appropriate. The crux of this group of amendments is therefore a proper definition of what it means to involve service users in the design and commissioning of the services they receive. An understanding of involvement which limits the patient’s role merely to being the recipient of a service, would be one that renders the current wording of “requirement” useless.

The inclusion of the word “involve” necessitates an active role for the patient in the commissioning processes. Different patient groups will require different levels of consultation involving different clinical and social networks in order for them to be considered to be actively participating. The board and clinical commissioning groups will be responsible for ensuring that the procedures are in place to make this happen. By explicitly stating in the Bill the requirement to arrange for patients to be involved, the necessary assurance will be provided. My Amendment 128 therefore requires the board to publish in its annual report a paragraph on what advice it received and what it did with it. I beg to move.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I have put my name to several amendments in this group, some of which are in my name only. Initially, I will speak to Amendments 125A, 125B, 195A and 195B. These are designed to ensure that the Commissioning Board considers the potentially destabilising effect of new providers choosing to deliver only simple or profitable services, and the effect on existing providers who provide a wider range of services. Clause 101 includes provision for providers,

“to set transparent eligibility and selection criteria",

in relation to treating NHS patients. This is intended to ensure that risk selection does not take place on the part of providers, whereby they accept for treatment only less complex cases or patients, with a view to maximising profit. The Bill also instructs Monitor and the board to take account of the different types of patients treated by providers, and the range of services offered. The amendments suggest that this must also be considered in the national tariff, when that is used, because in looking at tariff adjustments, the Bill does not adequately safeguard against the potentially destabilising effect on existing providers, where other providers choose to deliver only simple or profitable services.

This could increase the relative burden on those providers who deliver a wide range of services, including ones that are more complex and less profitable; also when they provide support at a tertiary rather than a secondary care level, they are providing support into other secondary care services. The amendments would ensure that when the board and clinical commissioning groups discharge their duties in relation to patient choice, they have regard to the effect on the stability of the local health economy and the providers within it; and that they provide this wide range for their patients.

I have made inquiries about what is already happening around the country and I am grateful to the British Association of Dermatologists for giving me some information. It has reported to me that private providers already appear to have been awarded contracts without the appropriate range of specialist staff in situ when starting a service; and private providers appear to be contracted to deliver services that are not necessarily integrated with the existing local secondary care services. They are also decommissioning in isolation without looking at the impact on other local specialist services. For a subject such as dermatology, that becomes really important, because it has a small but important role when extremely complex conditions are looked after by other secondary care providers, and where sometimes the skin holds a light to the true diagnosis.

The association has also drawn to my attention the problem in which some providers set up outpatient clinics which have no educational component. By doing that, they are setting up clinics which are unsuitable for secondary care training, both to doctors in training and nurses who want to train to become specialist nurses. This is a field in which a rising number of specialist nurses have an increasingly important role. The amendments are also designed to make sure that choice is appropriate and that the Commissioning Board does not have to prioritise patient choice over efficiency and effectiveness; quality of services; or over its duties to reduce inequalities and promote integration. These are important duties in the Bill, which many of us have welcomed. I hope that the priority for those is paramount, because they will affect the population at large and reduce inequalities.

Regarding Amendments 175A and 175B, I want to outline briefly why it would be important to be able to appoint a secondary care clinician from within a clinical commissioning group area, rather than being restricted either to somebody from outside the area or somebody who is retired. As we have already debated, there is a great need to promote integration. The report Teams Without Walls, to which I have already referred, stressed the importance of this integration with clinical leadership across primary and secondary care. The Government’s commitment, in response to the Future Forum’s report, that clinical commissioning boards would include at least one specialist doctor and a nurse was welcomed. I hope there will be some reciprocity by having a general practitioner representation on the board at foundation NHS trust board level, at a governance level, to facilitate such integration.

I was concerned that the Secretary of State for Health stated that a hospital doctor on the Commissioning Board should either be from outside the area or be retired. I was particularly concerned about the latter, because there did not seem to be any statement about how recently that person should have retired. People rapidly become out of date with what is going on in an area. For those doctors who work in a fairly large geographical area, it would mean that the secondary care doctor may have to travel a great distance, and perhaps be represented on the clinical commissioning group of an area where the secondary care services are pretty well unknown to him. In saying that, I draw on my own experience of being previously on a health board simply adjacent to the one in which I worked. There were many times when I felt I could contribute much more at a local level, across different services, because of having an in-depth knowledge, than having to explore the various ramifications of secondary care services in the area of the health board on which I sat before I was able to contribute fully to the debate within the board itself.

I also believe that it would help to drive up standards if somebody came from within the board. In saying that, it is important that we learn lessons from problems that have arisen. No one wants to prejudge what the Francis inquiry will recommend but the transcript of the oral evidence that doctors gave to the inquiry appears to indicate that the doctors and the hospital were isolated; that they did not have good networks with other local doctors who worked in different environments; and that when they complained about standards of care they did not report their concerns outside the trust’s structures. That suggests a degree of geographical isolation. There would be merit in reconsidering the stipulation and the restriction that the doctor must be drawn from outside the area.

I do not believe that appointing a clinician from within the clinical commissioning group area results in an unmanageable conflict of interest. First, the role of the secondary care doctor is to offer expertise to inform commissioning decision-making, not to represent one hospital or one specialty. Secondly, GPs will have the same degree of conflict of interest. Therefore, I suggest that the safeguards against this affecting their decision-making need to apply to other healthcare professionals—whoever they are—who sit on the clinical commissioning boards. That also applies to the nurse who sits on the board.

Since the secondary care doctor would not represent any one provider or specialty, there would be no conflict. The model of having a single representative across specialties is not new and exists within the current system—for example, with medical directors in trusts. Other clinical advice will come from clinical networks and senates, and there will be a degree of co-terminosity in the advice received by the clinical commissioning group. That might allow a degree of consistency, which would support some of the difficult decisions that the group will have to make, particularly about issues such as decommissioning services. Therefore, the secondary care doctor will not be able to overrule or push a personal agenda. They will be bound to governing board decisions in the usual way and should have no right of veto. I hope that the Government will reconsider the position of the person on the clinical commissioning group.

For the involvement of patients, it is important to differentiate between public involvement and the involvement of each individual patient in the management of their care and treatment. Amendments 194 and 195 seem important if the mantra and important principle of “no decision about me without me” is to be made real. That phrase is one of the most important things that this Government have put in place. It is certainly a phrase that I have often used in making presentations about various aspects of healthcare delivery.

The importance of involving patients is made clear when you look at the 17 million patients with long-term conditions, many of whom provide more than 80 per cent of their care themselves or with the help of their relatives. If patients understand what is going on with their illness and how to manage their condition, their demands on the health service will decrease. The Health Foundation is developing ways of embedding techniques for supporting people to manage their care and treatment through its Co-creating Health programme. This has already been shown to have excellent outcomes by empowering individual patients to take a degree of control over their own illness and condition. Therefore, I hope that the amendments in my name will be considered by the Government in revising some of the apparently restrictive aspects of the Bill.

17:45

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I rise to speak in support of Amendments 124, 125, 126 and 196, which are in my name in this group. These amendments are on slightly different aspects of patient involvement and patient choice in new Sections 13H and 13I in Clause 20.

Amendment 124 adds words to the duty under new Section 13H to promote the involvement of each patient. Nothing seems more likely to promote that involvement than ensuring that patients have easy access to their own medical records and, even better, hold their own medical records. The amendment puts those matters in the Bill as part of the duty of promoting patient involvement in decisions about their treatment and care. If patients are to be involved in decision-making, it is important that they can be confident about the information about them that is being held by clinicians and used by those clinicians in making decisions about them. We have moved a long way from a position in which doctors could say, “Trust me, I’m a doctor”. That is not to say that patients do not place a lot of trust in doctors, but the more examples of systems failure that patients hear about, the more I suspect they will want to be sure about what the system has on record about them. This is particularly true when we are dealing with end-of-life issues. Some of us are very keen to ensure that doctors and nurses observe our advance decisions in living wills that are placed in medical records rather than just make decisions on our behalf.

Amendment 125 literally follows on from Amendment 124 and reflects a number of conversations that several of us have had with National Voices, which speaks on behalf of many charities, especially those representing people with long-term conditions. National Voices, with assistance from the Health Foundation, has drawn on a lot of work to distil what it believes service-users expect from those commissioning care. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, referred to the work being done by the Health Foundation. This work with National Voices was born from the huge frustration of patients, service-users and carers about the way that they are often treated by those providing services. National Voices has also set out the results of this work in an excellent document called Principles of Integrated Care. Many Members of this Committee may well have a copy of it. If the Minister has not seen it, I commend it to him. I am certain that it has been sent to Sir David Nicholson. Around 50 chief executives or chairs of voluntary organisations involved with National Voices signed a letter to him, commending this piece of work.

Amendment 125 tries to ensure that there is a clear obligation on clinical commissioning groups to pay heed to patients’ and service-users’ voices in their commissioning of services and that the board issues guidance in this area to clinical commissioning groups. I hope that today the Minister will at least take away this amendment, discuss it in detail with National Voices and those of us who are involved in this area, and agree a version that can be included in the Bill and with which everyone is content. Of course, if he wishes to say “Snap!” to these words, we will be delighted. I emphasise that Amendment 125 does not come from the fertile minds of people in this Committee. It comes from the experience and views of many thousands of people with long-term conditions whose representatives have discussed and researched this very thoroughly within the ambit of the Health Foundation and National Voices.

Amendment 126 is on a different topic altogether. It tries to sharpen the duty of patient choice in new Section 13I in Clause 20, which in my view is pitifully vague. When they are exercising choice, people need to know what the speed of access to diagnosis and treatment is; where the location options and alternative providers of service are; and some information on the different levels of performance by those providers. Choice cannot be exercised in a vacuum. If people are to exercise meaningful choice, they need information that they can draw on to make their decisions about what is best for them. They should not simply be guided to local incumbents, which is too often the case in the system as it works now. Very often, those local incumbents may not be the best option for the patient seeking services for their particular condition at a particular time in their life.

I speak with some confidence on this, having spent two years as a Health Minister trying to advance the cause of patient choice. I have had a fair exposure to clinical views about patients not wanting it and just wanting a good local hospital. I have seen at close quarters commissioners in excessively close relationships with local providers. I have heard the voices of patients frustrated at being denied the information they need to exercise choice. I have experienced, at first hand, consultants declining to place their consultation slots on the Choose and Book system. I know that we need much more than the vague wording of new Section 131 in Clause 20 of the Bill. I hope that the Minister, who I know to be a strong advocate of patient choice, will throw away his brief and say yes, we do need more specific wording of the kind in Amendment 126.

I hope the Minister will do likewise in respect of Amendment 196, which applies the same increased precision to the duty as to patient choice and places it on clinical commissioning groups as well as the board. I will not go over the arguments again, as they are exactly the same as those I have deployed on Amendment 126. It is even more important to disturb the cosiness of provider incumbency when we come to clinical commissioning groups. I have added a little piquancy to the clinical commissioning groups amendment by a specific reference to end-of-life care, where we badly need more options for people to choose from if their preferences are to be delivered.

I have spoken for too long already, but I also wish to add my support to the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, to which I have added my name.

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 127B and 197B. As they relate to pharmacy, I declare an interest as the chairman of the Council of the School of Pharmacy, University of London. The intention of these amendments is to ensure that all relevant healthcare providers, including community pharmacists, are consulted when the NHS Commissioning Board and commissioning groups are discharging their functions and developing their business and communications plans. The essence of these amendments is to retain the long-standing arrangement whereby, under the 2006 Act, commissioning bodies have to consult widely and in good time with all relevant stakeholders, including local service providers or their representatives.

Under the current system, primary care trusts are required to consult widely in relation to their commissioning duties. There is concern in the pharmacy profession that the current provisions under Clause 20, new Section 13J, for the board, and Clause 23, new Section 14V, for clinical commissioning groups, to obtain appropriate advice are too vague. It is important that consultation with all local healthcare providers should be done via local representative bodies as well as directly with providers. Clinical commissioning groups should consult pharmacy professionals when making decisions in relation to the commissioning of relevant services in order that the professional skills, knowledge and expertise of pharmacists are used in planning, commissioning, delivering and evaluating NHS services. They should also demonstrate arrangements systematically to seek the views of all appropriate local clinical groups throughout the commissioning process, in general and for particular services. This would include ensuring that all local representative committees are fully engaged in the commissioning process and signed up to the outcomes agreed.

As part of their local leadership role, clinical commissioning groups also need open and transparent processes for reconciling different professional perspectives and contingency arrangements for seeking the agreement of non-GP professional groups in the case of urgent service change. These processes should be clearly set out as part of the CCG’s governance procedures for commissioning decision-making. The above will be of particular importance in the immediate term, given the influx of new commissioners into the market, to ensure commissioners commission services effectively. Without relevant healthcare providers being consulted, the different contributions that such providers, including pharmacy, can make to local healthcare could be lost.

If used effectively, pharmacy has the potential to deliver a great deal more both to patients and commissioners. For example, it is estimated that some 57 million GP consultations each year involve minor ailments which could be dealt with at a pharmacy. If these patients could be moved to a pharmacy, more than £812 million could be saved annually, and GP capacity could be freed up to deal with more complex cases.

In summary, it is critical that there is a duty on commissioning groups, when developing their commissioning plans, to consult primary care providers such as pharmacists as there is a danger under the proposed legislation that some groups may not do so, leading to ineffective commissioning of services. At the Royal Pharmaceutical Society Conference in September, the Minister said that pharmacists are pivotal to every aspect of the Government’s plans to modernise the NHS. I find those words very encouraging and hope that he can give further encouragement in the course of this debate.

[Lord Patel]

My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, on patients holding their own records. Speaking from personal experience, I know that it was not uncommon in maternity services years and years ago for patients to be given their old, shared maternity card. The difference was that that card was extra to the actual notes, so what doctors and midwives wrote in those cards was probably an abbreviation.

For 25 years of my life, I allowed patients to carry their complete set of records, thus avoiding having to write another card. That meant that what you wrote and what you told the patient had to be precise, and clear thought had to be given to the purpose of writing it down. It also taught people not to use abbreviations that do not mean anything, or that might be misconstrued. It is not uncommon for doctors to use abbreviations such as SOB or NAD. They do not mean what you think they might mean. SOB stands for “Shortness of breath”, and NAD stands for “No abnormality discovered”. This also meant that when you were putting the results of diagnostic tests into the notes you were forced to explain to the patient what those results meant. If the results were ambiguous, then you had to explain to the patient what that ambiguity was. That improved the quality of record keeping, communication with the patient and the quality of care given to the patient. In 25 years of allowing thousands of my patients to carry their own notes—and some of the noble Lords sitting today are well aware of my habits—I lost only two notes. One was eaten by a dog in the patient’s house and the other was torn up after being left by the mother-to-be on a bus. Apart from that, there was no loss of notes, while in hospitals usually you can hardly find any notes.

There is a double issue here. How do we make notes that are compatible—easy to write and yet which communicate with the patient. An electronic version is better, but even a hand-written version works. I am convinced that allowing patients to carry notes is not a problem.

18:00

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, this is an extremely important group of amendments, but I hope it is, by and large, an uncontroversial one. The Government say they are committed to patient involvement and patient choice. They say they want to see all decisions being taken with the patient rather than simply by professionals. These amendments all contribute to achieving those objectives. It is worth distinguishing between a number of different elements in terms of patient involvement. There is the involvement of the individual; there is the involvement of the specialist group of patients; and there is the collective involvement of patients. I hope that these amendments provide a means of addressing all three groups.

The involvement of the individual patient—specifically included in Amendment 121 and in Amendment 124, to which the noble Lord, Lord Patel, has just spoken, on access to medical records—is an example of where it is vital to write this into the Bill if you are serious about the Government’s mantra of, “No decision about me without me”. The experience is that, where patients are involved in all decisions about their medical care, better decisions are made and compliance with them by patients is far fuller than would otherwise be the case. Therefore, requiring patients to be involved in every decision affecting them is part of delivering a good and effective health system. My experience mirrors that of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, because the experience of patients’ organisations is that, where patients are given charge of their medical records, they look after them extremely carefully—often much more carefully than under the old system of trolley-loads of not dog-eaten but dog-eared files in hospitals—and are much more likely to be protected by the individuals concerned.

I have put my name to Amendments 123, 192 and 205, which talk about the involvement of healthwatch organisations. Amendment 123 places a duty on the board to promote the involvement of local healthwatch, and it is important that the board sets the tone for the NHS in the way in which healthwatch organisations are expected to be involved at every level. It needs to come from that level. Amendments 192 and 205 relate to the duties of clinical commissioning groups. There is a gap in the Bill, because it seems to be implied that commissioning groups will involve patients and healthwatch organisations, but I am not sure that that is stated explicitly, which is why those amendments are so important.

However, the reason why it is helpful to engage healthwatch at every level within the NHS is the support function that local healthwatch organisations and HealthWatch England will provide to the three levels of patient involvement that, as I have stated, are so important. That is because, as local healthwatch organisations and HealthWatch England, they will have an understanding of the way in which the health service is functioning. They will have an understanding of the pressures on the health service, commissioning groups and local providers and they can therefore support specialist groups of patients with a particular knowledge of their condition in how to exercise their influence most effectively within the organisation. It is those specialist groups of patients who will be tremendously valuable in improving the quality of service. They will often have far more knowledge about the way in which their condition operates than even the clinicians who support them—maybe not the specialists but general practitioners and so on—because they have that detailed knowledge and experience, day in and day out, particularly when they have a chronic condition that may continue over many years. That involvement is crucial in terms of the quality of decision-making, but it is important that they are supported by organisations such as healthwatch, which will then be able to put a context to the way that the local NHS is functioning.

Finally, there is the critical issue of the collective involvement of patients in decisions about the disposition and organisation of health services at a local level. That will be best articulated through local healthwatch organisations. This will be about what best serves the local community and what meets the differing needs within a community. The only simple mechanism by which that can be achieved is through something such as local healthwatch organisations. That is why such involvement must be built into the commissioning process, and the board must lay down how crucial this issue is crucial to the determination of services.

[Lord Kakkar]

I shall speak to Amendment 198 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Patel. It would impose a duty on clinical commissioning groups to consult relevant academic bodies in their area, including potential future academic health partnerships. I remind noble Lords of the entry in the Register of Lords’ Interests on my involvement in University College London Partners—one of the five academic health science systems currently designated by the Department of Health.

Academic health science partnerships can take a variety of forms but are all based upon a simple principle: the delivery of healthcare should be combined with high-quality teaching, training and research to drive the highest possible clinical standards achievable. Indeed, throughout healthcare systems in the world it is well recognised that alliances between the academic and service-delivery elements of healthcare help us to achieve the best possible clinical outcomes. That view has been recognised by the Department of Health in the designation of the five current academic health science centres in our country.

A number of other initiatives are moving forward at the same time as this Bill and are considering a broader role for academic health service partnerships. These include the ongoing review, conducted under the auspices of the chief executive of the National Health Service, which is looking at innovation in the NHS and how that might best be promoted as we move forward. It is possible that that innovation review could propose a broadening of the current five academic health science centres to a larger number of academic health partnerships that would have responsibility for the promotion of innovation, and would ensure that the results of research and other innovative ways of delivering care are more broadly and rapidly disseminated across the NHS. That dissemination of best practice and innovation could also be used to create an environment in which to stimulate economic growth. That is an important additional opportunity that the NHS and academic medicine have for our country.

There is also the detailed discussion that has taken place in Committee, outside the Chamber, and in the work of the NHS Future Forum with regard to future arrangements for education and training. In those discussions, there is a recognition that academic health partnerships should play an important role, not only in the configuration of Health Education England but in local arrangements, potentially with academic health science partnerships playing an important role in defining the structure and core of local education and training boards.

