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Oral Answers to Questions
(13 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
1. Whether he has made an assessment of the effects of reductions in local authority funding for libraries.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)
The provision of library services is the responsibility of local authorities but my Department keeps in close touch with them. Indeed, my officials have met representatives from seven local authorities to discuss their proposals.
Kate Green
Trafford council is withdrawing its mobile library service and axing 15 library staff, and it wants volunteers to run Old Trafford library in my constituency. Does the Minister agree that the expertise of professionally qualified library staff is important in getting people reading and improving literacy and English language skills, particularly in the most disadvantaged communities?
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
My hon. Friend and I are privileged to represent Oxford constituencies, and Oxford county council is managing to keep all 43 public libraries open notwithstanding a difficult financial settlement. Is not the reasonable inference that some local authorities have elected to make deep cuts in front-line services simply to make a political point and that it is perfectly possible, if local authorities put their minds to it, to keep libraries open?
Mr Vaizey
My hon. Friend makes a valid point. Local authorities have challenging decisions to make, and my approach is to give them the space and time to make those difficult proposals. Local authorities are going about their provision differently but all have a strong commitment to their library service, and the Government are also strongly committed through maintaining the statutory duty.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Is the Minister aware that some very hard-pressed local authorities up and down our land have already put libraries in children’s centres to dual use? Now that the opening hours of those Sure Start children’s centres are being cut back, people are losing their libraries as well. Will he talk to other Ministers about this matter?
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
Will the Minister accept an invitation to come to the brand-new Canada Water library, which was designed and planned by a Liberal Democrat-Tory coalition administration but continued and opened under a Labour administration? Both groupings running the council have agreed that there will be no closures across the borough and have sustained services. Will he come and see what can be done when the will is there?
Mr Vaizey
I would be delighted to visit that library, and I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for highlighting what cross-party consensus on libraries can achieve. It is worth reminding the House that although we tend to focus on library closures, it is also worth focusing on the fact that more than 40 libraries are opening or being refurbished across the country.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
Libraries are places of great benefit to our country, educationally, culturally and economically, but Government cuts to local authority budgets have placed 600 of them at risk of closure. If they close, they will be lost to our communities forever. What does the Minister believe are his full responsibilities when it comes to protecting Britain’s libraries?
Mr Vaizey
I am sure that the House will join me in congratulating the hon. Gentleman on the award of his MBE for his distinguished military service.
My responsibility for library services extends to England, as it is a devolved matter in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I have a responsibility to superintend the library service, and local authorities have a statutory responsibility to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service. Unlike the previous Government, we are not putting that statutory duty under review.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
2. What steps he is taking to increase the participation of women in sport.
The Minister for Sport and the Olympics (Hugh Robertson)
Sport England is investing £480 million in 46 national governing bodies between 2009 and 2013 to grow and sustain participation. This approach is entirely inclusive and encourages opportunities for everybody to participate in sport regardless of their gender. Sport England also funds the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation to provide specialist advice and support to national governing bodies.
Tracey Crouch
I congratulate the Minister on all that he and his Department are doing to increase participation levels, but does he agree that while women’s sport accounts for only 5% of all sports coverage, the profile of sports women will remain so low that not only will talented athletes not make it on to award lists, such as the BBC sport’s personality of the year, but many of our best role models will be totally anonymous, thus making it harder to inspire and encourage women and girls to participate in sport and physical activity?
Hugh Robertson
Yes, I do agree with my hon. Friend. One of the encouraging things is the opportunity that next year’s London 2012 Olympics presents to showcase the talent that exists among women, as well as male athletes.
Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)
But is not school sport the bedrock of participation, and should it not be a priority? If so, why have the Minister’s Government cut spending on school sports by 64%? Is that not sending the message that school sport no longer matters?
Hugh Robertson
The first point is that, as the right hon. and learned Lady should know, this Department is not responsible for school sport, which is funded by the Department for Education. What my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has championed personally is a school games competition that is intended to drive up participation across both genders.
Ms Harman
The Minister talks about driving up participation, but will he tell us how he will monitor how much sport young people are doing in schools when he has scrapped the school sports survey? As his Government have cut the school sports partnership, it is even more important that we know what the effect on participation in sport is. [Interruption.] Is it not remarkable that Ministers are sitting there saying, “It’s nothing to do with us”? They really should be making an impact on Ministers in other Departments to ensure that they support school sport across the whole of Government.