Therefore, at least two initiatives, in addition to the mechanisms and structures proposed in the Bill, will turn to partnerships between the NHS, academic institutions and other academic elements in the delivery of healthcare in our country. The purpose of my amendment is probing in order to try to understand what view Her Majesty's Government take of the potential future role of academic health partnerships and what relationship the Government foresee with regard to clinical commissioning groups working at a more local level with potential academic bodies and partnerships in their vicinity. This is particularly important because we heard today in Committee about the vital importance of clinical commissioning groups being appropriately informed. One of the important roles that academic health partnerships may play in the future is providing that kind of information to better inform the decisions that local clinical commissioning groups take. With the vast amount of evidence that academic health partnerships will have in their structures, bearing in mind that these partnerships are broad and include not only academic institutions but a variety of different service providers brought together with a common purpose, it would be peculiar if clinical commissioning groups did not at least make themselves informed of their information and expertise. It would also be peculiar if, in creating a framework and structure for education and training based around a partnership between academic elements and service and provider elements at local level in local education and training boards, clinical commissioning groups did not avail themselves of the opportunities from that.

Previously in Committee, I proposed to the Minister that clinical senates may be constituted around these broad partnerships of academic health service alliances. There was some concern that this might represent a conflict of interest. However, the very broad nature of these partnerships, with multiples of potential providers as seen in the current five academic health science systems, potentially overcomes the risk of conflict of interest. They provide a natural structure and environment to serve the function of clinical senates, to serve the function of the core of local education and training boards, to provide a useful source of information to clinical commissioning groups with regard to understanding the best pathways of care available in their regions and to promote clinical outcomes, patient safety and patient experience. They also provide a very important basis to serve the objectives of the current innovation review to promote not only best practice but the benefits of economic growth associated with innovation and implementation with regard to healthcare.

I would like to ask the Minister about Her Majesty’s Government’s view of the future role of academic health partnerships, with specific reference to clinical commissioning groups, to understand whether there is an intention that the current five academic health science centres are more broadly expanded into health academic health partnerships. If they are, how will arrangements be made in future to ensure that clinical commissioning groups avail themselves of the great expertise and knowledge that will be available in such partnerships?

18:15

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend Lord Harris that this is an extremely important group of amendments. I rise very briefly to support those emphasising the significance of patient involvement and, in particular, Amendment 191 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Patel and Lord Warner, which changes “promote” to “pay regard to”.

There is no doubt that we have made progress in recent years in addressing patient interest and hearing the voice of patients and carers, and we should acknowledge that. We still have a long way to go, however. When you work with groups of patients and carers, or with individuals, you always get the same reaction. They say something like, “I feel consulted out. I have been to every meeting, I’ve talked to every clinician, I’ve given my opinion endlessly, I sometimes think they add the words ‘patient’ and ‘carer’ to every paragraph of every document that comes out of any commissioner, but what I do not know is what happens as a result of my involvement”. This is what we must bear in mind. Changing the wording in that amendment would strengthen the ability of the patient, the user and the carer to ensure that something happens as a result of their involvement. That is what we must concentrate on. We should never forget that the involvement of patients is not a tick-box exercise; it is there to ensure we shape services around the needs of patients, not the convenience of commissioners.

[Baroness Murphy]

My Lords, I rise to add a number of comments to one or two of these amendments. I have my name on Amendment 196, also in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, which is about making choices real for patients. My experience is exactly the same as his—that patients have actually benefited very little from the wide range of choices they could have if they understood the information about accessibility, about the sort of provider, about the range of other services that that provider might have and about the performance of that provider. If you are skilled you can use information available on the internet now to find details on the various providers you have been offered under the “Choose and Book” system used by general practitioners. However, the vast majority of patients simply do not have the skill to negotiate the choices. Making that choice a reality is therefore vital.

I also support the amendments proposing that patients, wherever possible, should carry their own records. To cheer up my noble friend Lord Patel, I say that he will be reassured to know that most maternity units now do have the patient carrying their own records, and that has proved to be of great benefit because they hang on to them when the NHS loses them. It has worked very well in maternity services and I certainly support it. There should be more of that in mental health services, where there has been too much holding on to information—not always accurate information—in patients’ records. It would be much better if the patient held on to those data and was able to carry a great deal of the data with them. Of course, it would be much better if people had access to information on simple records but they do not because we do not have electronic patient records in every place. The more information the patient can carry with them, the better it is for those who are going to encounter them in the future; it is also better for the patient to have accurate data about their condition.

I come now to the question of whom the clinical commissioning groups should consult in the way of secondary providers when commissioning care. I do not support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, which suggests that the specialist on the clinical commissioning group should be local rather than a person from another area. No doubt when you have too much conflict of interest, specialists on a clinical commissioning board, and a PCT which engages with the local providers and takes account of their desires, local institutions become favoured. We have seen that many times. It is simply the institution the provider belongs to. That is when you are making a decision, so it is very important that the decisions should be made by somebody who can input and hold in their heads all the necessary secondary specialist information. The decision should nevertheless not be made by a local person with an interest in secondary care.

However, when it comes to gathering local information, local institutions and specialists in those institutions should be consulted about what is possible in the area, what has been done before and what could be thought about in the future. That is where primary care trusts in some parts of the country so often, unfortunately, have not appreciated what they could benefit from locally in terms of academic health partnerships and how they could use their academic health science groups to assist them with the commissioning function. They need to take account of what is available locally, and need to understand and get help and consult with local academic institutions and providers, but when the decision is made it should be made by individuals who do not have a conflict of interest locally.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendments 193 and 197, amendments to proposed new Sections 14T, on promotion of involvement of each patient, and 14U on the duty as to patient choice.

The Bill and our debates on it have been characterised by a recognition of the importance of patient involvement and patient choice, and a great deal has been said about those two things in this debate. It is important that we recognise and welcome the new Sections 14T and 14U to the NHS Act, which will enshrine those in statute, but it is also important to note that this is not an entirely new idea. In many areas of medical care, patient choice has been with us for some time. Patients currently have a choice of GP practice; they have a choice of hospital; they have a choice of the GP whom they wish to see within a practice; and they have a right to be informed.

However, there is in practice all too often a gap between the theory and reality. The reality is that although people may theoretically have the choice, they do not know that they have the choice. They do not know despite the excellent section on choice on the NHS website and the literature that is put out about choice at the national level. The amendments are designed to impose on clinical commissioning groups at the local level the duty to take steps to inform patients about their right to be involved and their right to make choices. They state, in certain terms, that each group,

“must take steps to inform patients, their carers and their representatives of the right to be involved in such decisions”,

and, in the other cases,

“to make such choices”.

They are simple amendments, and it may be a matter of regret that they are necessary, but simply having the right in the statute book will not do unless we can also ensure that patients are informed of those rights.

[Lord Walton of Detchant]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the principle underlying Amendment 198, so ably proposed by my noble friend Lord Kakkar, relating to the crucial importance of making clear that there must be a relationship between the NHS Commissioning Board, local commissioning groups and academic health partnerships. In using that term, I want to be quite clear in what I mean. I am not referring simply to the five academic health science partnerships which have been created within the past few years specifically in certain areas of the country by the NHS; I am talking about the crucial importance of being involved with everyone who is concerned with the teaching of medical students and the training of young doctors and other healthcare professionals.

There is no doubt that years ago, when the health service began, there was an article of faith to the effect that professors, lecturers and readers in the medical schools and universities employed by the universities, those that had clinical contracts, had a duty to spend half of their time on service to patients. In other words, they had honorary clinical contracts, they saw patients and they carried on in that capacity giving services to the NHS, in return for which there was also an article of faith that consultants employed by the National Health Service in teaching hospitals had a duty to involve themselves in the training of medical students and the supervision and training of young doctors who were being prepared for work in a variety of different professions.

There has been a total transformation of the scene over the course of the past 20 or 30 years, because academic appointments are no longer restricted to a small group of hospitals, which used to be called the teaching hospitals. They also take place and are based, in many instances, in other hospitals, sometimes in old regional hospitals at a distance. In those hospitals, not only do we have academic people employed by the university involved with teaching, but many of those hospitals are now called university hospitals. It is a recognition of the fact that medical students now are trained across a huge number of hospitals in what were the regions. Many of them spend considerable periods away from the centre around the medical school. Therefore, a crucial relationship must arise between the academic doctors working in those other hospitals outside the main centre and the commissioning groups.

We must also not forget the crucial importance to the NHS, as we heard a few days ago in discussion of the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Willis, relating to research, of not only the academic departments but also the consultants working in general hospitals and others who have significant responsibility for being involved in clinical research. As I said when we discussed those amendments, today's discovery in basic medical science brings tomorrow's practical development in patient care. In particular, these academic relationships are crucial when one begins to consider the importance of clinical trials of new procedures, new drugs, and so on, which may be carried out across not only a wide range of hospitals but in the community. A great deal of teaching is now going on in general practices, which makes the relationship between academic doctors in academic centres and commissioning groups even more important. I therefore support the principle and the purpose underlying Amendment 198.

[Lord Neill of Bladen]

I make one comment on the amendments, which also goes to the Government’s fundamental philosophy, with which we all agree, that patients should be told about their condition and kept fully informed. My experience in recent years has been visiting hospitals and wards with elderly people in them. You cannot but become aware of the inability of a lot of the patients to understand what it is they are being told or to look after their own notes. There is a danger, if we are not careful, of theory and reality moving apart from each other. There has to be a true awareness of the need to get the relevant knowledge to the right person. Sometimes, it will not be the patient; it will be the patient's spouse, daughter, son or whatever. We should keep that in mind.

[Baroness Masham of Ilton]

My Lords, I add my support to the patient involvement amendments and the HealthWatch amendments. Whose life is it anyway if it is not the patients?’ Patients can now be very much at risk, if they are not involved with doctors, through drugs available through the internet which are counterfeit medicine. I was at a meeting this afternoon and heard from a Minister that the Government had asked China for help, because it is a problem place, and the Chinese are now going to introduce the death penalty for people selling counterfeit medicine on the internet. That is a serious problem. Patients need to be involved; they need to have a voice; and they need to work together with everybody else concerned. Otherwise, they will feel left out and shunned, and that would not be a good thing.

18:30

[Baroness Wheeler]

My Lords, I am pleased to support the spirit, intention and thrust of all the amendments in this very large and, I hope, uncontroversial group, which are intended to ensure that provisions in the Bill to involve the public, patients, carers and specialist professionals and patient groups in the development and decisions about services, care and treatment are reinforced and strengthened. We recognise that the duties proposed by the Government for the NHS Commissioning Board and clinical commissioning groups—to promote the involvement of each patient and to enable patients to make choices on the services provided to them and obtain advice from specialist professionals—are a significant step forward from the original provisions in the Bill. They build on the foundation work on this issue undertaken by my own Government. However, it is clear from this excellent debate that these general duties do not go far enough to mark the significant step change that we need in getting genuine shared decision-making and participation of patients, carers, and patient groups in decisions about care and treatment, and on how services are planned and developed.

We also now have the added complexity of the reorganisation itself. Senates, networks and health and well-being boards are acting as the system integrators, all alongside our newly enlarged CCGs with their giant private sector support organisations behind them, as we now know from the Government’s recently issued draft guidance on commissioning which was referred to in the previous debate by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams. This will be a highly complex raft of interactions and interconnections with no notable route to accountability. I would be grateful if the Minister could give me some insight into how he envisages the voice of patients being heard among all the clamour and shouting that will go on between these different spheres of interest.

We must try to achieve real involvement. For individuals, that means involvement in care planning and support for patients with their carers, relatives and support groups to manage their conditions and share in the choice of treatment. On collective involvement, this means that knowledgeable patients’ groups should be able to advise commissioners on how to design services, rather than to have token consultation after decisions have already been made, which is the case now in so many situations. We must make sure that we harness fully the collective experience and knowledge of patients and specialist care organisations.

We recognise that this will involve a major cultural change in the behaviours, approaches and attitudes of key professionals from across the specialisms, moving away from seeing patients as units of disease, not as people with rights to information and to participation in discussions and decisions about their care and treatment, as the Health Foundation puts it. We need to change the way that patients and clinicians, in particular, relate to each other, and change the way that the NHS relates to patients in terms of, for example, information provision and the organisation of clinics, and in the style of consultations that professionals have with patients.

In respect of the NHS Commissioning Board, we support Amendment 121, which calls for the board to have the duty to secure rather than promote the involvement of patients, carers and their representatives in decisions about the provision of health services. This is important, and Amendment 150C—which seeks to ensure that the board’s annual report includes accounting for how it has carried out its duties in involvement, choice and advice—complements and underlines the importance of this duty.

Amendments 125 and 126, tabled by my noble friends Lord Warner, Lady Thornton, and Lord Patel, turn the focus on clinical commissioning groups and call for a published guidance to CCGs to ensure that they are clear about what is required of them to meet the duty to promote the involvement of each patient. I also pay tribute to the work of National Voices on the principles of integrated care and on other patient and involvement issues relating to these matters.

We know that many commissioners, both nationally and in CCGs, are unaware of the increasing evidence that involving individual patients in their care and treatment is proven to be more clinically effective, provides better patient experience and makes much better use of healthcare resources. In other words, it is the vital underpinning for the Nicholson challenge and for commissioners’ other duties to improve quality. A far stronger signal is needed in the Bill and in statutory guidance to draw commissioners’ attention to the proven interventions that they require from their providers. I would be grateful to hear from the Minister how he intends to do this.

Clearly, many CCGs will not make the changes that we need without help and support. Amendment 125 is therefore crucial, as it calls on the NHS Commissioning Board to draw up guidance to CCGs which will enable patients, carers and their representatives to make informed decisions. This includes patients having the means to express their views on the quality of services provided, opportunities to consult with service providers, access to appropriate information about their care and treatment, opportunities to consider available treatment options and their risks and benefits, and to participate in decisions about their care and treatment and its managers. The information they receive about these areas must be simple and well presented—not league tables or comparison charts, but clear information about treatment options, how effective they are and what the consequences might be for the patient. As other amendments underline, these rights of patients must be accessible to all patients.

Amendment 126 stresses how important it is to have information on access and location and about the providers of health services and performance if informed decision-making is to become a reality for the majority of patients. We fully support Amendments 127A and 197A, which would give expert patients’ organisations equal status to professionals in providing advice to commissioners. This would help ensure a patient voice in the clinical senates and networks. It is an approach that was supported by the clinical work stream of the Future Forum but overlooked in the Government’s response. We also strongly support Amendments 175A and 175B from the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, which calls for regulations providing for the governing bodies of CCGs to include individuals who are fully aware of the different aspects of specialist provision in the areas covered by CCGs.

Amendments 140 and 142, tabled by my noble friends Lady Thornton and Lord Hunt, require the Commissioning Board to ensure that patients are involved and consulted in the development and planning of commissioning and in the consideration of how proposals for change in health services are organised and delivered. Most importantly, Amendment 205 secures the involvement of the local healthwatch in these decisions, vital if HealthWatch is to be able to fulfil its key watchdog and patients role. The importance of this role was ably underlined by my noble friend Lord Harris, so I will not expand further on it.

On patient choice, we support Amendment 127, which proposes a definition of patient choice. Research shows that patients care most about being able to exercise choice about the care and treatment they receive, but currently the NHS performs poorly in involving patients in this way. A full definition of patient choice should be included in the Bill to ensure that commissioners provide opportunities for patients to exercise choices that go beyond the choice of provider. Does the Minister accept the need for this definition in the Bill, and if not, how will he seek to achieve the cultural change in systems and attitudes that we all want to see?

All these amendments seek to ensure that the NHS Commissioning Board and CCGs understand fully their responsibility, and that they commission for involvement. These changes would give a clear signal to the system that the Government mean business in wanting meaningful patient participation and involvement, and that real change can be achieved.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, this large group of amendments all relate to the different ways in which patients, the public and others will be involved in decision-making, and although I shall be suggesting that noble Lords should not press them, I am very much in listening mode on the themes that they raise. The only thing that I cannot promise to take forward is the suggestion of the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, that I should introduce an amendment on the death penalty, but, no doubt, she can persuade me.

The issues that noble Lords have covered are central to our vision of informed and empowered patients, and responsive commissioning that is clinically led. These are also issues that were considered in great depth as part of the listening exercise, in response to which significant improvements were made. Those improvements created much stronger duties than currently apply to primary care trusts, so it is important to begin by recognising how this Bill takes us forward from the current position. Nevertheless, I recognise that some confusion remains about what we mean when we talk about involvement, and what the different duties in the Bill are intended to achieve. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, has tried to frame an all-embracing definition of involvement through Amendment 125, and I find little to criticise as regards the purpose and intent of that amendment. However, I would argue that much of what the noble Lord intends through this amendment is already provided for in the Bill. Indeed, it is because there can be different elements to involvement that would be appropriate in different situations that I would be cautious about trying to wrap them up in a single definition.

It will be helpful to begin by considering the duties on the board and clinical commissioning groups to involve patients in decisions about their own healthcare. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, made some useful distinctions on this point. These new duties reflect our vision of shared decision-making, referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay—“no decision about me without me”, and an NHS where patients are involved fully in decisions about their care in partnership with clinicians. This is primarily about the relationship between the individual patient and their clinician; it does not extend to commissioning decisions. Therefore, I do not think that it would be appropriate for HealthWatch or indeed any other body to have a role in what are meant to be sometimes very personal decisions.

There is clearly a role for CCGs as commissioners, as distinct from the role of general practitioners, in supporting and encouraging this personal involvement. However, it is not completely within their control, so I do not think that it can be for them to secure, as the amendment proposes. Nor do I think that there should be any sort of hierarchy, where the board is in the lead with a weaker duty on CCGs. That would run counter to what we are trying to achieve, which is after all a more personalised service. Therefore, I am afraid that I cannot agree with Amendments 121, 123, 124A, 191 and 192. However, such a service might include giving patients greater control over their medical records, as Amendment 124 suggests. The noble Lord, Lord Patel, may know that this was a key theme of our consultation on an information revolution. Responses to that consultation showed a clear desire to enable people to be more in control of their care, supported by greater access to the information held about them in their care records. We are committed to this and our forthcoming information strategy will set out how we propose to achieve it.

These duties are of course closely linked to those relating to enabling choice. As noble Lords will be aware, patient entitlements to choice are set out in the NHS constitution. These are underpinned by directions by the Secretary of State, which will in future be the standing rules and regulations under Clause 17 which we have already discussed.

I reassure noble Lords that, as now, the role for commissioning bodies in respect of enabling choice in the future will include acting with a view to making people aware of their rights and entitlements, giving them the information that they need to make informed decisions and working with providers to ensure that these are delivered. I did, however, listen with considerable care and sympathy to the noble Lord, Lord Neill, regarding patients who need advocates to speak on their behalf. This will be further reinforced by the new duty that the board and clinical commissioning groups will be under in relation to promoting the NHS constitution among both patients and staff. The board will set the choice offer, establishing the parameters for choice and competition, based on the choice mandate that the Secretary of State will set as part of the annual mandate to the board. I remind the Committee that we recently sought views on these issues through the consultation, Liberating the NHS: Greater Choice and Control. This is an important approach because it allows the Secretary of State and the board to manage the rollout of choice in a controlled way—something that I know many noble Lords are anxious to ensure. That is why we have deliberately used broad terms in describing the types of choice that patients can exercise. Indeed, I think that defining them in more detail, as some of the amendments attempt to do, could paradoxically limit their scope. They could also be unsuitable or indeed unfeasible in particular circumstances, and that is why, although I am in sympathy with the spirit behind them, I am unable to agree with Amendments 126, 127, 193, 196, 197 or 197ZA.

Greater choice means, among other things, patients being able to choose between a greater range of providers. Amendments 125A, 125B, 195A and 195B are particularly concerned with the impact that greater choice and provider plurality might have on the viability of existing services—a matter that we discussed at our last session in relation to amendments tabled by noble Lords opposite about the interdependency of services. That is an issue that I completely understand. In securing healthcare services to meet the needs of their patients and populations, commissioners must have regard to the stability and financial viability of those services, including taking account of the interlinkages between services, where relevant, on an ongoing basis. Commissioners will need to commission high-quality integrated care that will deliver value for money for local communities and promote opportunities for patients to exercise choices in relation to their care. In taking commissioning decisions, they will have to consider what the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, reminded us of—that is, what will be in the best interests of their patients. This would always be their primary concern, and we would expect the board to ensure sufficient competency over these issues in authorising CCGs to take on their new responsibilities and in holding them to account for doing the job.

18:45

Monitor would need to support commissioners in carrying out their duties by promoting economy, efficiency and effectiveness in the provision of services while maintaining or improving quality. That would include setting prices that deliver sufficient reimbursement for the efficient costs of providing the services specified by the board. It would also mean supporting commissioners in securing sustainable, continued access to services where communities were dependent on one or very few providers. However, above all, our focus and that of commissioners should be on securing the best possible outcomes for patients, and I do not think that protecting the interests of individual providers should come above that priority. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, will therefore understand why I cannot accept Amendments 125A, 125B, 195A and 195B.

The board and clinical commissioning groups will also be under duties to make arrangements to secure the involvement of people in decisions about service provision in their area, just as primary care trusts and strategic health authorities are now. The very purpose of these duties is to ensure that commissioning decisions are informed by, and responsive to, the views of local people, as indeed Amendment 207 seeks to ensure. They will apply to anyone who is already using services or who may do so in the future, and in that sense they are all-encompassing. Therefore, there is no need to specify that this includes carers or representatives, as Amendments 141B and 206B propose. Nor is there any need, as Amendment 205 suggests, for an additional role for local healthwatch, whose role on health and well-being boards and in providing recommendations to commissioners we have already considered. In my view, it is right that the duty should apply specifically to changes to services that affect patients, rather than applying to every aspect of the board’s work, as Amendment 142 would require.

I also believe that it is important to allow these bodies some leeway to exercise their judgment in how they fulfil these duties. Consultation will not be appropriate in every case. However one defines it, there will always be a need to determine what is or is not appropriate in a specific instance. Where information is provided, it should certainly be made available in accessible forms, where necessary, and the board would be required to consider this under Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010. Therefore, I am afraid that I cannot agree with Amendments 140, 141, 141A and 141AA or 206, 206A and 206AA.

I appreciate that the intention behind many of these amendments is to prevent the board and CCGs undertaking, so to speak, cosmetic exercises in public involvement without really engaging with people or taking account of their views. However, the Bill as it stands includes a number of safeguards to prevent this—in particular, the fact that CCGs must set out the principles that they will adopt in exercising this duty as part of their constitution, and the requirement that the board’s and clinical commissioning groups’ commissioning plans and annual reports, as well as annual assessments of CCGs, must all include particular consideration of this duty. I also appreciate the concern to ensure that the board and CCGs—

[Lord Warner]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Earl’s flow but I have been extremely restrained today. Can he clarify for me the point that he has just made concerning clinical commissioning groups’ constitutions? As I understand it—he can correct me if I am wrong— they have a considerable amount of freedom on how they frame the obligations in those constitutions. Is the Minister saying that there would be some requirements on them centrally from the board to cover areas such as patient involvement and patient choice?

[Earl Howe]

I am. The intention is that no clinical commissioning group will be authorised in the first instance unless it can demonstrate to the board that it can fulfil the legal duties that the Bill places on it. That is key to our thinking. Indeed, as time goes on, it will be under a continuous duty to show it is abiding by those duties. In the first instance, it is very important that clinical commissioning groups demonstrate they are fit for purpose in that sense.

I also appreciate the concern to ensure that the board and CCGs benefit from as wide a range of advice as possible. The Government have been clear that everyone with a role to play in securing the best possible services for local people should be able to do so. The definition used in the duties to obtain advice is that used to define the comprehensive health service. It would encompass the areas covered by Amendment 127C. Indeed, I do not think it would be possible to cast it in broader terms. These duties will apply to every function the board or a clinical commissioning group will exercise. Again, within those broad parameters it is important to retain some discretion for the board and CCGs to determine how best to exercise this duty.

The board and CCGs will certainly have to work closely and effectively with all the providers with which they contract as Amendments 127B and 197B suggest. I would say to my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones that that most certainly would include pharmacists. I also agree as to the expertise and the unique perspective that patients and their representative bodies can bring not just to the commissioning process but also to the way the board and clinical commissioning groups approach many of their functions. The same would apply to many other groups, including academic institutions, as the noble Lords, Lord Kakkar and Lord Walton, have highlighted.

The noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, spoke powerfully in favour of academic health partnerships. Academic health science centres have been successful at developing these partnerships within their local areas but understandably have been less successful in spreading innovation across the NHS. As the noble Lord set out, the NHS chief executive’s innovation review is due to be published next month. That will set out how we can accelerate the adoption and diffusion of innovations across the NHS. It will include a mix of bottom-up, horizontal and top-down incentives and pressures that will drive adoption and diffusion of innovation and behaviour change. The role of academic health partnerships may or may not feature in this review. I hope the noble Lord will forgive me if I do not at this stage anticipate or pre-empt what the report will say by elaborating any further. However, I counsel noble Lords to play close attention to what the noble Lord said in his speech.

While these duties refer to obtaining advice from people with expertise in relation to the health service, that is not confined to clinical expertise. Indeed, in fulfilling these duties we envisage a role for clinical senates, as we have already discussed, in providing not just clinical advice but multidisciplinary advice from professionals in health, public health and social care backgrounds alongside patient and public representation and other groups as appropriate.

I am sure we all share a desire that these duties are effective. However, I am not convinced that imposing specific duties as to where the advice should come from, including through the membership of governing bodies, or how the advice should be acted on is the right way to proceed. If we become too prescriptive we risk overburdening CCGs with so many duties and obligations that they could never be sure whether they were doing enough and in reality we must trust them to build these relationships themselves and judge them on the outcomes they achieve.

The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, asked me about the secondary-care doctor role on CCGs and whether it had to be somebody from outside the area or retired or whether it could be a local person. We are looking carefully at that question. The secondary-care doctors on CCG governing bodies will not be able to have a conflict of interest in the decision-making process of the CCGs. That is where the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, was absolutely correct. We will use regulations to set out more detail about this and we will work with stakeholders, including pathfinders, to develop these proposals. The noble Baroness referred to the secondary-care doctor coming from either outside the CCG area or being retired. Those are two ways in which a conflict of interest could be avoided but they are only examples and do not represent an exhaustive list.

I want to finish by returning to a point raised earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Warner. We too are aware of the very good work of National Voices, as well as a range of other organisations, on how patient and public involvement could be strengthened in the Bill. While I have explained why I think these specific amendments are not necessary, I am happy to go on listening. I feel that the Bill is already strong in this area but we are always open to new ideas and I look forward to further discussions on this general topic. It is for those reasons that, while sympathetic to the intention behind the amendments, I am unable to accept them and I hope noble Lords will agree not to press them.

[Lord Patel]

My Lords, on behalf of all noble Lords who took part in the debate I thank the Minister for his comments. He excited us all by first saying that the only thing he would not be able to accept would be the death penalty. He finished by saying he could not accept most of what we were saying, partly because it was already in the Bill, which most of us did not think was the case. He demonstrates a commitment that patients’ voices and public involvement will be paramount and that all the commissioning boards and commissioners will be expected to demonstrate that they listen to the voices of patients and the public. We will watch and see how they are made accountable.

The Minister referred to innovation. Of course, the next group of amendments focuses on innovation, so we may come back to it and also the involvement of the academic health centres. We have had a good debate and maybe after reading Hansard some of us can decide whether we will come back to some of these issues. In the mean time, reluctantly, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 121 withdrawn.

Amendments 122 and 123 not moved.

Amendment 124

Tabled by

[Lord Warner]

124: Clause 20, page 18, line 11, at end insert “including access to or holding of their own medical records”

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I listened very carefully to the Minister’s response to my amendment on patients’ access to or holding of their medical records. As I understood what he was saying, it was that we could eagerly look forward to the Government’s long-awaited information strategy which might well be moving this agenda forward. If that is indeed the case I hope we can consider further with the noble Earl and his officials whether we should enshrine that moving forward in the Bill so patients have a clear statutory right to have access to and to hold their medical records. I will not move the amendment.

Amendment 124 not moved.

Amendment 124A not moved.

Amendment 125

Tabled by

[Lord Warner]

125: Clause 20, page 18, line 11, at end insert—
“( ) In discharging this duty, the Board must publish guidance for clinical commission groups that ensures that patients and their carers and representatives have—
(a) the means to express their views on the quality of services provided,(b) opportunities to consult with service providers through a variety of means,(c) access to appropriate information about their care and treatment,(d) opportunities to consider available treatment options and their risks and benefits,(e) the opportunity to participate in decisions about their care and treatment and its management, and(f) the means to ensure informed consent is given to care and treatment.”

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I am glad to note that the noble Earl is willing to reflect on this and perhaps discuss it further with us. I would very much like to talk to him with National Voices to see whether we can craft some wording which meets people’s concerns in this area. I will not move the amendment.

Amendment 125 not moved.

Amendments 125A and 125B not moved.

Amendment 126

Tabled by

[Lord Warner]

126: Clause 20, page 18, line 14, leave out from second “to” to end of line 15 and insert “the access, location and provider of the health services available to them at all stages of their life, including information about the performance of different service providers”

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, this is an important issue about choice. We need more beef in the Bill about what it means. We have not gone as far as we need to go. In the mean time, I will not move the amendment.

Amendment 126 not moved.

Amendments 127 to 128 not moved.

19:00

Amendment 128A

Moved by

[Baroness Thornton]

128A: Clause 20, page 18, line 24, after “provision” insert “and commissioning”

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, we move on now to discuss innovation and research. The amendments in this group are very important and were prefigured to an extent by the discussion we have just had. The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and me, is modest in some ways. However, it strengthens the promotion of innovation in the provision and commissioning of health services. Taken together with the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Warner and the noble Lord, Lord Patel, it strengthens the Bill significantly and in a very important way.

We have come to what seems an intractable problem: how to encourage innovation in the NHS. This is part of the Minister's area of responsibility and was also part of the area of responsibility of my noble friend Lord Warner when he was a Minister. I look forward to both of their contributions on this matter.

We know that often, the taking up of great innovation is a painfully slow, complex and bureaucratic process. Our amendment strengthens the promotion of innovation through commissioning as well as through the provision of health services. I would like the Minister to explain why that should not be possible—because it would strengthen and help innovation—and also how it could be done, because we are looking for incentives to promote and spread innovation throughout the NHS.

Last week, the noble Lords, Lord Willis and Lord Ribeiro, and I, with others, enjoyed a dinner and an evening with organisations and businesses to discuss how to ensure that innovation is disseminated, promoted, supported and invested in throughout the NHS so that both the NHS and UK plc benefit. The point was made during the evening that often we do not talk about sophisticated issues but about simple changes to nursing practice, such as the way dressings are done, or to information management, that nevertheless can have an important impact on patient care and progress.

I will not speak further on the amendments because I will be very interested to hear what other noble Lords speaking to their amendments in the group will say. I hope that the Minister, with his passion in this area, will give us some comfort on the matter. I beg to move.

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendments 129 and 129A in the group. First, I will take up the point made by my noble friend Lady Thornton about the long-standing problem of the slowness of the NHS to take up innovative ideas, and the frustration often felt by people in this country who have invented new approaches and created new innovations, only to find that they have had to go abroad to get them projected, promoted and sold, with the NHS being one of the last to take up the innovation, which was often funded in one form or another with public money by the British taxpayer. It is a long-standing problem and not a party-political issue; it has been a challenge for successive Governments. One of the most embarrassing moments one has as a Minister is when one meets foreign delegations or travels abroad to back Britain and is asked, “Has this innovation been taken up in the NHS?”, whereupon one has to shuffle one’s feet and think of a suitably weaselly form of words to avoid answering the question directly. It is a very long-standing and difficult issue.

Amendment 129 draws attention to the importance of the procurement of goods and services in the promotion of innovation, and to the duty that that places on the national Commissioning Board. There are many reports about the importance of public procurement in advancing innovation and in ensuring the take-up of UK inventions and innovative practices. The latest one was by the Science and Technology Committee of your Lordships' House, of which I was a member. The report brought out some of the dilemmas around using procurement to take forward innovation. Yet again it cast doubt on central government's use of their purchasing power and muscle to drive the take-up of UK innovations in public services.

The NHS is not alone in having this problem, but it is part of the problem and it is a big part of the public sector. A major and long-standing problem is that too many purchasing decisions are taken too far down the organisational food chain, with too little intervention at senior level and too little willingness to use large-scale purchasing to spread the use of innovative approaches. Whatever else the national Commissioning Board has, it has a lot of financial muscle. It must use that, through the NHS’s purchasing capacity, to drive innovation, which often comes from publicly funded research. I hope that the Minister, who is well aware of the issue, will see the sense in putting something like Amendment 129 in the Bill. We cannot say too often that public procurement is a way of helping to establish and drive innovation in the NHS.

Amendment 129A seeks to add the idea of an innovation fund to the board's armoury on innovation in new Section 13K. There is nothing novel in this. The amendment continues and builds on the proposals of my noble friend Lord Darzi, which led to regional innovation funds that strategic health authorities currently manage. Again, we need to strengthen the mechanisms in the Bill for driving innovation in an NHS that historically has been slow to take up innovations and apply them to scale for the benefit of patients. We are not talking about huge sums of money in the innovation fund, but relatively modest amounts in relation to the scale of NHS expenditure. However, an amendment of this kind would ensure the continuance of the useful work that has been started by the strategic health authorities following the promptings of my noble friend Lord Darzi.

It is typical of what we sometimes do in this country. We start an initiative with a fund at strategic health authority level and then shuffle the cards so that somehow, along the way, some of the initiatives and their benefits get lost. I hope that we can get some reassurance from the Minister that some kind of innovation fund will be available so that we can continue the work that my noble friend Lord Darzi so ably started to ensure that patients can secure the benefits of UK innovations.

[Lord Patel]

My Lords, I support the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, to which I have added my name.

First, I will speak very briefly about innovation and procurement. I also contributed to the report by the Science and Technology Committee on procurement. The public sector could learn a lot from the private sector about using procurement to drive innovation. Perhaps the Minister can comment on this. The NHS is a huge organisation that uses about £20 billion-worth of procurement a year and if that was done in a co-ordinated way, it could drive an immense amount of innovation within the NHS.

My second point is about how to drive innovation into clinical care. There are lots of examples I could give, but I will give one from my own specialty. It took us 20 years to take the learning from research into the kind of treatment to be given to the mother in premature labour that would considerably reduce the incidence of respiratory distress syndrome, which causes a lot of harm and death in neonates, and embed that into practice. There are lots of examples of such innovations not being embedded into the NHS and we need to look at ways of doing that faster.

My third point is how to use tariffs to drive innovation. If I as a provider will not be given a higher tariff if I drive innovation or innovate a different way of providing the service, and all that will happen is that the tariff for procuring my services as a provider will be less the following year, there is less incentive for me to use innovation in clinical care to improve patient care and also to make it cheaper.

The fourth issue is about an innovation fund, which I support. Together with the Wellcome Trust, the Government have an innovation challenge fund that asks for tenders in particular areas of innovation. The one I know about is in reducing infection rates. Innovation funds of this kind will drive further innovation; for example, in the United States Medicaid and Medicare have a joint innovation fund to drive improvements in healthcare. So I support that amendment.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I rise to speak briefly to Amendment 129ZA, which is really a probing amendment. I hope that the Minister will be able to explain what these “prizes” are that are referred to in the Bill. The Explanatory Notes do not really help. They talk about the Bill providing for,

“the NHS Commissioning Board to make payments as prizes in order to promote innovation in the provision of health services”,

and that:

“Innovation will originate primarily from the actions of commissioners and providers but it is intended that the NHS Commissioning Board will take a lead role in promoting it”.

The changes should bring about continuous improvement and innovation often happens outside the main NHS. Indeed, in my own discipline, end-of-life care, the innovations have happened by and large in the third sector, particularly in care in the last 48 hours of life. In some ways, this is where these organisations, the different hospices and those working with them, have felt freed up to pilot different ways of doing things which have subsequently been adopted within the NHS.

There is a huge need for more health services research and for good, qualitative methodology. My only anxiety about the word “prizes” being in the Bill is not that I do not want innovation to happen—I desperately want innovation to improve services for patients—but that I want to make sure that innovations are also properly evaluated; that they are piloted, evaluated and audited in the long term. It is terribly easy for people to have great flashes of inspiration and great ideas but they might not necessarily roll out appropriately across all aspects of the health service. Many of us have seen innovations that seem to be excellent in one setting but when they are rolled out without adequate support and training, mistakes are made and problems arise.

I had the privilege of chairing the commission into medical generalism, and our report noted the shortfall in both funding in primary care and in researching ways of delivering primary care to common conditions. We welcomed the National School of Primary Care Research and the recognition that more funding was needed, but we urged the MRC and other funders to create a dedicated funding stream for clinical research in primary care as it is difficult to secure funding. I hope the Minister will explain what these “prizes” are and say that they will in no way detract from the much needed research funding to really evaluate innovations and innovative ideas, particularly in primary care.

19:15

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 130, 131, 147, 150, which are in my name. I have also added my name to Amendments 215 and 218. These are very big groups and the Minister has my sympathy. I am sure he is listening very carefully to all the advice that he is receiving. I would particularly like to add my support to the remarks made about the power of procurement to promote innovation.

I want to speak about research and the research duty. My amendments are designed to add weight to the research duties in the Bill and follow on from the excellent debate on Clause 5 in relation to the Secretary of State’s research duty. I thank the Minister for his letter, which he has circulated to those who took part in that debate, although I fear that it may have raised rather more questions than it has answered. I apologise to the noble Earl for that, and I would like to go through a few of them now. I declare an interest as chief executive of a medical research charity, Breast Cancer Campaign.

In the debate on the research duty in Clause 5, many excellent examples of research were highlighted. It might be useful very briefly to reflect again on the impact that research has on the lives of people in this country, and to mention a report on cancer survival rates by Macmillan Cancer Support that had a great impact in the media last week. It highlighted that people now live nearly six times longer after their cancer diagnosis than was the case 40 years ago. Many noble Lords will be aware that for nine of the 20 cancers studied by Macmillan, median survival time is three years or less, with little improvement since the 1970s. The report highlighted the achievements that research has made but also that there is an awful lot more work to do.

It is also important to remember that there is a lot of research about quality of life. For instance, median survival time for breast cancer has doubled since the 1970s. Investment in research has played a fundamental role in this and yet more than 12,000 women still die from breast cancer every year. As I said, research is not only about improving survival rates. Many women with advanced breast cancer live with complex support requirements that are frequently not met, as evidenced by the research published recently by Breast Cancer Care and funded by my charity, which raises serious questions about pain control, for example. Ensuring that the NHS is committed to supporting research is absolutely key to addressing long-term improvements in survival but also improvements in quality of life for patients today.

Amendments 130 and 131 are intended to strengthen the research duty that has been placed on the Commissioning Board. Amendment 39, which we talked about a few days ago, removed the phrase “have regard to the need to” from the research duty on the Secretary of State, thereby strengthening it, and Amendment 130 seeks to do the same for the research duty on the Commissioning Board. During the debate on Clause 5, the noble Lord, Lord Willis, explained eloquently why the words “have regard to the need to” in the clause would be better removed ,and how by doing that we would have greater clarity and a better statement of intent would be established. So it would be helpful if the Minister could explain why we need to see those qualifying words in this clause. It would be particularly useful to be given practical examples of the effect that removing the words would have, because I suspect that they are not necessary and that the Bill might be better off without them.

I was also extremely heartened to hear the Minister say that he sympathised with me and with many other noble Lords when we argued that the research duty should be strengthened and that he would undertake a “closer consideration” of the research duty. I would welcome hearing a little more about his thoughts on that today, particularly whether any amendments to Clause 5 could be in the making, and whether they could be read across into Clause 20.

Moving on to Amendment 131, this seeks further clarity on the meaning of,

“research on matters relevant to the health service”.