Hugh Robertson
I am afraid the right hon. and learned Lady is mistaken. The policy responsibility for school sport lies with the Department for Education, and she should know that all too well. This Department is playing its part by introducing a new school games competition. That has been extraordinarily successful, with 11,000 schools now signed up. We will also produce a new measure for those aged 16 to 24—precisely the point at which we take responsibility for young people—among whom participation has been falling year on year for most of the last 10 years.
Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
3. What recent assessment he has made of the potential role of supporters in football governance. [R]
The Minister for Sport and the Olympics (Hugh Robertson)
The Government’s response to the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport’s football governance inquiry sets out a number of recommendations for increasing supporter representation and ownership at football clubs. In their response, the Government have challenged the football authorities to determine the best way of achieving the right changes, and we will be a key partner in those discussions.
Tom Greatrex
I thank the Minister for that reply and declare my interest as the founder of the Fulham Supporters Trust, notwithstanding our result last night, which demonstrates that we are not the only people who have had a bad week in Europe. I am sure that he will be aware of the proposals published by Supporters Direct on football club licensing. Will he encourage the football authorities to engage with Supporters Direct, in line with his comments about the inquiry by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee and his Government’s response to it, to ensure that supporters have a role in football governance in the future?
Hugh Robertson
Yes, I will certainly do that. I am delighted that the premier league still funds Supporters Direct after the events of last year. The football governance reform strategy is about getting the key parts of the front end of the process right—the reform of the Football Association board, the link between the board and the council, and the new licensing system. As part of that licensing system, we expect those concerns to be addressed.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
I do not know whether the Minister is familiar with that great football club AFC Bournemouth, which is due to enter the premier league in the next decade. Until that happens, Bournemouth, along with other non-premier league clubs, continues to struggle financially. What more can be done to encourage a greater distribution of wealth in English football?
Hugh Robertson
The distribution of, broadly, the broadcast moneys that go into the premier league and football league is, of course, a matter for those leagues. However, we expect the governance of football to allow for a proper distribution of those moneys. I think everybody across the House is agreed that there is a considerable distance to go before that is achieved, but I hope that it will be as part of this process.
John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
4. What recent discussions he has had with the Football Association on football governance.
The Minister for Sport and the Olympics (Hugh Robertson)
The Secretary of State and I continue to meet the Football Association, the Premier League and the Football League collectively to hear their progress on the reforms that the Government have called for in their response to the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport’s football governance inquiry. The football authorities have until the end of February to come forward with their proposals.
John Mann
The Football Association is significantly more enlightened than either UEFA or FIFA when it comes to tackling racism in football. Would the Minister be prepared to meet the all-party group on anti-Semitism and community groups such as Community Security Trust, the Holocaust Educational Trust and Searchlight to listen to our concerns about what more the Government, the FA and UEFA can do to tackle the potential for racism at the Euro 2012 championship?
Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
Will the football governance report that the Minister talks about include football agents, because those parasites took £210 million out of the game in the last three years from the premiership alone? Just imagine how that money could be spent within the game, including on football in schools, if it was used properly instead of lining the pockets of these spivs.
Hugh Robertson
Off the top of my head, I cannot remember whether the Select Committee report includes a specific element on agents. As part of the new licensing fee, however, that is exactly one of the issues that we would expect to see addressed.
Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)
5. What plans he has to support the tourism industry in 2012.
The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
Next year represents the biggest opportunity in our lifetime to profile the British tourism industry, and we have announced the biggest ever international and domestic tourism marketing campaign designed to attract an extra 4.5 million visitors to the UK in the years that follow the Olympics.
Esther McVey
Continuing the sporting tourism theme, next year the Royal Liverpool golf club will welcome the women’s open golf championships with the first ever women’s day, so we will be developing tourism through our exceptional golf facilities while also ensuring youth engagement and celebrating women’s success. I would like to extend an invitation to one of the Ministers to come along.