I do not want to rehearse the arguments made previously in relation to Clause 5 and the wording of this phrase except to request a further explanation of its definition, including practical examples to aid our understanding which I hope the Minister will be able to provide either today or later in writing. In correspondence, the Minister helpfully clarified that public health was covered by the current definition, which was an important point for the noble Lord, Lord Warner, as I recall. However, the intention of Amendment 131 is to seek further clarification and a definition of the phrase so that we can understand whether it is sufficiently comprehensive. Public health is one issue that we are very clear about. It is covered, but we need to be confident that the duty is comprehensive in that regard. I believe that a more substantial definition is required and I am pleased to have the opportunity to request this today. For example, with this definition in place, what are the implications for NHS staff who are involved in supporting research? Will there, for example, be sufficient research nurses to support research activity, will clinical training incorporate time for research and how will research successes be recognised and encouraged as part of NHS career progression and structures?

In terms of what we know about the Commissioning Board, what will it be doing with respect to research? The Government have attempted to reassure noble Lords that the Commissioning Board is aware of the need to promote research and indeed that one of the board’s most important functions will be to support a culture that promotes research and innovation. I welcome this but I feel that in practice there is still very little detail about how this will happen. It appears that research will not form one of the six key portfolios of the board, but will fall under the commissioning development portfolio. Will this include, as I believe the Minister’s letter suggested, the development of commissioning tools and commissioning guidance ensuring that patient care is commissioned so as to support the conduct of research in the NHS? I note with interest that the Government are committed to ensuring that the systems and processes for commissioning used by the NHS Commissioning Board and clinical commissioning groups will ensure that research is promoted, supported and funded by the NHS, including the tariff, commissioning guidance and processes for authorising and supporting the development of clinical commissioning groups. That is important, but I would be grateful if the Minister were able to provide further detail on the activities of the Commissioning Board in relation to research.

Will the development of commissioning tools and guidance as defined be sufficient to embed a culture of research in the NHS? While we have heard that the tariff for patient care will incorporate the costs of patients who are taking part in research projects, how will infrastructure costs be captured? Obviously I am thinking about the cost, for example, of storing tissue for research purposes. I fear that what we have been provided with so far is a number of ad hoc references to research that do not attempt to embed comprehensively a research culture into the NHS or set out a vision of what the research duties would mean in practice.

That brings me to Amendments 147 and 150. Two clear opportunities to ensure that the board is accountable for its actions with respect to the research duty now present themselves in relation to the business plan and the annual plan. I note with interest—and I believe that many others have noticed this—that the board must publish a business plan setting out how it proposes to exercise its functions in that year and in each of the next two following years, and at the end of the year it must also publish an annual report on how it intends to exercise its functions. There is therefore a great opportunity here. However, I am puzzled as to why Clause 20 establishes that the business plan and the annual plan must report how the board proposes to discharge its duties only under new Sections 13E and 13P, and likewise explain in the annual report its performance under those sections, which cover the duties on the improvement of quality of services and public involvement in consultation by the board. Again that is very important, but there is no comparative requirement with respect to new Section 13L and the duty on research. Again, there is an opportunity here to improve the feedback loop. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain what plans there might be to bring forward government amendments or to accept the amendments now before the Committee.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and particularly to support her comments about the duties in respect of research. But perhaps I may also say that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, raised a very important issue in her opening remarks, which is the definition of the difference between a duty to provide and a duty to commission. There is a subtle but important difference between the two. Commissioning, as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, clearly stated, is something for which there is a huge budget, so it is very important indeed that it is used effectively. I was particularly interested in Amendment 129A tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Warner. We are all puzzled about the Government’s intentions in terms of prizes and incentives to encourage innovation and to bring research out of the labs, if you like, to the bedside.

There are some extremely good examples of this. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, mentioned the work of his noble friend Lord Darzi, particularly the Health Innovation Challenge Fund. I have just finished chairing the fund’s three-year review, and it is interesting to note that three years into the five-year programme, new devices, technologies and procedures are being brought forward from research to clinical outcome. Some 13 of these are now up and running, and some are quite remarkable. We have seen the groundbreaking research to deal with the onset of blindness being undertaken at Oxford. Within five years we will have gene therapies that will make a huge difference to patients suffering from a whole range of conditions, including macular degeneration. That will have a massive effect not only on patients’ lives, but also on the health service budget itself. It is important work and there are other good examples on which we need to move forward.

I want to speak specifically to Amendments 215 and 218 tabled in my name and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and the noble Lords, Lord Patel and Lord Turnberg. I should also declare an interest as chair of the Association of Medical Research Charities. Amendment 215 concerns the role and responsibilities of clinical commissioning groups towards research and includes, within their commissioning plans, how they intend to execute their duty as defined in new Section 14X. That commissioning groups should have a duty to promote research was recommended by Professor Steve Field, the chair of the NHS Future Forum, when he said in his report:

“Support for research and innovation is also important for evidence-based commissioning and practice, so the report recommends that commissioning consortia should have a duty to promote research and innovation and the use of research evidence in the NHS”—

a recommendation which was immediately taken by the Government, to their credit, and, indeed, was welcomed by the medical research community.

19:30

It is important that that is in new Section 14X as inserted by Clause 22 of the Bill. However, as the Bill stands, there is a duty on commissioning groups to promote research but absolutely no mechanism to make sure that it is actually done. There is a duty without the wherewithal. Amendment 215—it is a simple but effective amendment—does exactly that by making it clear that the CCG commissioning plan should include clear evidence about how commissioning groups propose to carry out their duty to promote research. I cannot believe that the Government cannot accept that very simple amendment to put that into practice. I think it is very helpful.

However, this amendment goes further than that because it seeks clarification from the Minister about “evidence based commissioning” and how a “research aware culture” is to be embedded in the NHS through clinical commissioning groups—the very things that Professor Field recommended and the Government supported from the Future Forum. Clinical commissioning groups will have to report in their commissioning plans how they have sought improvements in quality of services, patient care and, indeed, how they have worked alongside their counterparts in health and well-being boards when developing their plans. Why not include in those plans how research is being used too? It makes good sense to have that as a separate issue. If the clinical commissioning groups’ approach to commissioning services is to be informed by evidence, then research is a fundamental part of securing that evidence. Research and patient benefits are two sides of the same coin. By making research part of the commissioning plan for CCGs, Amendment 215 would automatically trigger a requirement for outcomes to be included in the commissioning report. Also in the commissioning report—a matter alluded to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan—was how the costs for non-commercial clinical research in the NHS were to be met and, specifically, the role that excess treatment costs play in supporting this.

Clearly, the Government decision to confirm the continuation of this funding stream to support, in particular, charitable funders undertaking clinical studies in the NHS is very much welcome. However, there is considerable uncertainty around just what is being proposed by the Government, particularly following the Minister’s comments on 5 November. I cannot stress sufficiently just how crucial the medical research charities are to medical research in the NHS. In 2009-10 more than 3,000 clinical studies were conducted using NHS patients. Thirty-seven per cent of them were funded by AMRC charities and, in the case of clinical trials for cancer, 75 per cent of all cancer patients involved in clinical trials were on Cancer Research UK funded trials. Clarifying how costs will be apportioned is hugely important. The Minister has assured us that systems and processes will be in place for meeting these costs but implied that both the NHS Commissioning Board and clinical commissioning groups will have a role in ensuring that they are funded by the NHS. However, as clinical commissioning groups will commission secondary care, will excess treatment costs occurring on a research study taking place in secondary care come from a clinical commissioning group’s budget?

Similarly, if the NHS Commissioning Board is responsible for commissioning primary care, will the NHS Commissioning Board be liable to cover the excess treatment costs associated with research studies conducted in primary care? At present, these costs are covered via the PCT commissioning budgets. In its review, the Academy of Medical Sciences identified that mechanisms in place for trusts to claim these costs were not clear, they were not consistent and, in turn, led to many trusts becoming disincentivised to undertake clinical research. In fact, there are examples of PCTs refusing to meet excess treatment costs in certain studies, leading to delays in getting the studies set up and therefore affecting patient outcomes and care. The Bill is an opportunity to send out a clear message and I hope that in responding the Minister will be able to put the record straight and, if not, to write to us as he often does.

Amendment 218 examines the role of the NHS Commissioning Board and how it will assess and encourage research to be undertaken by the NHS. Within the new structure there are a large number of bodies with research functions or an interest in research. There is the National Institute for Health Research; the NHS Commissioning Board; Public Health England; the Health Research Authority to be set up; NICE; and, of course, local commissioning care groups. NIHR will stay in the Department of Health, outside the NHS Commissioning Board, and retain its research budget to provide funds to support the infrastructure for research with clinical research networks and biomedical research centres and units. It is essential that this infrastructure is appropriately aligned with NHS activities. The NHS Commissioning Board will include a medical director who, I understand, will have responsibility for research. Presumably this will include executing the NHS Commissioning Board’s duties towards research. Can the Minister confirm that is the case?

What is not clear is where the buck stops with regard to the leadership of research culture throughout the NHS. The Government have accepted a commitment to embed a research culture in the NHS. Amendment 218 is an attempt to clarify the role of the NHS Commissioning Board's duty to promote research and its duty to lead CCGs in their duty as well. This amendment recognises that co-ordination between all the bodies will be critical to identify and implement national strategic priorities for research. The link between the NHS Commissioning Board and the CCGs will be crucial. If we do not get that right, and we do not get the leadership, then heaven knows where we will get to.

CCGs will need clear leadership from the NHS Commissioning Board as to how they are expected to carry out their duty towards research, which is why the Commissioning Board’s research leadership role must be made clear. We have evidence from programmes of work such as the North West Exemplar Programme that we need a culture shift in the UK better to embed research as a core part of the NHS. The intention behind Amendment 218 is simply to make it a requirement for NHS Commissioning Board to assess the performance of each CCG when carrying out its duty to promote research. This would complete a virtuous circle whereby both the NHS Commissioning Board and the local commissioning groups would have to define how they would carry out their duty on research and then report on it in a way that could be openly challenged. It seems a sensible way to progress and gives a clear definition as to what should happen. I hope the Minister will accept both Amendments 215 and 218.

[Lord Turnberg]

I wish to speak to some of the amendments that are in my name. I would also like to comment briefly on Amendments 128A and 129, dealing with innovation. We know that we are quite slow in taking up innovations in the UK. It is not simply that there is a bit of sluggishness in the system—there are hurdles in the system. I want to mention two examples of very simple innovations that would not cost any money to the health service, but which have been blocked by the systems under which we operate.

One example is a consultant colleague of mine, a gastroenterologist—my own field—who set up a clinic in which he took phone calls from GPs and patients and was able to answer many questions without actually having to see the patients. It had a rapid turnover. It was considered to be innovative but was blocked because it did not earn any money for the hospital trust which found that it was not getting the patients referred. The second example concerns a similar situation in which the same consultant saw new patients from 8 am until 9.30 am. He sent them away for tests, scans, endoscopies and so on, and saw them again at about 11 am with the results of the tests and gave them the treatment that was necessary. This, too, was considered not to be earning money for the PCT, because it was paid for items of service, and it would have got twice the money with the normal system. This is a hurdle to innovation which we should surely be able to overcome. We have discussed that with the Minister. He expressed sympathy for the idea so I hope that it can be acted upon. It is not simply that we are slow; we have hurdles.

I come to Amendments 130, 131 and a number of others in my name. I have no doubt that the Government have firm intentions to promote research and innovation. It is mentioned in several places in the Bill and I know that the noble Earl’s heart is in the right place on all this. The amendments in my name are simply there to help the Government in their own aspirations by emphasising and reiterating the need to keep research and innovation at the forefront. I simply emphasise the points made so eloquently by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and the noble Lord, Lord Willis. The amendments make it clear that innovation and research are of such central importance that they should be explicit in the board’s business plans, in reporting its activities and in clarifying how it is going about achieving these aspirations. The amendments make sure that the board actively promotes research as against simply having regard to it. I hope that the Minister will find the amendments helpful in the light of the Government’s intentions.

Amendment 131 returns to the issue of research that protects the public’s health. Here I make two particular points that the Minister might consider answering in one way or another. First, how will it be possible to ensure that the local authorities taking over the directors of public health also promote research? What levers will there be with the local authorities? Secondly, I ask a question that has been posed before. How will we ensure that the Health Protection Agency, which engages in much important research, will have access to external funds? We have discussed this before, but it would be nice to know whether it is clear that the HPA will have access to grants from external funding bodies.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the NHS has a long and proud track record of innovating and delivering better care for patients. That must continue—we all agree about that. That is why new Section 13K of the 2006 Act places a duty on the board to promote innovation when exercising its functions, including innovation in the provision of services and the,

“arrangements made for their provision”.

That last phrase means the commissioning of services. As a result, although we completely sympathise with the principle behind Amendment 128A, it is not necessary. The duty is intended to support the delivery of quality and productivity improvements across the NHS to help transform healthcare for patients and the public. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, I say that I expect that innovation in procurement of goods and services will be an essential part of this. The duty certainly allows for it as it stands. It is an important part of the QIPP programme at the moment, and I am sure that it will continue to be. If we were to specify one area of activity in which the duty should be exercised, as Amendment 129 suggests, we would face the perennial problem of listing those areas where the duty should be exercised to the detriment—

[Baroness Thornton]

I am sorry to interrupt, but it strikes me that if none of us understood that that was what those words meant—that was what led us to table the first two amendments in this group—maybe the Minister should look at those amendments, because they offer more clarity.

[Earl Howe]

I am always keen to accept the wise suggestions of the noble Baroness, and I will of course go away and consider the words that she has proposed.

I was just referring to the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, on procurement, and saying that we would face the perennial problem of listing those areas where the duty should be exercised to the detriment of those not listed.

[Lord Warner]

I have an uneasy feeling that we are going to hear a lot about lists today. On lists, some things are more important than others, and I think that the argument about lists does not hold a lot of water unless the Minister can show us some other items that will be missed out that are as powerful as procurement of goods and services in further research and innovation. If there are others, I would be happy to consider the matter, but the reason why the amendment has been tabled is because it is a very powerful way in which to promote something that the Government want. Many of the other things may not be as powerful in delivering that.

19:45

[Earl Howe]

I recognise that and, after what I said a moment ago, we know that procurement can be an important lever in the innovation agenda. Indeed, that will be recognised in the innovation review, which is due to be published next month. Furthermore, we are planning to launch a procurement strategy by April 2012. I will not go into huge detail about it, although I have it here, but it will consist of three elements—system levers, standards for procurement and system level support. We can look to take forward some of the ideas that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, put forward in his speech.

All this goes to show that there is a substantial amount of work already under way to create the right conditions for innovation to flourish. These include dedicated regional innovation funds to support front-line innovation and innovation challenge prizes to recognise and reward ideas that tackle some of the biggest health and social care challenges facing the NHS and in future. I have named only two from a long list of current initiatives.

I will just say to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, that the Secretary of State already has a power to awards prizes. New Section 13K of the 2006 Act, inserted by Clause 20, simply gives the board the same power. Should it choose to use the power to make payments as prizes—and it is a power rather than a duty—this is one way in which it might decide to promote innovation in the provision of health services. Recently I presented the very first group of innovation challenge prizes, and it was a very heart-warming and exciting occasion.

The noble Lord, Lord Warner, rightly made the point that the NHS was slow to take up innovation and that people were forced to go elsewhere to take their new ideas forward. Again, this is an issue that we are tackling with considerable energy in the NHS chief executive’s review of adoption and diffusion of innovation, which will be published next month. I look forward to talking more to the noble Lord about what is in that review in due course.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, in particular that the main way in which the board will collaborate with research funding bodies is to fund the treatment costs of patients who are taking part in research funded by government and research charity partner organisations.

The existing innovation funds were not put in primary legislation; there is no need to put a specific power in the Bill, as Amendment 129A seeks to do, to enable the board to establish an innovation fund. As with prizes, establishing innovation funds is only one way in which the board might seek to exercise its duty to promote innovation; innovation funding is being considered as part of the chief executive’s innovation review.

Amendments 130 and 131 reflect the similar and previously debated Amendments 39 and 41 on the equivalent duty on the Secretary of State in Clause 5. I agreed to undertake a closer consideration of that duty and I shall do that. I reassure noble Lords that our discussions will include the board’s duty. Work is under way to look at these duties ahead of future stages of the Bill. Indeed, I undertake to reflect carefully on the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Drefelin, and to write to her with answers to her questions. I have also written to all noble Lords who spoke in that earlier debate, picking up points that I was not able to cover at the time. I explain in that letter how public health falls within the definition of the health service, which was one of the points touched on by the noble Baroness. It will therefore be covered by the existing duty on the board to promote research in proposed new Section 13L of the 2006 Act.

The noble Lord, Lord Patel, spoke about the role of the tariff in promoting innovation. He is absolutely right to do so; the new tariff could indeed play a key role in encouraging innovation. The Bill introduces a new, independent, transparent and fair pricing system where the board and Monitor would collaborate to set prices for NHS services. That would create a more stable and predictable environment, allowing providers and commissioners to invest in technology and innovative service models to improve patient care. We are actively looking at the way in which the tariff could drive that.

My noble friend Lord Willis and, indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, asked how exactly the board will go about promoting research. As previously set out, we will make sure that the systems and processes for commissioning used by the board and clinical commissioning groups ensure that research is promoted, supported and funded by the NHS. That will include the tariff, the commissioning guidance and the processes for authorising and supporting development of clinical commissioning groups. However, noble Lords will be aware that a great deal of the practical detail of the board's role is still under development. Further detail will be published in due course and we must respect the autonomy of the board in devising for itself how exactly it will undertake this function.

I turn to Amendments 147, 149A, 150, 215 and 218. Given the wide range of statutory duties placed on the board and CCGs, the approach we have taken in the Bill is to emphasise a few key duties that the board must look at—in particular, in its business plan, annual report and its performance assessments—and that CCGs must, in particular, look at in their commissioning plan and annual report. We feel we have chosen the right duties to emphasise, not because they are the most important but because they are duties about which any annual report, business plan, commissioning plan or assessment should provide explicit evidence, specifically linked to the exercise of the board’s or CCGs’ functions.

That said, with respect to clinical commissioning groups I say to my noble friend Lord Willis that the department has published Developing Clinical Commissioning Groups: Towards Authorisation and that, to be authorised, a CCG will need to demonstrate that it has in place the systems and processes both to promote patients’ recruitment to and participation in research, and for funding the treatment costs of patients taking part in research, so this will not be overlooked. However, we are clear that an annual report, business plan, commissioning plan or annual assessment should provide an assessment of all the body's functions, including the exercise of its innovation and research duties. There is also nothing to prevent the documents going into significant detail about the exercise of a specific duty. I add that the board has the power to issue guidance to CCGs on the contents of commissioning plans and directions as to the form and content of the annual report. I hope that those remarks are helpful in answer to the questions and points from noble Lords, and that they will be sufficiently reassured by what I have said not to press their amendments.

[Baroness Thornton]

I thank the Minister for those remarks and all other noble Lords for theirs. This has been a very high-quality, expert debate. I do not want to delay noble Lords from their supper and, indeed, on this side, from an opportunity to defrost—we have hypothermia on this side. The Committee has again shown its great expertise, commitment and enthusiasm to innovation and research and there is great consensus across the Committee about this. This suite of amendments would have given practical action and voice, and would have strengthened this part of the Bill on innovation and research. We need to look at what the Minister has said. I am grateful for those areas where he said that he would reflect upon these issues and let us know. However, it is safe to say that because of the consensus in the Committee on these issues, we would all be keen to make sure that the issues of innovation and research are, indeed, put beyond doubt in this Bill. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 128A withdrawn.

Amendments 129 to 131A not moved.

Amendment 132 had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.

Amendment 133 not moved.

House resumed. Committee to begin again not before 8.56 pm.

Subsidiarity Assessment: Food Distribution (EUC Report)

Monday 28th November 2011 Lords Chamber

Motion to Take Note

19:57

Tabled By

[Lord Roper]

That this House takes note of the Report of the European Union Committee on the amended Commission Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Council Regulation (EC) No.1290/2005 and Council Regulation (EC) No.1234/2007 as regards distribution of food products to the most deprived persons in the Union (COM(2011)634, Council Document 15054/11) (23rd Report, HL Paper 217).

[Lord Carter of Coles]

My Lords, in the absence of the noble Lord, Lord Roper, I beg leave to move the first Motion standing in his name on the Order Paper. It fell to the EU Sub-Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries and Environment, which I chair, to carry out detailed scrutiny of the latest proposal in relation to food for the deprived. In doing so, we were conscious of the consideration which we gave a year or so ago to the previous version of the proposal. Both the sub-committee and the EU Committee itself, which the noble Lord, Lord Roper, chairs, took the view that the changes made to the latest proposal did nothing to remedy the failure to comply with the principle of subsidiarity.

It is tempting to use this occasion to talk about the common agricultural policy as the evolving backdrop to the scheme to distribute food to deprived persons but, since time is limited, I will make only two remarks in this respect. First, when the scheme was initiated in 1987, a largely unreformed CAP generated excesses of butter, milk powder, beef, sugar, rice and cereals—the so-called food mountains—which allowed food to be released to charitable organisations in participating member states. Those days are long gone. Surplus stocks are now very low and in recent years the scheme has in fact relied on open-market purchases of food, so the link between the scheme and the CAP, clear enough in the past, has become more and more tenuous in the present.

I hope that your Lordships will take the view, as the committee has done, that the task of tackling deprivation faced by our fellow citizens rightly falls on the member states, not on the EU itself. No one should downplay the scale of the challenge on social protection across Europe. Data on expenditure in that regard in October this year—I am relying on data from Eurostat, the European Commission's own source—showed that, in 2009, the 27 member states spent over €3 million million on this support. That is, greater than the figure 3 followed by 12 zeroes of euros: a colossal amount of money. Compare the scheme for deprived persons that is being proposed here of €500 million or so. Doubtless that can buy a great deal of food, but in respect of the total spend by member states it is not of great significance.

20:00

Your Lordships will know that, in their Explanatory Memorandum, the Government have made clear that the UK has not participated in the scheme since the mid-1990s because of dwindling UK intervention stocks, and because of the bureaucratic overhead associated with ensuring compliance with the scheme’s rules to prevent fraud. The Government go on to say that,

“the UK believes that measures of this type are better and more effectively delivered by individual Member States through their own social programmes”.

As our report explains, we share the Government’s view on this matter. We are clear that the proposal does not comply with the principle of subsidiarity, and we hope that the House will accept our recommendations and agree to issue a reasoned opinion on the latest proposal. I beg to move.

[Lord Roper]

My Lords, I support the arguments that have been put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Carter, who chairs the European Sub-Committee of the European Union Committee dealing with agriculture, fisheries and the environment and who prepared the report that we are considering today. This is an important issue and one of the occasions on which this House has the opportunity to argue why subsidiarity matters and why some things ought to be done at a national level, not at a European level.

As the noble Lord said, the food distribution programme made sense when there were significant European surpluses. However, in the 24 years since the programme was introduced, probably at the time when the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, was responsible for these matters, things have changed. There are no longer surpluses that it is perfectly legitimate for the European Union to distribute to member states where there are needy people. The argument has therefore changed. That is why, despite the fact that the European Commission, in preparing its proposals for this document, modified them from the document on which this House gave an opinion about a year ago and suggested that there was a reasoned opinion against subsidiarity over the old proposal, in our view there is no longer a satisfactory situation.

We do not believe that any European value-added is produced by producing €500 million on buying things from the open market to give to needy people. Member states should do that—there are lots of reasons why they should—but that is a decision for the 27 member states of the European Union. That is why this report has been produced and why, although the earlier proposal has been withdrawn as a result of a judgment by the Court of Justice of the European Union, we still believe that this is a serious error.

As we say in our report, neither the proposal nor the Commission’s Explanatory Memorandum produces an explicit subsidiarity justification as required by Article 5 of the protocol on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality. However, it seems clear from the summary of the impact assessment that accompanied the original proposal of three years ago that the Commission sees three reasons for this. These include the view that the programme addresses problems of hunger, deprivation, poverty and social exclusion in the spirit of the treaty and that it supports the objective of strengthening the Union’s social cohesion.

Our report sets out our consideration of those justifications. I will not repeat them at length. The nub of our assessment, this year as last, is that the spirit of the treaties can be respected without the European Union acting in this respect. Moreover, we consider that member states are capable of acting individually to fulfil those objectives if they so wish, and in any case the failure of European member states to act is not in itself a reason why the EU should act. In conclusion, we again take the view that there is no compelling argument to suggest that the Union is better placed than its member states to ensure a food supply to its most deprived citizens.

We know that the Government share our view on this proposal—indeed, I believe that it is also the view of the opposition Front Bench—and in their Explanatory Memorandum they have stated their belief that,

“measures of this type are better and more effectively delivered by individual Member States through their own social programmes”.

The Scottish Parliament has taken a similar view and the Swedish Parliament, the Riksdag, has also issued a reasoned opinion sharing our view. Other member states such as Denmark and the Netherlands share our concerns, though we are not yet sure whether they have issued reasoned opinions.

The Government have told us that, unfortunately, agreement in principle on this measure has been reached following a decision by Germany to accept a time-limited extension of the scheme to the end of 2013. There appears to have been movement at the political level but certainly not, in our eyes, at the level of the underlying policy.

While the European Commission has made changes to the proposal that we considered a year ago, we think that those changes make no difference to our assessment of whether the proposal is in compliance with the principle of subsidiarity. We consider that it is not compliant with that principle and therefore recommend that the House should issue a reasoned opinion on the latest proposal.

[Lord Williamson of Horton]

My Lords, it was of course only in November last year that the House took the view that a proposal from the European Commission on the distribution of food products to the most deprived persons in the Union did not comply with the principle of subsidiarity, and we sent a reasoned opinion to that effect to the Presidents of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission in accordance with the treaty. As the noble Lord, Lord Roper, stated, on 13 April 2011 the European Court of Justice annulled the provisions of the food distribution plan providing for purchases from the market. In consequence, the Commission has now submitted a new proposal, which we have before us, from 2011, document number 634 final, adding a new treaty base, Article 175(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which relates to social cohesion. As has been stated, the reason for this is that the Commission wants to make market purchases a permanent source of supply for the scheme when there are no longer the intervention stocks that used to exist in the Union. They have gone and the Commission wants to turn to the market.

The European Union Committee of the House has recommended that the objection on the grounds of subsidiarity that applied to the earlier proposal applies equally to the new one, and that we should issue the revised opinion in paragraphs 5 to 11 of the committee’s report. I agree that we should be consistent and follow the advice of our European Committee. Of course there may be good reasons for supplying food to the most deprived citizens, but today we are concerned only to judge whether this might be done at EU level and on the EU budget. The principle of subsidiarity that is in the treaty on the European Union in Article 5(3) states inter alia that,

“the Union shall act only if and insofar as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States, either at central level or at regional and local level, but can rather, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved at Union level”.

We do not agree that this proposal corresponds to that part of the treaty.

Although the principle of subsidiarity may not have much impact, it is none the less an important provision. It is in line with much of British opinion and we should play our role in seeking to ensure that it is respected. As we seldom see the text of a Commission proposal for legislation in this Chamber, I would add three short comments. First, the Commission proposal, which as usual is clearly drafted and easy to understand, is not a law. Bureaucrats in Brussels cannot and do not make laws on a subject such as this. Substantive laws are made jointly by the Ministers of the member states in the Council and the European Parliament. This may seem self-evident, but in view of the widespread public misunderstanding, I emphasise it in this case.

Secondly, it is interesting to note that the European Court of Justice annulled provisions of the earlier proposal because the legal base was not sufficient, showing the value of the oversight by the court. Thirdly, and lastly, as has already been stated, this case shows clearly the transformation of the agricultural policy of the Union—the old CAP—as market intervention has been removed or drastically reduced and intervention stocks are no longer generally available for this scheme. I support the proposal of the European Union Committee of this House.

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow and to support everything that has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles; our committee chairman the noble Lord, Lord Roper; and the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, particularly with his experience of dealing with the situation when it was entirely different. I propose to add nothing to what they say, but to ask a few questions of my noble friend. Does he agree with me that this is a serious matter? As far as I understand it, this is only the third reasoned opinion that this House has given, but it is identical to the one we passed on 3 November. Why are reasoned opinions passed by this House taken so lightly by the Commission? What negotiations has the Minister had with the Commission? What was its reaction to our previous reasoned opinion?

It is all very well for the Commission to make a slight tweak to what it presents to us because the European Court of Justice ruled it out of order, but that does not satisfy me. I want to know what the Commission has done to take on board our concerns. I hope my noble friend will update me on that. If the Commission does not take on board member states’ concerns about reasoned opinion, there is no point in us producing reasoned opinion. If it is as dismissive as it has been to date, it will only intensify the disregard and dislike of the Commission that many in this country have.

May I also ask the Minister about the current state of negotiations? I was appalled to read the letter from his fellow Minister, Mr Paice, of 15 November, in which the Germans seem to have decided with the French in, if no longer smoke-filled rooms, the corridors of power to do some dirty deal and produce a draft joint minute telling the rest of the European Union’s members what they can accept from the Germans and the French. That is pretty unacceptable, too. I hope that he has made strong representation to the Germans about this. Surely it is wrong in principle, as has been well said, for some sort of shady deal in which this matter is done at European level rather than at member-state level to the end of 2013. Let us hope that in negotiations about what will happen after that, when the French will be keen to continue this into the next round, the Germans will be in a weaker position than they would be if they remained firm and principled.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

I should declare an interest as a member of the EU Sub-Committee D, which has brought forward this opinion. It has now considered this and similar proposals from the Commission on three occasions. On all three, it has taken the view that the proposal has little justification now that intervention stocks have more or less disappeared. Redistribution to deprived groups within society to relieve their poverty is essentially, we maintain, a matter for member states, not for the Union, and it is really ridiculous that CAP funds—€500 million—should be used to buy foodstuffs on the markets for such redistribution. If anything, such purchases would tend to drive prices up and exacerbate food poverty rather than the reverse.

20:15

As we have seen, however, the Commission is very persistent. In its explanatory memorandum it justifies its actions on the grounds that in March 2009, the European Parliament strongly advocated the maintenance of the full Union’s funding scheme, which amounts to €500 million, and that this opinion was reinforced in January this year by the European Economic and Social Committee. In addition, it points to the current economic crises and suggests that certain member states that have benefited in the past might not be able to meet the co-financing proposals that were put forward last year and that this justifies dropping them.

As for the European Court of Justice’s opinion that the justification for the scheme under Articles 42 and 43—the agricultural articles—could support the scheme only when it was redistributing surpluses acquired through intervention powers, the Commission now comes back to justify it under Article 157(3) as helping to promote economic, social and territorial cohesion. I join others in thinking that the opinion that this House came to last year still stands: purchasing food from the market and distributing it to deprived people is a matter for local decision. At present, 20 member states, including it would seem both France and Germany and some of the richest countries within the Union, benefit from the scheme. Perhaps that is one reason why the Commission can claim that it is backed by so many member states. Breaches of the subsidiarity rules are justified only where action by the Union would, by reason of its scale or effects, produce clear benefits which would not be available if similar action were taken by member states. In this debate last year, the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, who is also a member of our committee and was at one time chair of the Food Standards Agency, spoke about various local schemes that had been set up in the UK to relieve food poverty. She said:

“Food networks are local, direct and know their communities. They are not overbureaucratic and, consequently, are flexible in responding to need. Above all, they are transparent. We should leave them uncluttered by intervention by the Commission, however well intended”.

She concluded that there appears,

“to be no compelling argument to suggest that the Union is better placed than member states to ensure a food supply to its most deprived citizens”.—[Official Report, 3/11/10; col. 1684.]

I concur entirely with what she said this time last year. Nothing has changed since then to alter the conclusion. I fully endorse it and, in so doing, support the Motion to issue another reasoned opinion of the same ilk.

[Baroness Byford]

My Lords, I should like to reinforce what my noble friend Lady Sharp has just said. I declare that I am also a member of Sub-Committee D. Unfortunately, through illness, I could not be here last year to participate in the discussions. I have one or two basic questions for my noble friend when he comes to reply. Like others, I certainly think it is the responsibility of individual member states to look after those who are in need; that is the best way to supply it.

However, the proposal was to raise the sum of money to €500 million. My question to my noble friend is: which countries have benefited from it and how much have they had? Although the UK takes the very clear stance that it should be done locally, which I hope my noble friend will reflect in his comments, clearly the money will come from Europe, to which we contribute. If the Minister has figures that he can share with us tonight, I would be interested to hear them. If he does not, perhaps he will write to us to let us know. It seems a very unusual situation—to be opposed to something that is being proposed and will be imposed, over which we have no control except to have the debate that we are having here tonight. I should just like to reinforce my concerns about the way in which it is being proposed.

Some 17 member states and some 18 million people benefited back in 2010, but, as other noble Lords have said, when there was a surplus it made sense to use it and distribute it. However, that is not the situation that we face today. I assure noble Lords that buying in from the market is not the cheapest way to do things. Therefore, we look to my noble friend for some steer on the Government’s thinking about how they will deal with what is proposed, and how we can say, “No, we don’t think this is a good idea”. As one of the member states, we are presumably committed to providing that money up front.

I apologise to other noble Lords for not being able to take part in discussions last year through illness, but I am very glad that we have had the debate tonight. I reinforce my support for the Motion moved by the noble Lord, Lord Carter, and for the comments of other noble Lords. Clearly the situation should not continue.

[Lord Hylton]

My Lords, it is very good to hear the principle of subsidiarity being upheld and defended. I am also inclined to think that this House should be consistent in maintaining the reasoned opinions that it has previously given.

The Commission, and perhaps some member states, might like to examine how food stamps in the United States have worked out in practice. The United States probably has less comprehensive and less long-term social welfare arrangements, compared to many European countries. On the other hand, I expect those who devised the food stamp scheme took full account of the interests of commercial food producers and of the market generally.

I conclude by asking the Government how many civil servants within the Commission have been employed, or are still employed, in dealing with these matters. If things go ahead in the way that we wish, will some of them no longer be needed? What will happen to them? Having said that, I support the Motion.

[Lord Grantchester]

Like others, I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Roper, and my noble friend Lord Carter of Coles for the work of European Union Committees that they chair and for their exposition tonight. The House has heard that this is essentially a repeat of the Motion debated on 3 November last year, since the amended Commission proposal does not materially alter the thrust of the original document. All sides of the House concur that the revised food distribution programme is still defective, as the substance and objective of the measure remain basically the same.

We have heard how the proposal has fared since the debate last year. In April this year, the European Court of Justice annulled the provisions of the 2009 distribution plan providing for purchases on the market. As a consequence, the budget for 2012, based entirely on intervention stocks, accounts for only €113 million against a proposed €500 million. This is a success indeed against the mission creep of the original scheme. However, in July, the European Parliament called on the Commission and the Council to develop a solution to avoid a sharp cutback in food aid as a result of the reduction in funding. The memorandum states:

“Numerous representations of the European civil society, ranging from local authorities to NGOs and charities, have expressed their worries for the future of the scheme”.

This suggests that it will not be a simple matter to resolve the situation in the manner this House would wish. The Minister at last year’s debate, the noble Lord, Lord Henley, assured the House that no charitable organisations in this country had asked the Government to participate in the scheme. He also stated that,

“no member state at the moment actually supports the scheme”.—[Official Report, 3/11/10; col. 1691.]

Where does the support for this programme seem to come from? There does not appear to be a member state that looks on this as part of its budget. Is there any similarity or region characteristic to the 18 million people said to have benefited as recently as 2010?

On cofinancing, the memorandum states, in very similar fashion, and again on page 4:

“National authorities of participating member states and very numerous representatives from the civil society have recently expressed their wish for the scheme to remain fully funded out of the EU budget”.

What discussions have taken place between those member states and the Government? While the Minister last November, the noble Lord, Lord Henley, commented that there was some way to go before this proposal would succeed, the intervening period seems to underline that the proposal’s supporters will not easily be deterred. The Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions of the European Union also came out in favour in January this year.

I support the Motion in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Roper, and commend the committee for its deliberations. I understand that although the question of subsidiarity did not feature in the treaty of Rome, the position is covered under the Lisbon treaty that, in matters of shared competence, the EU can act only and in so far as the objectives of the proposal cannot be sufficiently achieved by member states. Could the Minister clarify the Government’s position? Are the Government content that the reversal to the original intention to distribute only out of intervention stocks could still continue, albeit now on a much reduced budget? Do the Government consider that the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union can be used as a legal base to the amended proposal? I look forward to the Minister’s update and his proposals to carry forward the determination shown tonight by all sides of the House against the amended proposal.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Taylor of Holbeach)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Roper, and the EU Committee for giving us the opportunity to debate this matter this evening, and indeed to the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, for introducing our debate and for chairing the committee. Its report is welcome. This debate has been opportune and I am able to update noble Lords on meetings as recent as today. Let me make it quite clear at the outset that the Government continue to share the committee’s view that the Commission’s latest proposal is not consistent with the subsidiarity principle. In that position it is supported not only by the committee but by all speakers in our debate this evening, so many of whom, I am pleased to see, are members of the committee.

I know that your Lordships are well aware of the background to this scheme, and the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, pointed out that we had debated this topic as recently as last November. When the scheme was first introduced in 1987, it was used as a mechanism to derive benefit from the growing intervention stocks and to save European embarrassment in running down these stockpiles. I point out to my noble friend Lady Byford that the 18 million people who benefited from these stockpiles came mainly from the following list of countries. In the 2012 allocation, the countries were: Spain, €18 million; France, €15 million; Italy, €22 million; Poland, €17 million; and Romania, €12 million. In fact, all member states participate, other than Denmark, Germany, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden and the UK.

20:30

In the current context, this scheme no longer has a basis in the intervention stocks because they are significantly reduced to the point at which they are more or less insignificant. As a result of an increasing focus on purchasing products on the open market, the Commission has had to provide new proposals to adapt the scheme. I am unable to say how many civil servants have been engaged in this exercise, but I shall do my best to ascertain the number, although it may be difficult to satisfy noble Lords on that point.

Several recent proposals have failed to achieve a qualified majority in favour within the Council. Yet we have before us another proposal. Perhaps I may say to my noble friend Lord Caithness that the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, is absolutely right to say that under the Lisbon treaty certain criteria must be met. The proposal depends on the number of reasoned opinions received. One-third of votes are required from Parliaments that consider that the proposal is not compliant with the principle of subsidiarity—a so-called yellow card—or more than half the votes in the Council must consider that the proposal is not compliant. Based on the response to the 2010 proposal, neither of those conditions was met. Therefore, our reasoned amendment is not without force or consequence, but the Commission has been unnecessarily determined to push its proposal despite our criticism and reason for it.

What is specific about this latest proposal? One key development earlier this year was a judgment in the Court of Justice of the EU on the provisions of the 2009 distribution scheme that provided for purchases on the open market. In the court’s view, the existing regulation did not provide an adequate legal base for the purchase of food on the market other than on an exceptional basis when intervention stocks are temporarily unavailable. This ruling has had an immediate impact on the operation of the scheme by limiting the budget for 2012 to approximately €113 million. On current projections, there will be no intervention stocks to supply the programme in 2013.

Against this background, the Commission has made a further amended proposal that reflects the Commission’s attempts to justify the provisions for the sourcing of food from the market as a matter of course, rather than on an exceptional basis—as was the case in the past. The Commission has indicated that it intends this proposal to be a transitional measure to ensure the continuation of the existing programme until the end of the current multiannual financial framework in 2013. The Commission is expected to come forward with further proposals for a food distribution scheme for deprived people to be funded solely by the European Social Fund from 2014, under heading 1 of the EU budget.