Mr Hunt
I congratulate the Royal Liverpool golf club, and I would be delighted to attend—diary permitting. I agree with my hon. Friend that sport is a massive driver for tourism. Two million people come to this country every year to watch or play sport. I hope that sport in Liverpool will be helped by this week’s announcement of a new local TV station for Liverpool, on which I am sure my hon. Friend will be an early honoured guest.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
What is the Secretary of State doing to support the tourism industry to attract more people to smaller conurbations like Halton, which has the excellent Norton Priory museum and the Catalyst science centre, which is currently struggling. What is he doing to attract more people to the, shall we say, less obvious tourist areas?
Mr Hunt
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. It is part of our commitment—and, indeed, his party’s commitment—to make sure that next year benefits the whole country and not just big cities like London. We have announced that next year we will have the biggest ever campaign to boost the domestic tourism industry, including a nationwide promotion of a 20.12% discount for hotel rooms booked in 2012. I urge him to encourage hotels and attractions in Halton to take part in that promotion, which is a big way to get people to take a holiday at home, as there is so much to see here next year.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
I thank Ministers for their visits to Dover to promote the castle, the white cliffs and the fine view we have of France. Should it not be a particular priority that we promote tourism in our coastal towns?
Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)
Many tourists visiting this country earlier this month would have been horrified when they turned on their television sets in their hotel room only to find a highly paid public presenter advocate that British citizens should be taken out and shot in front their families. What does that say about the future of Britain and what kind of message does it send to the rest of the world?
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
6. What progress his Department has made on the roll-out of rural broadband; and if he will make a statement.
The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
Eight local authorities have moved to the procurement stage for the roll-out of rural broadband. I will write to all local authorities this week to tell them that as a condition of receiving public funding for their rural broadband programmes, we will need them to move to procurement by the middle of next year and to have signed a contract for the roll-out of broadband by the end of next year in order to make sure that we have the best superfast broadband in Europe by 2015.
Julian Smith
North Yorkshire is making good progress in its procurement process, but EU procurement rules make it very slow, which is frustrating for many businesses and constituents. What message would my right hon. Friend give them? Will he commit to coming and launching the north Yorkshire pilot once the procurement process is complete?
Mr Hunt
I would love to, as I recognise that north Yorkshire has gone further faster than many parts of the country and the £18 million grant that it received has helped that. We have tried to make the European regional development fund rules simpler to enable local authorities to tap into them for their rural broadband programmes. I would certainly be happy to help my hon. Friend and every local authority speed up the process of getting these contracts signed.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
May I urge the Secretary of State to look very closely at his definition of rural? Many areas that look urban, such as former mining constituencies, actually feel very rural in relation to broadband because businesses still need fast broadband but, because of the contention rate, find it very difficult to get a decent service.
Mr Hunt
The hon. Gentleman is right. Let me reassure him that our commitment is to 90% coverage of superfast broadband for the whole country. We talk about rural broadband because that is where there are particular challenges, but we are not forgetting semi-rural areas. We want it to apply to the whole country and, indeed, we want our cities to go even further with a faster broadband offering, as announced by the Chancellor in the autumn statement.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
I commend the Minister on this initiative but, as he explained, it still leaves perhaps one in 10 households and premises without the prospect of faster broadband. What consideration has he given to the contribution that could be made by innovative wireless technologies, such as the WiBE—or wireless broadband extender—designed by the British business Deltenna in Chippenham, to improving broadband using mobile spectrum networks in rural areas?
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Wireless and mobile solutions will be very important in dealing with that final 10%. We are strongly encouraging local authorities, as part of their broadband plans, to come up with a way of reaching that 10%, even if it is not the same mechanism by which we reach the 90%. The kind of technologies he talks about might well have an important role to play.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
7. What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for the Home Department on the system for granting work permits and visas to foreign professional musicians performing at concerts in the UK.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)
I have had no such meetings but the arts sector, my officials and the UK Border Agency meet every quarter as part of the arts and entertainment taskforce to have such discussions.
Kerry McCarthy
The Minister might be aware that on 6 December some Congolese musicians who had been working with Damon Albarn and Oxfam on a project were refused entry to the UK to perform at Rough Trade Records. I appreciate that there was some confusion about the type of visas they needed to apply for and about the process, but can anything be done to make it easier? It is a valuable, worthwhile project, and it is a shame that they were not able to perform.