Nevertheless, the Government’s view has not changed. We remain unconvinced as to the merits or appropriateness of this proposal. The Commission’s attempt to make use of social cohesion as a legal base confirms our view that the scheme is no longer an agricultural measure but one which has a fundamental social principle behind it. My noble friend Lord Caithness will know that the Government share his view of the behaviour of the Commission in this matter. As several noble Lords including the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, pointed out, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity there is a long-standing general principle of union law, currently enshrined in Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union, that the Government consider the EU should act collectively only where there are clear additional benefits or EU added value compared with action by member states either individually or in co-operation.

We consider that such measures to assist the neediest members of society can be better and more effectively delivered by individual member states through their own social programmes and not at EU level. As noble Lords will know, we have a Healthy Start programme here in this country. It is the member states and their regional and local authorities that are best placed to identify and meet the needs of deprived people in their countries and communities, and to do this in ways that are administratively simple and efficient. The proposal has long been discussed in Council and the UK, along with a number of other member states. We maintained our opposition to the scheme on the grounds that social measures are a matter for individual member states, and therefore the proposal is not in line with the principle of subsidiarity.

However, in the margins of the Agriculture Council’s meeting on 14 November, following French and German bilateral discussions to which my noble friend Lord Caithness has drawn our attention, the German Minister indicated that she could accept a time-limited extension of the scheme until the end of 2013 provided there was a guarantee that funding would not continue into the next financial perspective. During discussions in the special committee on agriculture earlier today, it was clear that Germany had not received the assurances it was looking for from the Commission in not coming forward for new proposals for a similar programme in the future, and as such I can say that the qualified majority in favour does not yet exist.

The Government will consider their position, as they should in light of any proposed compromise, but they will continue to oppose the principle of expenditure on social measures of this kind being funded from the EU budget. Clearly, as my noble friend Lady Sharp pointed out, it is important that all our citizens have enough food to eat and supporting them through these difficult times is no doubt a matter of some priority for each member state.

In the UK, the Healthy Start scheme, for example, provides a nutritional safety net in the form of vouchers for basic healthy foods and free vitamin supplements for pregnant women and children under four in disadvantaged and low-income families. Also, as many noble Lords will know, FareShare and FoodCycle provide good examples of the essential work that charities are doing to support communities to relieve food poverty. In 2010-11, the food distributed by FareShare contributed towards 8.6 million meals, with the number of people being fed daily averaging 35,500. The point remains, that ensuring the availability of adequate food for the most deprived citizens is an activity not best undertaken at EU level, nor in our view an appropriate use of the EU budget, as the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, said.

I hope this helps your Lordships in completing your scrutiny of this proposal. I suspect noble Lords will want to remain on continuous alert where this proposal is concerned but I thank the committee for its report, and the Government support the Motion on the reasoned opinion.

Motion agreed.

Subsidiarity Assessment: Food Distribution (Reasoned Opinion)

Monday 28th November 2011 Lords Chamber

Motion to Resolve

20:39

Moved by

[Lord Roper]

To resolve that this House considers that the amended Commission Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Council Regulation (EC) No.1290/2005 and Council Regulation (EC) No.1234/2007 as regards distribution of food products to the most deprived persons in the Union (COM(2011)634, Council Document 15054/11) does not comply with the principle of subsidiarity, for the reasons set out in the 23rd Report of the European Union Committee, Session 2010-12 (HL Paper 217); and, in accordance with Article 6 of the Protocol on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality, instructs the Clerk of the Parliaments to forward this reasoned opinion to the Presidents of the European institutions.

Motion agreed.

20:40

Sitting suspended.

Health and Social Care Bill

Monday 28th November 2011 Lords Chamber

Committee (8th Day) (Continued)

20:56

Amendment 133ZA

Moved by

[Lord Patel]

133ZA: Clause 20, page 18, line 37, at end insert—
“13L1 Duty in respect of education and training
(1) The Board must promote education and training of the health care workforce, having taken note of the responsibilities of the regulatory authorities, academic and professional organisations, and consulted Health Education England.
(2) In exercising its functions, Health Education England must take steps to ensure that providers of health services in England have due regard to any minimum numbers of training placements that it may specify.”

[Lord Patel]

My Lords, we return yet again to education and training. There is so much anxiety about the issue of education and training and workforce planning that I have had several representations, in particular one from the Royal College of General Practitioners.

Government Amendment 43 places a duty on the Secretary of State to ensure that there is an effective system for the planning and delivery of education and training of the healthcare workforce. In order for this to be an effective system, a duty must be placed on the NHS Commissioning Board to promote education and training. This amendment seeks to do exactly that. As the board is nationally accountable for the outcomes achieved in the NHS and is also tasked with providing,

“the support and direction necessary to improve quality and patient outcomes and safeguard the core values of the NHS”,

it is only right that this duty to promote education and training is included as part of the core responsibilities of the NHS Commissioning Board alongside the existing duties in respect of research, variation in the provision of health services, and so on.

We must try to get education and training structures right so that the long-term sustainability of the health service is maintained with patient care continually improving. This must be reflected in the approach taken to commissioning, with the NHS Commissioning Board taking note of the needs identified by regulatory authorities and academic and professional organisations so that plans are in line with national strategies. In carrying out this important role the board should consult Health Education England as it has a vital role in providing sector-wide leadership and oversight of workforce planning, education and training in the NHS.

The second part of my amendment deals explicitly with the role of Health Education England, as it will oversee the current system for providing education and training via a levy set on providers, and aims to make sure that there is adequate capacity in training to meet the needs of the health service. Under the current proposals, healthcare providers are to work together in provider-led networks to manage the planning and commissioning of education and training. However, if there is no specification of the minimum number of placements—the minimum number of trainees that should be provided in each sector—providers, especially those such as alternative or private providers that might work to make profit, with shareholders to answer to and an increasing range of competitors, will have little impetus to provide adequate numbers in the long term. The future of the NHS depends on having sufficient numbers of trainees in all specialties, including general practice, and the training of the next generation of doctors and other healthcare professionals will be put at risk if these plans are not strengthened. Furthermore, with the likely greater specialisation of some providers, and the non-requirement for all providers to provide educational opportunities, there is a risk that the overall quality of postgraduate generalist medical education will be affected due to reduced opportunities to widen the range of disease types and treatments that the students will see.

The policy of any qualified provider, alongside the pressures of the Nicholson challenge, should not be allowed to affect the provision of education and training by providers, whether they are new or old. Health Education England should therefore be tasked with taking steps to set a minimum number of trainee placements for each sector within the health service and to hold providers to account where necessary.

The amendment demonstrates the anxiety felt by a whole range of people in different parts of training and education. I know that the chairman of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, the medical school deans and the postgraduate deans have recently sent a letter to the Secretary of State expressing their concerns. I hope that it will be possible to get this right with a solution that is acceptable to all sides, including the Government, so that we have in the Bill something which does not affect government policy but demonstrates that the Government are serious about making sure that the education and training of the healthcare workforce will be a priority.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)]

My Lords, it may assist the Committee if I indicate at this early point in the debate that the Government are extremely sympathetic to this group of amendments. As noble Lords will know, I have already committed to publishing, prior to Report, a much more detailed set of proposals for health education and training in the light of the forthcoming recommendations of the NHS Future Forum, and I hope that this will prove helpful. However, I can now go further.

These amendments focus on how commissioners in the new system will foster high-quality education and training in the health sector and on the potential role of regulators and Health Education England in supporting the education and training system. The Government have listened carefully and we are persuaded by the intent behind these proposals. I therefore now commit to taking away the amendments, considering them in a constructive spirit and bringing forward our own proposals on Report aimed at addressing the issues raised by the amendments. I hope that the Committee will welcome this undertaking. I am of course willing to meet noble Lords between now and Report to discuss the underlying issues further.

[Lord Patel]

I am grateful to the Minister for those comments and am greatly encouraged.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

I add my thanks for the Minister’s remarks. I look forward to seeing amendments which thread education and training through all parts of the Bill with duties on everybody at every level.

[Lord Walton of Detchant]

The Minister has completely taken the wind out of my sails. I had every intention of going at this hammer and tongs because all the medical organisations and all those involved in education and training are deeply concerned about the absence of detail in the Bill. The Minister has now reassured us greatly. We look forward earnestly and with keen anticipation to seeing what he proposes for the Report stage and hope that it will be adequate.

[Baroness Emerton]

I rise without notes, which is very unusual for me, to thank the Minister very much indeed. There is anxiety about education among nurses, midwives and particularly community nurses—they are getting very agitated. Therefore, I am absolutely delighted that we shall see something soon.

[Lord Kakkar]

My Lords, I, too, want to congratulate the Minister on his very helpful statement on education and training which is warmly welcomed not only in this Chamber but I suspect broadly through the medical and healthcare professions. This issue has caused tremendous anxiety. To provide clarity and the opportunity for it to be addressed in a constructive way on Report is genuinely welcome.

[Lord Rooker]

I, too, welcome the Minister’s statement. He will know that I have no qualifications in this but I have raised the issue of nurse training twice in the House this year—in the debate in March and at Question Time in October. I just want a point clarified. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, refers to the board promoting but,

“having taken note of the responsibilities of the regulatory authorities”.

Does the Minister include possible changes and recommendations to the regulatory authorities in terms of their aspect of education and training?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, no, because the Bill does not cover the duties of the regulatory authorities themselves, the professional regulators that is to say. My undertaking should be read as relating to the Bill itself and the bodies and structures it sets up.

[Lord Patel]

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 133ZA withdrawn.

Amendments 133A to 135A not moved.

Amendment 135AA

Moved by

[Baroness Jolly]

135AA: Clause 20, page 19, line 16, leave out “encourage” and insert “mandate”

[Baroness Jolly]

I will be brief so perhaps we can make a little more progress this evening. These four amendments come as a group; originally they were in two groups of two, but actually they hang together as a suite. They are probing amendments, and I thank the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health for its help with them. These amendments are intended to arrange for the organisation of carer children and young people, particularly young people who are vulnerable, and are about guaranteeing their safety and well-being and safeguarding them. When I was rereading the amendments earlier and making my notes I realised that they are not in the context of children necessarily and thought that they might just as easily apply to vulnerable adults, but certainly the intention was around children.

Successive Governments have tried without an awful lot of visible success—or perhaps there have been successes, but with some high-level and visible failures—to integrate services for young people. From Victoria Climbié to Baby P, there are still issues around silos not talking to each other. We have not got integration absolutely right.

In many ways, the Bill does not help streamline services for young people: if you are under five and going to be looked after by health visitors it is the responsibility of the board; if you are over five, school nurses come under the auspices of the health and well-being boards; primary services, local services, mental health and acute services are all under clinical commissioning groups. Within the Bill there are several different organisations responsible for delivering services to young people.

I will very quickly go through the meaning of all the amendments. Amendment 135AA concerns the general duties of the board in promoting integration. The wording of the Bill encourages commissioning groups to enter into Section 75 arrangements with local authorities. The amendment suggests that we move to mandating—and it occurs to me that somebody really should produce for this House a sliding scale of verbs from “may” right up to “mandate” so that we can work out exactly where they all sit within the hierarchy. Certainly this is a probing amendment, however, so I am using the verb “to mandate”. We are talking about Section 75 arrangements involving pooled, shared budgets. Shared budgets will give you shared ownership and shared solutions to problems. With shared solutions one will get shared decision-making. For this vulnerable group, we need shared decision-making.

Amendment 197BA concerns the general duties of clinical commissioning groups. It covers the duty to obtain appropriate advice. The intention of the amendment is to add in experts in maltreatment. Nobody could gainsay that. Whether it needs to be in the Bill, I do not know. We would appreciate some indication from the Minister on this.

The third amendment in the group concerns the establishment of health and well-being boards. It would add to the board a representative who is a health professional, for safeguarding. The final amendment in the group, Amendment 331AB, concerns the function of health and well-being boards and the duty to encourage integrated working. Again, it uses the word “mandate”, which I appreciate is at the top of the scale. It mandates people who work in health and social care to work in an integrated manner.

I do not apologise for the verb, because the situation is very serious. Young people who need the most care run the risk of falling into holes where there is nothing joined up. We are saying that the Bill puts the patient first and we talk about integration running all the way through the Bill. Sadly, it does not look like this will happen in children's services. The amendments in the group try to make it happen. Perhaps the Minister will offer clarity on the level of detail—which clearly is not in the Bill—that will be in secondary legislation to help with this. Successive Governments have tried to get this right but it has not always worked on the ground. This is an opportunity to rectify that. I beg to move.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I sympathise with the motives of the noble Baroness who tabled the amendments but I am not sure whether they are persuasive. Mandating is not necessarily the right approach. It is certainly not the correct approach for health and well-being boards, because they are not executive decision-making bodies. We hope that the boards will produce joint strategic needs assessments, to which the clinical commissioning groups will have to have regard. There will certainly be joint working there, but the boards will not be in a position to mandate anybody. Therefore, while the aspiration is noble—appropriately—the phraseology does not necessarily achieve what is intended.

I expect the Minister to say that he envisages that the precise object that the noble Baroness is pursuing will be taken into consideration and acted on by the relevant parties: in this case clinical commissioning groups in particular. Obviously these are probing amendments. They should not be reflected in a substantive amendment put to the vote—unless of course the noble Earl departs from his usual practice and accepts them.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the amendments concern the issues of integration and advice, and in particular the use of arrangements under Section 75 of the National Health Service Act 2006 between the authorities and clinical commissioning groups. Section 75 arrangements would effectively be a means for CCGs and local authorities to work together in an integrated manner, often to commission health and social care services. The Bill contains a number of provisions to encourage and enable the NHS, local government and other sectors to improve patient outcomes through more effective co-ordinated working. It provides a basis for better collaboration, partnership working and integration across local government and the NHS at all levels.

Health and well-being boards will have a strong role in promoting joined-up commissioning between health, public health and social care. Through their duty to promote integrated working between commissioners, they will also be in a good position to be able to promote more integrated provision for patients, social care service users and carers. They will also be able to encourage close working between commissioning of social care, public health and NHS services and aspects of the wider local authority agenda that also influence health and well-being, such as housing, education and the environment.

21:15

Through statutory guidance on preparation of the joint health and well-being strategy and the Government’s mandate to the NHS Commissioning Board, we will be encouraging lead commissioning and integrated provision. Section 75 arrangements are an effective means of enabling local authorities and the NHS locally to align and pool budgets, as well as share other resources, such as staff, goods and services, for a wide variety of functions, to meet the health and well-being priorities of the local population. CCGs will sometimes, rightly, want to enter into these arrangements but there will be other times when they will not. The NHS Commissioning Board, under its existing duty to encourage CCGs to enter into Section 75 arrangements, could decide to include guidance on the matter in the commissioning guidance that it must publish for CCGs and to which CCGs must have regard.

Our strong view is that commissioners, who are after all ultimately concerned with improving health and social care outcomes rather than focusing on working arrangements, must be allowed the ultimate discretion to decide which arrangements are the most appropriate under differing circumstances. That is why we do not intend to mandate integrated working or to specify the form in which integrated working should take place. Approaches to commissioning and delivering integrated care will be dependent on local circumstances and, as such, we do not wish to force organisations to follow a fixed model of integrated working. CCGs are already under integration duties in their own right, and as members of health and well-being boards they must co-operate with the health and well-being board in the exercise of its functions, which will include duties in relation to encouraging integrated working between commissioners of health or social care services.

The Bill sets out a minimum membership for health and well-being boards but one that can be added to by either the local authority or the health and well-being board. We recognise that local authorities and the boards themselves will want to draw sensibly and flexibly from a range of expertise in addition to the minimum membership outlined in the Bill. It is important to be clear that the purpose of this policy is not primarily about setting up a committee but about stimulating effective joint working for and with local people and communities. The health and well-being board will be central to this joint working but it must not represent its limit. We know that a large number of local areas are already working with all the relevant stakeholders to explore and agree how they can work together in the future to make the biggest difference to local people so that everyone, whether that is district councils, clinicians, local providers or the voluntary sector, can contribute in the most appropriate way. That is something that is best left to these conversations rather than being prescribed in the Bill.

Finally, the duty in new Section 14V to obtain appropriate advice is related to the definition of the comprehensive health service and is itself deliberately wide in scope. In response to Amendment 197BA, it could indeed include any health-related issues relating to maltreatment. There is no reason why CCGs would not seek professional advice in relation to maltreatment, but this is only one of many specialist areas. I hope that this reassures my noble friend and that she will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Jolly]

I thank the Minister very much for his reply. I am more than happy to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 135AA withdrawn.

Amendments 135B to 135D not moved.

Amendment 136

Moved by

[Baroness Thornton]

136: Clause 20, page 19, line 42, leave out from beginning to end of line 1 on page 20

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, three amendments are tabled in this group in my name and those of my noble friends. They are principally probing in nature on some important points that need clarification. Amendment 136 would leave out the duty on the board in respect of the variation of the provision of health services; while Amendment 268 would leave out the instruction that:

“Monitor must not exercise its functions for the purpose of causing a variation in the proportion of health care services”;

while the third element of the group seeks that Clause 144 should not stand part. This clause relates to the:

“Secretary of State’s duty as respects variation in provision of health services”.

It would seem that this group of provisions provides the Secretary of State, Monitor or the NHS Commissioning Board with the ability to increase or decrease the share of market for the provision of health services held by a particular group of providers. I assume that this also applies to CCGs, but I would be grateful to the noble Earl if he could explain whether that is the case. I would also be grateful if he could say how these will impact on the provision of primary medical services and the contracting for them by the NHS Commissioning Board. Can he further say how this will affect the commissioning of services by CCGs when they propose to commission services either from hospitals, other primary care providers or private sector hospitals? I suppose that what we are seeking is clarification of the definition of “providers”. For example, let us say that a strategic decision was made by a clinical commissioning group to switch priority from secondary care to community care and that it was a deliberate decision to increase or decrease the share in the market by a particular group of providers, what would be the implications of that for other providers? We also need to think about the issues of cherry-picking that have been mentioned.

This clause was added with a certain amount of fanfare as the Government’s response to the Future Forum and attracted claims of victory by the Liberal Democrats over the threat of privatisation. I give them credit for trying to protect the NHS from the full force of the then draft Bill. But the reason why we want to explore these provisions is that we are concerned that they will not achieve what has been claimed for them. As with so many concessions, you need to scratch beneath the surface to see whether they actually achieve what you want from them.

First, are these provisions effective in achieving the aim of preventing the overt promotion of private companies in the National Health Service? The impact assessment of the Bill still states that the aim is to promote a so-called “fair playing field”, and it goes on to say that, an important way of making the market work will be to rebalance so-called fair playing field distortions, citing a report which calculated that the NHS enjoys a £14 cost advantage over the private sector for every £100 it spends. We know that at present around 3 per cent of NHS funding is spent on the private sector. This is also taken as an indicator of an unfair playing field for private providers. Therefore, in order to achieve parity between the sectors, the Bill requires that all CCGs, Monitor and the Secretary of State should provide extra subsidies to the private sector, and to promote it so that it does have parity. If this does not happen then, according to the Government’s own impact assessments, these reforms will fail.

We also know that other words and actions from the Government suggest that the promotion of the private sector is continuing unabated. The noble Earl himself reportedly told a private health company conference that the reforms offer huge opportunities for the private sector. Most recently, we have had the continuing agenda confirmed by an operating framework that sets out both the agenda for the commercialisation of commissioning support, which is a deliberate policy to remove commissioning from the public sector, and the announcement of a performance measure of the trend in value/volume of patients being treated at non-NHS hospitals. On this side of the House we are unconvinced that this intention has gone out of the Bill and remain concerned that the long-term aim of using competition law and the market to provide a wedge for privatisation has not been removed. I ask the Liberal Democrats to look at these questions very carefully. On this side of the House we question this clause because we do not think the NHS can—or should—be blind to the governance and ownership of its providers.

We think it is right that the Secretary of State should be able to say that the NHS is the preferred provider in certain situations, particularly where existing services are performing well through performance management, collaboration and professional motivation. It may be desirable for a commissioner to maintain continuity of emergency and critical care services that are not amenable to the open market and in order to do so it may need to manage the system of providers locally. We are learning the hard way from Southern Cross what happens when commissioners turn a blind eye to the governance and business models of providers of social care. We should not be afraid of saying that organisations with a social purpose should sometimes be promoted above those driven by narrow financial interests.