Mr Vaizey
I thank the hon. Lady for giving me notice of her question and for the good work she does to highlight the issues for musicians coming into the UK and for British musicians who wish to travel abroad. My understanding is that those musicians applied for a tourism visa when they should have applied for an entertainment visa, which applies even if someone is performing pro bono. I would happily take any recommendation she has to improve the website and pass it on to colleagues at the Home Office. I shall also ensure that it is discussed at the next arts and entertainment taskforce.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Will the Minister join me in congratulating the UK Border Agency in processing 95% of all non-settlement applications within three weeks, while acknowledging that many applications are dealt with far faster than that?
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
9. What plans his Department has to increase participation in sport.
The Minister for Sport and the Olympics (Hugh Robertson)
Sport England is investing £480 million in 46 national governing bodies between 2009 and 2013 to grow and sustain participation. In addition, we have introduced the new Places People Play lottery-funded legacy programme and will be launching a new sports participation strategy aimed at 16 to 25-year-olds in the new year, to ensure we create a real lasting sports legacy after London’s games.
Damian Collins
Sportsmen and women need to have confidence in the governing bodies of the competitions they play in. Will the Minister send a message to FIFA that following the resignation of Mr Havelange from the International Olympic Committee, Sepp Blatter can and must allow the publication of the Zug court report into the $100 million bribery case involving FIFA officials and International Sport and Leisure—that is, ISL?
Hugh Robertson
I shall certainly do that, but I should warn my hon. Friend that I am not sure that FIFA pays a great deal of attention to what we say any more.
Mr Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South) (Lab)
The Minister knows that one of the main reasons we won the Olympics was our promise on the participation rates, but the target of involving 2 million more people in sport and physical activity has been dropped. I have the greatest respect for the Minister, but further to his earlier answer on school sport, what discussions has he had with the Department for Education about the cuts in school sports and school sports co-ordinators?
Hugh Robertson
No one who is involved in sport wants to see money go out of sport, but the question completely overlooks the economic backdrop that sits behind that. If Opposition Front Benchers are seriously going to say that the level of funding that has been invested in school sport against an economic backdrop in which £120 million is paid out in debt interest payments every day can be maintained, they should tell us what else in sport should be cut instead. I have not heard a single constructive suggestion of that sort.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Will the Minister welcome the National Football League’s efforts to increase the amount of American football played in this country—not at the taxpayer’s expense? Also, what position in an American football team would he play?
Hugh Robertson
I think I should honestly say that that is slightly outside my area of competence, but I would of course welcome any efforts in that regard, particularly efforts better to educate Ministers.
Mr Speaker
The fact that something is outside the area of competence of a Minister has never stopped a Minister before, but there we go.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
The person who launched the school games was the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport—it was not the Department for Education. Ministers have been using the figure that one in five children are involved in inter-school competitive sport, and they will know that that figure comes from the PE and sport survey that is carried out in schools every year. That figure is measured on the basis of children taking part in nine competitive sport events against other schools in a school year. We know from what the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said in a Westminster Hall debate that that is not an ambitious target. How is the Minister going to measure the impact of the school games on increasing participation in competitive sport? Is the benchmark nine times in a school year or more?
Hugh Robertson
Let me answer this in two parts. First, a number of schools want to sign up, and I am delighted to say that we have got 11,000 schools signed up, which I am sure the hon. Gentleman would welcome. On the part of the equation for which this Department is responsible—the cadre of people from 16 to 25—we will make an announcement in the new year.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
I recently visited the Desborough indoor bowling club, which has benefited from an investment via the landfill tax, and I was pleased to see a large, enthusiastic and mainly retired membership. At the other end of the age spectrum, what can the Department do to encourage the participation of retired people in sport?
Hugh Robertson
The next round of whole sport plans will have a concentration of young people, particularly those aged between 16 and 25, but that is not exclusive. I probably ought to be slightly careful about how I say this but for sports such as bowls, which might appeal more to those at the other end of the spectrum, it would be entirely within the remit of the new whole sport plans for the bowls governing body to put in a plan that drives up participation at that level.
Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)
10. What assessment he has made of the potential effects on communities of the closure of local libraries.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)
It is very important that local authorities take into account the needs of their local communities when assessing their comprehensive library provision. That is why I have written to all local authorities to remind them of that.
Chris Evans
What message does the Minister have for Caerphilly borough council, which wants to close Aberbargoed library in the face of opposition from residents and local councillors who want to save that vital community resource?
Mr Vaizey
As the hon. Gentleman knows, the duty to superintend the library service is devolved to the Welsh Government. What I would say to Caerphilly borough council, which I believe is led by Plaid Cymru although there is no overall control, is that I am delighted it is investing in its library service and that it has opened or refurbished six of its libraries.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
Hunmanby library will stay open if volunteers man it, but will the Minister intervene to assist with at least a part-time library presence from North Yorkshire county council to enable it to put a business plan in place in the interim?
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
11. What assessment he has made of the potential legacy of the London 2012 Olympics for children and young people.
The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
There is a cross-party commitment to use the games next year to have a lasting sporting legacy for young people. That will partly be through the school games, which my hon. Friend the Minister for Sport and the Olympics has talked about, as well as through the extraordinary sports facilities that will be built next year and a new youth sport strategy that is designed to boost participation among young people, which we will be announcing in the new year.
Julie Hilling
I saw first hand the real difference that a school sports partnership was making to the participation rates and, indeed, the performance of young people in Bolton West. Now that it has gone, how will the Secretary of State ensure that my constituents benefit from the Olympics?
Mr Hunt
Some school sports partnerships did an excellent job but, overall, participation among young people fell under the last Government—it has fallen from 58% to 54% over the last four years, three of which were under the last Government. That is why we are looking at the whole business of how we reduce the drop-out rate among people leaving school, so that we can have more people who have sport as a habit for life, including in the hon. Lady’s constituency.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
12. What recent discussions he has had with the organising committee for the 2014 Commonwealth games on disabled sports.
The Minister for Sport and the Olympics (Hugh Robertson)
The sports programme for the 2014 games is being determined by the Glasgow organising committee in consultation with the Commonwealth Games Federation and the International Paralympic Committee.
Jonathan Edwards
My constituent Jemma Morris is an aspiring paralympian in archery, and the county of Carmarthenshire has high hopes that Jemma will fly the flag for Wales next autumn. She will reach her sporting prime in the Commonwealth games in 2014; however, there will be no archery competitions for disabled sportspeople. Will the Minister raise the issue with the Commonwealth Games Federation so that disabled archers are able to showcase their skills on the global stage?
Hugh Robertson
I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman’s constituent is in the GB squad, but I visited the paralympic archery squad at Lilleshall last year, so I may have met her. The position with the paralympic mix in the Commonwealth games is that four sports are necessarily included, and the local organising committee is allowed to select another four. I suspect the problem may be that Glasgow has not selected archery. Clearly, since this is a devolved issue, my remit over the Glasgow organising committee is limited, but I will certainly raise the issue when I next see the Commonwealth Games Federation.
Mr Speaker
Well, the inquisitive appetite of colleagues in respect of substantive questions appears to have been exhausted. I call Mrs Sharon Hodgson. She is not here. We move on to topical questions.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
This week we announced the first cities that will be getting licences for local TV. They are Belfast, Birmingham, Brighton and Hove, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Grimsby, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Plymouth, Preston, Southampton and Swansea. We hope to award a further 40 licences in the following year.
Kate Green
Ministers are aware of the considerable concern that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs’ treatment of VAT on five-a-side league football is causing businesses such as the Trafford soccer dome in my constituency. What steps can Ministers take to support this popular sport and ensure that it continues to thrive?
Mr Hunt
The hon. Lady is from a constituency with fantastic sporting traditions. We want to do everything we can to get more young people playing sport next year of all years. If she supplies us with more details, we will happily make representations to the Treasury, although it is a very difficult climate in which to get concessions on things such as VAT.
Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
T2. Two of my constituents, Audrey Cole and Colin Maddever, live in Doddy Cross, where there is no broadband. Superfast broadband is being rolled out across Cornwall, but these constituents still have to use expensive dial-up, which is frustratingly slow, blocks their incoming calls and increases costs. Furthermore, there are many farmers in that area who have to file their VAT returns online but find that they are unable to do so. What message of help does the Minister have for the 33% of people in South East Cornwall who have no broadband access at the moment?