That is not about preserving the world the way it is, or perhaps once was. We think this clause could actively prevent policies that this side supports and which have been promoted in government, including the right for NHS staff to request to set up a mutual social enterprise—we will be discussing that in a later group of amendments—with support to do so and protections from well-financed bids from multinational companies. We understood that the parties opposite supported these aims as well, but in supporting this clause they may show to the third sector that they will have no more assistance in development from this Secretary of State.

It is worth noting that while the amendment was introduced following the Future Forum, Peers will have received a briefing from ACEVO whose chief executive chaired the choice and competition strand of the Future Forum exercise. Therefore, my final remarks are from that briefing. This is what ACEVO has said:

“We believe that the unintended consequences of the Government’s policy to ‘outlaw any policy to increase the market share of any particular sector or provider’ would be that people in the NHS Commissioning Board and NHS more widely would interpret the Health and Social Care Bill to mean that capacity building and other policies which support the development of voluntary and community organisations would become illegal”.

It goes on to say that this would have the unintended consequences of:

“Stymying various Government policies, from building the capacity of charities and community groups to supporting public sector staff to form new mutuals/social enterprises (the Department of Health previously said it wanted to ‘create the largest and most vibrant social enterprise sector in the world’ … Making it harder for charities and community groups to provide services and support that many (particularly those who are vulnerable and hard to reach) rely on”.

This is a very serious probing amendment. Between now and Report it is going to be very important that all those organisations and parties who think that they have solved the problem, consider that they may, in fact, have made the situation worse. I beg to move.

21:30

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, I remain puzzled by these amendments from the Labour Benches because it seems quite clear that the purpose of the provision was to make sure that the commissioning groups and the board would not use their considerable influence and power to change, for dogmatic reasons, the balance between private and public sector provision. That must be right. It must be right that only quality and the response to patients’ needs should determine what that balance is. I very much welcome this provision. I thought it was an important safeguard against anybody seeing the Bill as having a particular dogmatic purpose. I was quite surprised that the Labour Front Bench took a different view and put down these amendments. It seems as if it was determined to find some flaw in this provision and it is a provision that is intended to show genuine commitment to a level playing field. It is perfectly proper for the Labour Front Bench to pursue questions about the provision but it is quite clear that it refuses to take the provision, even for a moment, at face value.

I have one or two questions. I know that the hour is late so I do not intend to keep the House for more than a moment or two, but there are some interesting questions to raise. One question was about the position with regard to the partnership that has been advocated by the Minister in other parts of this Bill and the deliberate attempt to reach partnerships between the private and public sector. For example, the private sector in its role of innovating and coming up with new ideas would be very properly in some cases partnered with a public sector body, such as a clinical commissioning group. How does the Minister see that as compatible with the wording of the Bill?

The wording of the Bill is pretty clear. It relates first to the board and then to Monitor and makes it plain that in both cases those boards should not use their particular powers to advance the cause of one side or the other. Therefore, I found it puzzling that this set of amendments should be tabled—in particular the attempt to decide that Clause 144 should not stand part of the Bill.

With those words, I wait for the Minister’s reply. I do not want to delay the Committee, but I have to say that I was genuinely puzzled by the Labour Front Bench’s decision to put down amendments of this kind and to question Clause 144.

[Baroness Thornton]

I think that I explained to the noble Baroness earlier today that these are probing amendments. When we received the briefing from ACEVO, we were very concerned, and that is why we tabled the amendments. It is very important for those of us who have been promoting the voluntary sector all these years that we find out what the truth is. They are probing amendments; there is no intention at all to press them, and I said that from the outset. They are to explore the meaning and the effect of the provisions. Sometimes amendments can have unintended consequences. I hope that the noble Baroness will accept that this is not partisan; it is a genuine effort to get some explanation for how this part of the Bill might work.

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I hesitate to intervene in this debate, but I am prompted by the intervention from the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby. I speak as someone who is probably some way away from the Labour Front Bench on the subject of competition. I do not start from the same position as my noble friend, but like her I am extremely puzzled about what the Government are trying to do. We may be in the realm of unintended consequences.

We go back to July 2010, when the Government published a White Paper that said that the aim was to make the NHS the largest set of social enterprises in the world. That was the Government’s policy. It is quite difficult to achieve that, I would suggest, without some capacity building—and I was one of the Ministers involved in setting up the Social Enterprise Unit in the department, under the previous Government. The Minister will know about the case of the East Surrey nurses and their attempt to set themselves up as a social enterprise. It is very difficult for people to set up these new forms and organisations without some assistance and capacity building.

Looking at the data, you can see that the voluntary and community sector currently delivers only a tiny proportion of NHS services. The National Audit Office estimated that over 2007-08 PCTs spent less than 0.5 per cent of the NHS budget on commissioning services and support from the voluntary sector. So we are dealing with a minute proportion of the provider side of the NHS when we talk about social enterprises and voluntary organisations. Those sectors cannot grow bigger without some assistance; they have to be given some help; there has to be some investment of resources in capacity building so that they can compete for contracts and provide alternative ways of providing services outside hospital in a community setting. In many parts of the country, they are the big hope for actually producing a set of services which are not based on in-patient care of individuals. We are never going to get to that brave new world without some capacity building. As far as I can see, in their attempt to reassure their coalition partners on the subject of competition the Government may have shot themselves in the foot on this issue.

We need some clarity about what the Government are up to on the subject of the voluntary and social enterprise sectors. Forget the private sector; we need to know how they will grow those sectors, which seems to be their declared aim, without some capacity building and without altering the proportion of services that those sectors provide in the coming years. I would be glad to be reassured by the noble Earl but, as I and ACEVO understand it, the Bill as drafted freezes the proportion. We need to understand from the Minister whether the Government are going to amend it to clarify that position, because it is certainly exercising the outside world.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

My Lords, I, too, am extremely concerned about the provisions within the Bill. How are the Government going to implement the policy as stated in it? Is there going to be a general expansion of the health service, so that they can change the proportions of the private and the voluntary sector? I am concerned that, even in the private sector, there is going to need to be innovation and change. Are the Government going to do that on a one-in, one-out basis? Are they going to say that there can be expansion only in those areas of the country where, at the moment, there is no private sector? Are they going to do the same regarding the voluntary sector?

If there is going to be the development of hospices, for example, we know that one key area of concern for the Government is the whole handling of end-of-life care. I think there is unanimity across this House that hospices, Macmillan nurses and so on are probably the best organisations to deal with end-of-life care. I say this through being involved with an NHS trust: the trust would not want to be taking over those areas of responsibility from hospices. Yet this provision may well mean that there can be no development of hospices in this country and that as we discover areas where there is paucity of provision there may not be the opportunity for development, because it may change the proportion. This seems madness.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, to put completely at rest the mind of the noble Baroness and, indeed, the minds of noble Lords, I assure her that she need have no anxiety. We are coming on to a group of amendments which deal specifically with social enterprise and the voluntary sector. I shall have more to say then, but I want to reassure her at this point.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

My Lords, I might have more to say then too. However, we are dealing with what the Bill actually says and with what the Government said at the end of the pause. They said then that the Bill would “outlaw” Ministers arguing for an increase in the size of the three sector providers—public, private or third sector. That means that they want to preserve aspects of the third sector and of the private sector. However, it also means that it freezes in aspic what is there. I do not think that is in the interests of anyone.

I ask the Minister, so that he can perhaps come forward with replies to this in thinking about the next amendment: what is going to happen to the voluntary sector and social enterprise programme that the department currently runs? It was set up to maximise the extent to which third-sector organisations were able to achieve their full potential. There is also the social enterprise investment fund, which provides investment for social enterprises to start up, grow and develop in order to develop NHS services. There are real rumours that this is being finished and that it will not continue into the future.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

Might the noble Baroness consider more closely the actual wording of Clause 144? It refers to the Minister not being able to choose a variation for the purpose of choosing that variation; it does not in any way rule out the possibility of choosing that variation for the purpose of providing better provision for patients. It distinguishes between a direct political purpose and the purpose of doing what we all want, which is to provide a better service to patients. A great deal of what has been said in this short debate about the effect on the voluntary sector would therefore not stand up to very close and careful investigation.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

My Lords, that is precisely the sort of reassurance and clarity that we are seeking from the Minister. At the moment there is real anxiety out there about this; whether we like it or not, that is the reality, and it is our job to tease out exactly what Ministers mean because they have given different messages about this.

The third area that I ask the Minister to be clear about is the future of the Health and Social Care Volunteering Fund, which is important as a means of supporting volunteering in the National Health Service. All three of those aspects are currently in the Department of Health and I want to see them continue. I would like some reassurance from the Government that they will continue. That would reassure me and, I am sure, people outside that the Government will continue to see the role of the voluntary sector grow in areas where it is most appropriate for it so to do.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the amendments take us to the fundamental issue of who should provide healthcare services. The Government are clear that there should continue to be a mixed economy in which the public, independent and voluntary sectors should all have opportunities to contribute in improving outcomes for patients. Our policy is therefore that services should be commissioned from those providers best able to meet the needs of patients and local communities. This is consistent with the previous Government’s policy as set out in principle 1 of the Principles and Rules for Co-operation and Competition, and we believe that it is commissioners who should be free to decide who can best meet patients’ needs and offer value for money for the taxpayer within a regulatory framework that ensures transparency and protects patients’ interests.

Although that has always been the Government’s position, the listening exercise earlier this year highlighted that some people had genuine fears about the Government’s long-term intentions for the NHS. The NHS Future Forum recommended that,

“the government should not seek to increase the role of the private sector as an end in itself”,

and that additional safeguards should be brought forward, so in another place we tabled amendments to the Bill that created the provisions in Clauses 20, 59 and 144. These prevent the NHS Commissioning Board, Monitor and, when he exercises certain functions, the Secretary of State from acting with the intention of varying the market share of any particular type of provider. Removing this provision from Clause 20 and deleting those at Clauses 59, 10 and 144 would leave it open to the NHS Commissioning Board, Monitor and the Secretary of State on exercising the relevant functions to distort the market in favour of, for example, private providers. We do not think that that would be in the best interests of patients or taxpayers. I hope that that has clarified matters.

[Lord Warner]

I am really puzzled by that. What happens in a big swathe of the country if Monitor or the national Commissioning Board considers that there is a 100 per cent public sector monopoly that is actually slowing down the improvement in services? Does that mean that they cannot, as a matter of policy in order to benefit patients, break that 100 per cent monopoly in a certain part of the country that is public and bring in, say, the East Surrey nurses or whoever as a social enterprise to reduce that 100 per cent to, say, 95 per cent? That would change the proportion of services in a chunk of the country, and that is what I understand competition to mean.

21:45

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, let me explain. Monitor cannot on its own do anything. It cannot drum up competition from thin air even if it wanted to. We will come to that in a later part of the Bill. The aim of these duties is to prevent national policies which aim explicitly to influence market share. The duty would apply in the same way as it does for secondary care—the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, asked that question in the context of primary care. The board may take steps which have the effect of increasing market share in order to meet some other purpose—for example, filling a gap in provision—but the board cannot act with the aim or intention of increasing or decreasing the market share of a particular type of provider. That is the distinction. We are clear that there should be an absolute prohibition on Monitor and the board acting with the intention of varying the market share of a particular type of provider.

[Baroness Thornton]

My noble friend is puzzled and I am too. How will they do that? What mechanism will be used to change the market share?

[Earl Howe]

My point is that either for the board or Monitor to act with a specific view to change the market share for its own sake would run counter to these provisions. However, that does not mean that the market share of the NHS, the independent sector or the voluntary sector could not change. It depends entirely on what is seen to be in the interest of patients. In a particular area of the country, one might find that there was a considerable case for increasing the share of social enterprises in order to meet the needs of patients. That would not be illegal. What would be illegal would be the board setting out with the express intention of expanding a particular sector for the sake of it. That is the distinction here.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

My Lords, could the Government never decide that it was important to increase the share of hospices as part of palliative and end-of-life care?

[Earl Howe]

The board and clinical commissioning groups might well decide that it was important to have more hospices. The question would be: who would provide them? It might be that a charity would provide those hospices. That is fine, as long as the justification is that the expansion in market provision is there to meet the needs of patients and that it is not some covert way to boost artificially a particular sector of the market, unrelated to patient needs. That is the distinction.

The concerns that noble Lords have raised, that these clauses would make it illegal for the department to build capacity in the voluntary and social enterprise sectors, are unfounded. This is neither the intention behind these clauses, nor is it their effect. As I have said, we will debate the third sector in the next group of amendments, but I can reassure noble Lords that we will ensure that procurement practices do not unfairly restrict the opportunities for charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises to offer health and care services. We continue to value and support the many contributions that the voluntary and community sectors play in improving health and well-being for our communities; and there are a number of ways in which we can do that in a tangible fashion. We are already doing this, and the noble Baroness listed a number of the levers that we have at our disposal. I hope that the distinction I have outlined makes sense and that it will therefore reassure noble Lords that the fears they have expressed are groundless.

[Lord Warner]

Can I just be clear that I have understood this? If the national Commissioning Board or the Secretary of State, in pursuance of their duty under the Act to facilitate choice for patients, decided that one important way of expanding such choice was to increase the number of social enterprises and/or voluntary organisations in a particular service sector, would that be permitted under the Act?

[Earl Howe]

It is highly unlikely that that scenario would arise. What could happen is that the board could identify certain services where it felt that competition would serve the interests of patients. Let us take the example of children’s wheelchair services. If that choice offer were created by the board and Monitor created a tariff for those services, it would be up to local commissioners to decide whether to take advantage of that choice offer. There may be instances where that would be a very good thing to do. On the other hand, in other local areas clinical commissioning groups might find that there was no need to create a local market because the services were already adequate. It might be helpful if I write with some detailed examples of how this is expected to work.

The point that I want to emphasise is that the board’s decisions about who will supply particular services could result in one type of provider having a larger market share. That is fine, as long as the intention is to deliver a service that meets the needs of patients in an area. As I say, what is not acceptable is for a conscious decision to be taken to increase the market share of a particular sector just for the sake of it, unrelated to patient need.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, this has been a useful discussion. This clause takes a bit of reading but its meaning is quite clear and it was explained very carefully by the Minister and my noble friend Lady Williams. However, there is one point that I want to raise. I have an old fashioned, perhaps rather simple, view of legislation. When you read it, you should be able to understand what it means. The bit of this clause that is not good in this respect is new paragraph (b). New paragraph (a) very clearly says that the Secretary of State and these bodies cannot discriminate for ideological, dogmatic or general policy reasons in favour of either the public sector or the private sector. That is clearly there because of the concerns that the whole purpose of this legislation is to discriminate in favour of the private sector, as the Minister has explained very carefully.

However, new paragraph (b), which refers to what the Minister described as charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises, refers to,

“some other aspect of their status”.

That is not clear and understandable legislation. I suggest that the Minister thinks seriously about coming back at a later stage and replacing those words with a clear explanation of what the Bill is referring to, which appears to be charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises. If nobody else does so, I shall table an amendment on Report to replace the current wording with those words. However, I would prefer the Government to put into legislation words that ordinary people—or even the sort of extraordinary people who might want to read this legislation when it has been passed—can read and understand, rather than vague words such as,

“some other aspect of their status”.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

The Minister’s comments have been most helpful, so far as they have gone. Taking on board the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, it will be helpful, when the Minister writes in response to this evening’s debate, to stipulate how the new arrangements will differ from what is currently available to commissioning by PCTs or by other groups. The voluntary sector works very well, by and large, with the current commissioning bodies and finds that it is viewed as good quality and value for money, by and large, though not all the time. The difference in the arrangements needs to be clarified in that letter so that people can really understand if there is a difference and where it is, and also to allay the fears which are quite widespread in the voluntary sector, as was stated so clearly by the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, we will come quite soon, I hope, to Part 3 of the Bill, which deals with competition more generally. Much will be revealed at that time, but I can say to my noble friend Lord Greaves that I would be happy, if it would help him, to wrap up the meaning of that particular phrase in the letter which I am going to send on these examples. They are—I ask him to believe me—well chosen words.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his answer. I wish I could say that I now completely understand everything about these clauses, but I do not think that is true. I will read what the Minister has said and look forward to reading his letter. It may be that what we actually need is to have some discussion with the voluntary sector—with ACEVO, NCVO, the Social Enterprise Coalition—so that we, and they, can be completely clear that this is indeed a benign part of the Bill and is not going to affect their work or their future. If the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, thinks that this wording is a bit difficult, just wait until we get to Part 3. I beg leave to withdraw.

Amendment 136 withdrawn.

Amendment 137

Moved by

[Lord Rooker]

137: Clause 20, page 20, line 1, at end insert—
“( ) The Board may take specific action to support the development of the voluntary sector, social enterprises, co-operatives and mutuals as it considers appropriate.”

[Lord Rooker]

If the Minister’s words in the last debate mean anything at all, he will accept this amendment. It is as simple as that. It is his lifeboat. In fact, it is the lifeboat that—nothing personal to the Minister—will stop the team of Ministers becoming a laughing stock for the third sector, bearing in mind what was said last year, which we have heard a little bit about, and what is being done in this Bill. It will also stop them taking the Lib Dems for a ride. I heard some of the most profound words in our debates on the Bill uttered by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, at around 3.30 pm this afternoon, when she deeply questioned once again the motives of the endgame of this exercise. That is what she said; it is very profound and she has said it before. They are words that others have also used. What is the endgame of this process? To stop themselves being taken for a ride, the Lib Dems would do well to accept the amendment too. We have heard about creating opportunities and,

“the largest social enterprise sector in the world”.

Last year, the Secretary of State said there was,

“also opportunity because across government we are going to open up to new providers, and the voluntary sector is at the heart of that”.

That is what he actually said, before this Bill was drafted. I know you can get carried away on conference platforms, but as the Minister you are, at the end of the day, responsible. We have probably all done it, but the fact of the matter is that is what was said, and it could be held to be misleading. The amendment, which has come to me via Social Enterprise UK, is a lifeboat. It does not require anything, it says “may”, and it goes to the heart of what the Minister said about not trying to do it for ideological reasons. Clause 20, as drafted, may be used to prohibit any interventions that support the voluntary and social enterprise sectors. The fact that it can be used for that purpose is bad enough in itself and undermines the point which the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, made earlier on. It would be a disaster. Therefore, the amendment, which has been looked at by those outside, would be of assistance.

Why do we want the amendment? In the previous debate, we heard the well rehearsed arguments for social enterprise and the voluntary sector providing a greater share of public services. They were the implications of the Secretary of State’s words at the conference last year. They are recognised and proven, and it is a trend that crosses all political parties. That point must be taken on board if the credibility of Ministers is to be maintained. Indeed, all parties in the House and next door support the passage of the Private Member’s Bill tabled by Chris White MP that would open up public service markets and require commissioners to consider how they might promote or improve the economic, social or environmental well-being of their local area through contracts. The parties are supporting that Bill in the other place. Are they kidding anyone or are they being genuine about support for a mixed economy, because this Bill, as drafted, could stop the mixed economy and stop any changes? I am not proposing my amendment for ideological reasons.

There are about 62,000 social enterprises in the UK. They contribute some £24 billion to the UK economy, and they need to be treated seriously, responsibly and as adults. Of these, a third operate in the healthcare sector. By the way, I am reliably informed that Circle is not one of them—whatever might have been put over as spin by the Department of Health. Add to that the vast number of voluntary and community organisations that are providing a huge range of health and social care, and you can see that knocking out their continued development—I repeat, continued development—would be a disaster for the market and most importantly for service users.

If there is to be a competitive market, and I do not argue against that, then it can operate only if there is a fully functioning market. We do not have a fully functioning market at present—it is embryonic. That is the difference and that is the point that did not come across in the Minister’s response to the earlier debate. Healthcare markets in England are, by any definition, in their infancy with regard to supply and demand sides. That must be the case as regards this Government, the previous Government and the one before that. Where both supply and demand sides are underdeveloped, I believe that open competition will result in high barriers to entry, limited choice and compromised quality and outcomes. We have seen a few examples of that in the past few years. A small number of large firms will dominate and there will not be the innovation or value that introducing competition is designed to bring about. There has to be another way of looking at this.