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point very powerfully. There are still 250,000 homes in this country with no broadband access at all. We are absolutely committed to making sure that we deal with that problem by the end of this Parliament, which is why we have announced very ambitious plans. Cornwall, like the rest of the country, is being asked to submit a broadband plan that deals with all the broadband “not spots” as well as providing superfast broadband to 90% of its residents. I hope very much that at the next election my hon. Friend will be able to go back to her constituents and say that the problem has finally been addressed.
Tessa Jowell (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
Today the Indian Olympic Association meets to condemn Dow Chemical’s controversial sponsorship of the 2012 Olympic stadium wrap. Will the Secretary of State join me in reaffirming the Indian Olympic Association’s view that a boycott of the Olympics would merely make Indian athletes the innocent victims of the ongoing controversy caused by the continued debate about liability for the Bhopal gas disaster and ensuing contamination? However, have the Government carried out a risk assessment of Dow Chemical’s sponsorship of the 2012 stadium? If not, will he commit to doing so and sharing the results so that an agreed course of action on a cross-party basis can be taken to mitigate any assessed risk of the sponsorship?
Mr Hunt
Of course I welcome what the Indian Olympic Association has said about a boycott. As the right hon. Lady will know, boycotts are illegal under the Olympic charter. With the greatest respect to her, because of the enormous role she has played in the 2012 project, she is a member of the Olympic board and shares some responsibility for all the decisions that have been made. We look to her to play a constructive role in resolving this difficult situation, not exacerbating it.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
T3. Two weeks ago Transparency International cut its ties with FIFA. The corruption watchdog objected to the lack of independence in FIFA’s new outside governance committee and to the fact that its remit will not extend to allegations of past wrongdoing. What pressure will the Minister and the Football Association exert so that we can shine a light on the serious allegations of systemic corruption at FIFA both past and present?
The Minister for Sport and the Olympics (Hugh Robertson)
We will do everything we can, both internationally through our European counterparts and elsewhere, to ensure that FIFA becomes what we all want it to be: a properly transparent and accountable body that is capable of fulfilling the remit it is supposed to have to govern the global game.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
T7. It is some time since John Robb of Louder than War approached me about the problems musicians have when trying to get visas to tour the United States, and we brought a delegation to see the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), who has responsibility for culture. Will he update the House on the progress being made in talking to the Americans about this and, in particular, whether we can persuade them to look at reciprocal arrangements and adopt measures similar to those that we have here whereby organisers of big events can help to facilitate the visa process?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)
Officials from my Department have had constructive discussions with the United States embassy, which has taken on board our points, and those discussions continue. Obviously the US will continue to want to implement its regulations, but it has heard the hon. Lady’s concerns via my officials and we are continuing a constructive dialogue with the US.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
T4. I very much welcome my right hon. Friend’s announcement of local television and the greater media diversity that it will bring and note with interest the impressive list of cities involved. Crawley finds itself on the cusp of two television regions, so may I put in a bid for it to be considered as a future centre for local television?
Mr Hunt
I am sure that Crawley would be an excellent place for a local television station and that my hon. Friend would make a very good contribution to it when it happens. Our plans for superfast broadband, which we talked about earlier, mean that it will be possible to launch a local television station in Crawley with no transmission costs by the end of this Parliament, so I hope that he encourages local media groups in his constituency to take advantage of it.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
Further to the Secretary of State’s earlier answer to the hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey) on tourism, has he made any regional assessment of the number of visitors likely to visit the UK regions as a result of inward tourism for the London Olympics and the jubilee celebrations next year? In particular, has he had any discussion with the Welsh Assembly on how we can attract additional visitors to my area?
Mr Hunt
Because of the way the 2012 project has been constructed, with the progress of the torch relay across the whole country, including it spending a significant amount of time in Wales, and because of the cultural Olympiad, which is happening across the whole country, we are absolutely determined that next year will be a bumper year for tourism in all parts of the country. We have a big domestic tourism marketing campaign, which is fully supported by Visit Wales, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will encourage businesses in his constituency, which has some particularly beautiful scenery, to take part in that promotion to encourage more people to have a holiday at home next year.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
T5. In my constituency, we are busy pioneering the “Stroud Special” train, which is designed to take up the slack on the route from London and to encourage people to come and benefit from Stroud’s hugely impressive environment, pubs and all the rest. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a good initiative, which certainly justifies infrastructure expenditure?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (John Penrose)
Of course, we encourage any organisation—any local tourism body—to lay on the kind of facilities and product offerings that my hon. Friend describes. It is absolutely essential that we secure better local marketing and ownership of the local tourism visiting experience, and I am glad to hear that Stroud is leading the way.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
The Radio 1 programme “Introducing…in Scotland” has helped launch the careers of fantastic Scottish artists such as Paolo Nutini, Calvin Harris and Frightened Rabbit, yet it is threatened with cancellation. Campaigners are coming to London on Monday to deliver a petition to Radio 1, and the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) has kindly agreed to meet them, but does he agree that it is exactly the kind of programme that we need in order to introduce new British music talent to the British public?
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
T6. Many constituents have contacted me with their concerns about the increase in spending on the Olympics opening ceremony. Will the Minister take this chance just to explain the extra value that we will receive for that money?
Mr Hunt
With pleasure. We expect that 4 billion of the world’s 7 billion people will watch the opening ceremony, which will be the biggest single opportunity in our lifetime to showcase this country, its history, its culture and its tourism to the whole world. I want it to be of great benefit in places such as the Peak district and my hon. Friend’s constituency, and that is why I went to the east midlands and had a very positive session with the local tourism industry on how it can harness the amazing opportunities that we will have next year.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
When Lord Coe decided that Dow Chemical was a suitable ethical partner for the Olympics, was he aware that earlier this year, in May, it had been blacklisted by the Indian Ministry of Agriculture for five years for bribing officials to get the chemical Dursban fast-tracked before the growing season—a chemical that has been banned in the United States for some years because of its health risk to human beings?
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
T8. The Olympics are a real opportunity to boost tourism in the UK. Will my right hon. Friend say some more about his plans to spread the benefits of tourism to, in particular, the north-west of England?
Mr Hunt
That is why next year we will have the biggest ever marketing campaign to encourage people to take a holiday at home. It is designed to encourage the whole UK not to take for granted what we have on our doorstep. I know that my hon. Friend has great local stories, such as the Pendle witches, which he would like the whole country to find out more about, and next year is the moment to do so.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
What discussions has the Olympics Minister had about the security implications of the cuts to police funding and the changes to control orders, which will allow very dangerous people back into the capital in the months leading up to the games?
Hugh Robertson
We have had extensive consultations with the Metropolitan police and all the security agencies about security for London 2012. The Metropolitan police assistant commissioner with responsibility for that area, Chris Allison, gave a presentation to the organising committee before the passage of the recent London Olympic and Paralympic Games (Amendment) Bill, and the Met has raised no such concerns.
Mr Don Foster (Bath) (LD)
May I thank the ministerial team and the Opposition parties for their support for my Live Music Bill, which passed through its entire Committee stage yesterday? There are, however, fears among some residents associations that it will reduce protections against noise and antisocial behaviour. Will the Minister confirm that that is not the case and that, although we wish to see an explosion of live music in small venues, we want to continue to protect residents who live close to pubs and clubs?
John Penrose
May I join everybody in the House in congratulating my right hon. Friend and, indeed, his compatriot Lord Clement-Jones at the other end of the corridor, who have been instrumental in guiding the Bill through both Houses so far? I can reassure him, as he said, that protections for local residents and local residents groups will be maintained as they are.
Mr Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South) (Lab)
If it is right to cut the school sports budget by £162 million, a 60% cut, why is it right to double the budget for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympics from £40 million to £80 million?
Hugh Robertson
In a sense, the hon. Gentleman has answered his own question. The two figures are in no way comparable. The amount of money that goes into school sport—[Interruption.] I have to say to the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) that even she might have worked out that £160 million each year is a great deal more than £40 million once.
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sure that the House wants to hear the question from Dr Thérèse Coffey.
Dr Coffey
Thank you, Mr Speaker. Tomorrow is the deadline for schools to register for the Get Set network, part of the Olympic legacy that can cover every school in our land. Will the Minister encourage children, parents and teachers to ensure that their schools are registered and take full advantage of the values and benefits on offer?