Knowledge barriers, capacity barriers and structural barriers put social enterprises, and voluntary and community groups, at a disadvantage. Knowledge and understanding of the social enterprise and voluntary sectors by the public sector has improved but remains particularly weak in the healthcare sector. Without understanding the sector, commissioning may be designed in such a way that precludes its involvement. It will be all right for the smart lawyers to argue about the way it was done, but the consequences are snuffed out before they start. That is the difficulty we are seeking to overcome.

On capacity, we know that a lot of community-based organisations could play, and currently do play, a huge role in improving healthcare through early intervention, community-level delivery, advocacy and behaviour change, but they lack the capacity to engage with competitive tendering, and alternative approaches specifically designed for them can make a huge difference. The Bill as currently drafted may—I repeat, may—prevent commissioners from feeling that they have the power to do this. That is the point. If we had a fully functioning market, the situation would be slightly different.

Structurally, we know from the central Surrey case—as has been repeated several times—and others that barriers to entry can be set structurally too high for many social enterprises. We are not on a level playing field. Not everyone is a big firm or a multinational. That is not the purpose of the exercise, which is to allow 1,000 flowers to bloom in the interests of the patients. That is what it is about. However, the fact is that the entry level can be set structurally too high for many social enterprises and voluntary organisations that lack the ability to raise the same levels of capital as private organisations but are often better placed when it comes to quality of care. That is the other side of the balance. They reinvest their profits into the organisations, which means that their balance sheets always appear less strong. It is an inevitable consequence but a strength when it comes to service delivery.

The Bill must make provision for the continued development of these groups and certain interventions need to be made; without this we will not see the realisation of a truly plural ambition for these reforms. As has already been said, where would we be without the hospice movement, community drug and alcohol projects, the range of mental health work and so on? The innovation and user-centred services will disappear to the detriment of all. The multinationals do not come with that ethos to start with and what is really wrong with Clause 20 is that it assumes an already existing level playing field where there is an established mixed market. I challenge that assumption which underlines this clause and, although I would not dream of questioning him personally, I challenge the Minister that if he is serious about what he said in answer to the last debate, he must be prepared to come back with something in the Bill which does not snuff out social enterprise in the way that this Bill, currently structured, will do. I beg to move.

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I speak in support of my noble friend Lord Rooker’s amendment. I pose a couple of questions and add a couple of facts for the Minister. I will not repeat what I said on the previous group of amendments. I speak from two perspectives; first, as a former chairman of a number of voluntary organisations competing for public service contracts; and, secondly, as the former Minister involved in the setting up of entities at the centre to facilitate the growth of social enterprises and voluntary organisations to participate in NHS service provision.

I want to mention some of the things which were set up at the centre because you could not rely on people at local level to actually provide this kind of help to the voluntary and social enterprise sector. Can the Minister say whether these initiatives will continue in this brave new world we are going into? The first one was the Department of Health voluntary sector and social enterprise programme, which was set up to maximise,

“the extent to which third sector organisations are able to achieve their full potential”.

That was a central unit aiming to help people to develop their capacity. There was the social enterprise investment fund, which provides investment to social enterprises to start up, grow and develop in order to deliver NHS services. The third I would mention is the health and social care volunteering fund—both the local and national programmes—which supports volunteering in health and social care.

Those are three areas where an initiative had to be taken well away from the local level to ensure there was some capacity building of social enterprises and voluntary organisations. If those are disbanded in the guise of leaving it up to clinical commissioning groups, it is very difficult to see how those sectors will be able to participate.

Now briefly, I turn to my experiences as a chairman of voluntary organisations. Voluntary organisations simply do not have the capacity to go at risk for entry into new markets without some guarantees. They often do not have the working capital or access to loan facilities because there is no guarantee of the revenue streams that would fund those loans. Unless they happen to have very large reserves, which many do not, they cannot easily enter that market without a big brother to help them over their first steps. I cannot see how we can move in this direction without an amendment of the kind that my noble friend has proposed, and which has backing it some capacity to help these sectors grow when the need arises rather than just leaving it all to clinical commissioning groups.

I hope that the Minister can give us some reassurances about how that capacity-building capability can continue to be preserved and developed because, if it is not, we will see a growing volume of partnerships between the private sector and the voluntary sector, because they have the capacity to borrow money and provide the working capital to help those organisations to play their role in developing services in the NHS.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

My Lords, I, too, support the amendment. It is critical that the Government are clear as to how they will support and enable the voluntary and community sector to participate in ways that we know, from experience, are valuable to the National Health Service. In my previous intervention, I mentioned the three parts of the DH which the Minister referred to as levers. It is important that he is clear with the Committee that those parts of the Department of Health will remain, and that the financial contribution put into the fund will continue in order to support the capacity building and the ability of the voluntary sector to put in bids.

The problem is that the Government's rhetoric has not so far been followed through in action. I take, for example, the work programme, which came not from the Department of Health but from the Department for Work and Pensions. Serious commitment was given in the House that significant parts of the work programme would be contracted to the voluntary sector. This simply has not happened. In most of it, the voluntary sector was a very lowly partner. I must say that the organisation I am involved with in the north-east, which is now the largest voluntary organisation in the north-east, is a lowly partner with others in the work programme. We have not signed anything, because we cannot afford to go into it unless we get more than what is left after everyone else has taken their cut, because we are at the bottom, committed to work with only the most disadvantaged, who are therefore the most difficult to get into work. It is six months later, and we are not yet anywhere near agreeing to go in with the other groups. We have to cover our costs.

It is very important that the Government do not follow the same route in the health service. I know that that will be done locally, which the work programme was not, but it is very important. I also have experience through the voluntary organisation on negotiating on detox facilities and facilities for addicts. It has cost us an enormous amount to finally be allowed to provide the service. Because we are providing a unique service and no one else in the National Health Service in the region is following what is called the recovery method, rather than methadone and so on, we have decided that it is worth pursuing that. I must tell the Minister that, were we not such a large organisation, we would struggle. Were we not therefore so prepared to continue to work on it, it simply would not happen. It is vital that the Government give the voluntary sector much more reassurance than they have to date in these areas. Accepting my noble friend’s very good amendment would be one way to do that.

22:15

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

The noble Lord will know that the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has in it some very serious considerations about how to build up the voluntary sector and indeed build up the whole relationship of the community to the National Health Service. However, in all fairness, from the very beginning the Minister has talked a great deal about the role of the community and about the way in which the National Health Service can become more open to patients, or more open to those local community forces that can assist it in bringing out the best possible outcome for patients. With respect, it is a little unfair for the Opposition to talk as if that had not happened.

Indeed, if one looks closely at the motivation of the Bill—it is well known that I have considerable reservations about some aspects about it—one of the aspects that I like the most is the quite clear commitment to the idea of the National Health Service being in partnership with local authorities, health and well-being boards, and the healthwatch system and so forth. All of these organisations are new and all are about involving citizens, voluntary organisations and community organisations in the best possible delivery of healthcare. I have to say that the highly centralised control that was exercised in the early stages of the Labour Government, and indeed right up until 2007, really is quite strikingly different from the attempt to decentralise and create partnerships between local authorities, citizens’ groups and the National Health Service itself.

With great respect, the Minister would be quite fair in saying that he has tried to make the point, in almost all the debates that we have had on this issue, of the importance of the voluntary sector and of the community that can protect and help the National Health Service. Although I would readily agree that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has made some very important and germane points which should be addressed, I do not want to give the impression abroad that somehow the Government are less keen on the voluntary sector than the Labour Government were in their day.

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, would the noble Baroness accept from me, as someone who was this great centraliser sitting in Richmond House, that we actually set up these capacity-building capabilities for social enterprise in the voluntary sector, in response to those sectors’ concerns about their inability to make headway locally and enter the market to provide services in those areas? That was not a centralising tendency on our part. It was actually a response to people saying to us that we needed more capacity-building capability at the centre because it was not being provided at the local level.

[Baroness Jolly]

My Lords, I can give an example of where it has been provided. Today I have been talking to the operations director of Peninsula Health Care. That was the provider arm for the Cornwall PCT which was providing community hospitals and community services, and which is now a community interest company as of 1 October 2011. It has already brought across all the arrangements that it has with its local authority; Section 75 and so on, shared budgets for equipment, and all sorts of innovative work alongside.

The whole thrust of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, was part of our manifesto, it was part of the coalition agreement, and I feel quite comfortable about supporting it.

[Lord Mawson]

My Lords, I am very sympathetic to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for very practical reasons. I am building a street at the moment in Tower Hamlets, and part of that street is not only a new school but a new health centre, which has been under development for five years. The health centre proposals were begun in the previous Government’s time in office. It is true that the Bromley-by-Bow Centre, when competing for that practice, was not on a level playing field. It is very difficult to compete with a multinational company that could undercut the price per patient to £75 per head, when I, having run an integrated health centre for 20-odd years, knew that the real costs were probably around £119 per patient and that the £75 per patient was not sustainable. It was very interesting going through the whole of that process, of proper competition and then losing the competition, to three years later, when I was approached by that company which admitted that the business plan did not work and asked whether we could help rescue the situation, which we have now done, and the multinational business has now withdrawn. I know that there is a problem here that we need to get our heads round, and I know and believe that the Government are serious about wanting the social enterprise sector and the voluntary sector to play their full role. It is a practical problem that needs to be got hold of.

The other thing that I know from experience is that bureaucracies like to talk to bureaucracies. I know that large government departments often find it easier to talk to large businesses. Indeed, we have seen this happen over many years. I am in favour of the private sector. We work a lot with the private sector, and I do not think that it is a case of one of the other. However, I have noticed how easily civil servants translate across into large companies, with the bureaucracy carrying on under other names, and organisations that are leaner and more innovative sometimes find it very difficult to break in. Therefore, if the Government are really serious about allowing some of us who do this work but are smaller in scale to break into this market and grow in capacity, then something will need to happen here to help that.

I also know from experience that one way in which we have grown in capacity is by forming relationships with one or two businesses. They have got to know what we are about and we have got to know what they are about, and we have formed partnerships and grown opportunities together. As I mentioned earlier, a £35 million LIFT company has now built 10 health centres. When we formed that relationship, which is a bit like a marriage, we got to know about each other’s worlds. We are now in a social enterprise with that business carrying out landscape work on 26 school sites. Therefore, there are things that government can do.

In my experience, some businesses are becoming more intelligent about this, although some businesses are not. The Government should be using their muscle to encourage businesses to form these local partnerships. If they do not do that, the danger will be that the profits made in poorer communities will be sucked out of the area, rather than there being virtuous circles around the areas creating more jobs and opportunities in local contexts. Therefore, I am sympathetic to the amendment. I would encourage the Government to look again at some of the practical issues and how they work in practice on the ground.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, for centuries what is now termed the voluntary or charitable sector was the main provider of health services in this country. It is a common view across your Lordships’ House that the sector must be encouraged to play a growing part in the provision of services, partly because it has a track record of innovation, is less inhibited by cumbersome regulations, and perhaps, as I have said on a previous occasion, is a little less risk averse than public bodies tend to be and obviously less motivated by the profit motive than the private sector necessarily has to be.

Surely it is common ground that we want to see a thriving voluntary sector, and I credit the Minister with sharing that aspiration. The trouble is that the Bill does not help him to do that. At best, this clause is neutral in its attitude towards the voluntary sector and, at worst, it will conceivably endanger the realisation of that aspiration. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, pointed to the curious phrase in paragraph (b), seeking some elucidation, which we may get. However, as it stands, that paragraph could easily be interpreted as referring to the charitable and voluntary sector and as placing that sector at a disadvantage because it would be brought within the scope of the provisions of the clause, which would prevent any positive discrimination—if I might put it in such terms—in favour of that sector. That may not be the intention but it would appear to be very likely to be deemed to be the outcome.

There are already significant inhibitions, as a number of your Lordships have pointed out. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, referred to the central Surrey experience, where a £9 million performance bond was requested from a social enterprise which clearly was not able to provide it. Incidentally, I contrast that with the financial position of Circle, which had a £45 million pre-tax loss in the year prior to the award of a contract to it and apparently very little relevant experience in running a hospital facility. However, it was awarded a contract. It would be interesting to see what criteria would be applied in future cases of that kind, whether to social enterprises, enterprises purporting to be social enterprises, such as Circle, or other enterprises. Be that as it may, there are clearly considerable difficulties for the social enterprise sector. Social Enterprise UK in its briefing, which no doubt some of your Lordships will have had, points out that the clause could also prevent the continuation of policies such as the Social Enterprise Investment Fund, which helped to support social enterprises in their endeavours.

The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, bravely interposes herself between the raging Opposition and the beleaguered Minister—as he appears to deem himself—but for what purpose I really cannot quite understand. Nobody is doubting his bona fides; the question is whether the legislation reflects his intentions. The very best that can be said of the clause which the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, seeks to improve is that it creates a neutral situation. However neutrality, like patriotism, is not enough in this context. If we want to support the sector then we have to recognise the disadvantages with which it starts and not go for a simple level playing field on the assumption that all parties on the field are equal. We have to prepare the ground to assist this particular sector. At the moment, I do not think that the Bill provides for that.

The amendment does not require the board to favour the sector. I might have gone along with it had it done so. It provides the option for the board to assist the sector in making its particular and distinctive contribution to the provision of health services and removes what would be a substantial obstacle to that happening. This clause reflects a positive attitude to a sector that needs that kind of support. I therefore hope that the noble Earl will accept the suggestion made by my noble friend Lady Thornton in the earlier debate and hold some kind of discussion with representative bodies such as ACEVO, which is clearly concerned. The chief executive of ACEVO was a member of the Future Forum and his views should be taken very seriously. There are other organisations, some of them already in the field providing services, which clearly have an interest in this. The hospice movement, which has been referred to, is a very good example. A meeting convened by the Minister would be very helpful in that respect.

Social enterprises are perhaps slightly different from traditional third sector organisations. They are essentially a new form of enterprise in this field and again they ought to be represented at such a discussion. At the very least, I cannot see what the Minister would have to lose by accepting the noble Lord’s amendment. It does not impose a positive requirement. It does not prevent other parties being involved in undertaking work or competing for the provision of services in this area, it merely provides for a third option. If that is consistent with the Minister’s approach I cannot see what the Government have to lose by accepting it. It certainly is no reflection on his intentions, as I am sure the noble Lord would confirm and as I have repeatedly said. I therefore hope that the Minister can respond positively—if not tonight by simply accepting the amendment, which would be the easiest and most preferred course for many of us, then at least by entering into discussion with a view to assessing the degree of difficulty that the sector fears would arise from this provision. We could then see on Report whether we might amend the clause something along the lines of—if not on the actual lines of—what the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has proposed. That would meet the wishes of all Members of this House to see a thriving sector contributing in that mixed-economy provision to which we all subscribe.

22:30

[Lord Mawson]

My Lords, I would certainly be willing to help with this. It is one thing to talk to representative bodies: that is fine. However, the Government might find it helpful to talk to individuals who have dealt with the nitty-gritty, practical realities of the situation, and who may have practical insights that could help the Minister with some of these issues. I would be willing to suggest one or two people if that would be helpful.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I have had a lot of helpful comments in the debate and very much welcome the chance to reiterate the Government's support for the work of the voluntary and community sectors. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, is absolutely right; these organisations have a very important role to play both in the provision of support to patients and their families, carers and communities, and increasingly in the provision of services. It is right that the NHS Commissioning Board and clinical commissioning groups should be able to provide funding to support them in this work. The noble Lord suggested that the effect of the Bill would be to snuff out the third sector. I assure him that that is not so.

I will quickly clarify the effect of the duties relating to market share. We want the NHS to operate around the needs of patients. That is why patients’ interests are at the heart of the Bill. Healthcare services should be commissioned on that basis and not on the basis of who is providing the care. This will not prevent a range of work that may go on to support the voluntary sector where it does not directly provide healthcare services. I believe that the Bill goes further than any previous legislation to remove barriers standing in the way of a fair playing field. I do not and will not shy away from our commitment to see a vibrant third-sector market in the NHS.

I will provide a little detail and flesh on the bones. The Bill already provides the board and clinical commissioning groups with the power to make payments through loans and grants to voluntary organisations that provide or arrange for the provision of similar services to those that the board will be responsible for commissioning. This power mirrors the power that the Secretary of State has under Section 64 of the Health Services and Public Health Act 1968, currently exercised by strategic health authorities and primary care trusts. The power would not apply only to service provision. The board and clinical commissioning groups may also want to fund work that will assist in the effective commissioning of services. For instance, the board may provide funding to voluntary organisations with particular expertise in the provision of support to people with rare specialist conditions to guide its approach to commissioning those services. Grants and loans of this sort will support innovation and vibrancy in the health sector and we want to encourage this.

I reassure the noble Lord that we expect that the NHS Commissioning Board and clinical commissioning groups will also continue to uphold the principles set out in the compact. This remains a key agreement between the state and the voluntary sector. Local commissioners should make every effort to engage their voluntary and community partners in discussion on priorities and the allocation of resources, working in a way that is transparent and accountable to local communities. I know that that is already happening at the level of pathfinder CCGs.

The noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, chided the Government by saying that their rhetoric had not been followed through into action. I say to her that voluntary sector grant schemes are still in place. These are the innovation, excellence and service delivery fund, the strategic partner programme, opportunities for volunteering and the health and social care volunteering fund, under the collective umbrella of the Third Sector Investment Programme. The total value of this for the current year is £25 million. It will continue in 2012-13, which will ensure the continued support of its member organisations to build their capacity and capability to make high-quality and responsive contributions to support health and well-being in our communities. A £1 million financial assistance fund opened on 20 December last for organisations that make a significant contribution to health, public health and social care, but which are most at financial risk. In addition, the department contributed to the Office for Civil Society’s transition fund.

As I say, the department greatly values the voluntary sector’s contribution and our ongoing support for the grant funding programmes through this year recognises the increased role of the sector in helping us renew our efforts to build strong, resilient communities and improve health and well-being outcomes. What I cannot precisely do at the moment is say how much money will be available next year. Decisions about budgets for 2012-13 will be made in due course and we will work within the principles of the compact in making those decisions.

I hope that what I have said has served to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, that we are serious about this and indeed I hope he will accept from me that nothing in the Bill interferes with our purpose to support this important sector. Our policy is that services should be commissioned from the providers best able to meet the needs of patients and local communities. That is the key. Unfortunately, the wording of his amendment, if taken literally, would run counter to that principle, which is why I am afraid I cannot accept it, but I hope he will find some comfort in what I have said.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

Can the Minister say a word or two about the building up of capacity, which seemed a very important element in the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and whether there will be any other method by which the capacity of the voluntary sector could be developed and increased?

[Earl Howe]

I have already outlined a number of funds that are held centrally to enable that to happen. That is happening at the moment. I am pleased to say that we have had very encouraging take-up of those funds. The Social Enterprise Investment Fund has been in place for some time. What I cannot do at the moment is say how much money will be available next year. A lot of these funds will continue in the next year and we will be making announcements in due course. However, we are clear that there is a role for this type of lever to ensure that social enterprises and voluntary sector organisations can be supported in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, indicated was important—and I agree with him.

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, if this was in the Bill, no one would have to take any notice of it at all. That is the reality. I am very grateful to those who have supported my amendment. There will be plenty of people in the sector watching the debate, metaphorically and reading Hansard, who will wonder what on earth we are doing. I realise it suits the Government to have this embarrassing debate on the twilight shift because that is very inconvenient for them. To be honest, I did not hear anything from the Minister that showed that he took on board the central points I made. Notwithstanding his answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, I will test the opinion of the House on this.

22:38

Division on Amendment 137 called. Tellers for the Contents were not appointed, so the Division could not proceed.

Amendment 137 disagreed.

Amendments 137A and 137B not moved.

House resumed.

House adjourned at 10.43 pm.