Hugh Robertson
I most certainly will. More than 20,000 schools up and down the country have now signed up to the Get Set programme, and I absolutely encourage every school across the country to do likewise. It is also great news that another 11,000 schools have signed up to the school games project, and I encourage many more to do that.
Brandon Lewis (Great Yarmouth) (Con)
1. What recent assessment he has made of the Government’s e-petitions website.
The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)
Since the launch of the site, more than 3.2 million signatures have been submitted. The signatures and the debates that have stemmed from them have shown that we are indeed building a successful bridge between people and Parliament. Last Wednesday, I gave evidence to the Procedure Committee on the e-petitions system. I look forward to reading the views of the Committee when it publishes its report.
Brandon Lewis
I thank the Leader of the House for that answer. Will he outline how the Government are taking account of views in forming policy from the e-petitions, particularly given the excellent news in the autumn statement following the fantastic campaign run by my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) on fair fuel prices?
Sir George Young
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Six petitions have gone through the 100,000 threshold, of which four have been debated. The Hillsborough debate, one of the best that we have had this Parliament, obliged the Government to clarify their policy on the documents that they held. My hon. Friend referred to the autumn statement following shortly on from the debate on fuel, secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon). We have also had two debates on extradition and the Government have undertaken to have a look at their policy on extradition.
Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
I joined the Leader of the House in giving evidence to the Procedure Committee investigation into e-petitions and their short-term future. The Committee will shortly produce a report on the future of e-petitions. Will the Leader of the House guarantee that any short-term proposals for e-petitions will not be imposed on the House without a debate and vote, to avoid the problems that we had in introducing e-petitions in the first place?
Sir George Young
It was a pleasure to give joint evidence to the Procedure Committee last week with the hon. Lady. The Government would not want to impose any new arrangements on the House without going through the usual process of consultation. I await with interest, as I am sure she does, the outcome of the Committee’s deliberations, when we will see its proposals about how we handle e-petitions in future.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
The Leader of the House and you, Mr Speaker, will know that the big green bag on the back of your Chair is for citizens of this country to petition their Parliament to do something. Given that precedent, should not the e-petitions initiative be to Parliament, and not to the Government?
Sir George Young
That question was put to me by the Procedure Committee last week; my hon. Friend might like to read the response that I gave. The coalition Government made a commitment to introducing an e-petitions system. At the moment, it is run by the Government and the moment a petition reaches 100,000 signatures, I transfer it to the Backbench Business Committee, which considers whether the petition should have an opportunity for debate. That can take place only if the petition is then sponsored by a Member of Parliament. We have a system unlike the previous one, which ended at No. 10 and went nowhere. The system that we now have ensures that the petition does reach Parliament once it has gone through the threshold.
Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
2. What representations he has received on whether correspondence between hon. Members and their constituents is subject to parliamentary privilege.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)
My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has received no representations other than in the course of the Westminster Hall debate on the Bill of Rights, led by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), to which I responded. As I said then, although Members’ correspondence may be subject to qualified privilege for the purposes of the law of defamation, the House has never sought to assert that such correspondence is a proceeding in Parliament. Therefore it is not protected under article 9 of the Bill of Rights.
Stephen Phillips
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that answer. He will be aware of the recommendation of the Joint Committee on the draft Defamation Bill that correspondence between Members and their constituents should clearly be the subject of qualified privilege. It is critical that our constituents can correspond with us freely and frankly. I hope, therefore, that he can assure the House that the Government will bring forward legislation in that regard.
Mr Heath
I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend. The Government will examine that recommendation in making their response to the Joint Committee, of which he was a distinguished Member. I hope to update the House shortly on our related work on the draft parliamentary privilege Bill.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I rather agree with the hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) about parliamentary privilege and Members’ correspondence. In the wider context, the concept of parliamentary privilege is in a bit of a mess. We are relying on rather antiquated concepts at the moment. In the light of what has happened this year, when I believe that many witnesses, in giving evidence to two Select Committee, have lied to Parliament, I suggest that we now need a criminal offence of parliamentary perjury for when people lie to Parliament.
Mr Heath
The courts have always recognised the right of each House of Parliament to regulate its own affairs. I accept that there are legitimate questions about the House’s enforcement powers and the punishments available to it. It is right to look afresh at whether the powers of each House are appropriate. That is part of the work that we are doing to bring forward a draft Bill on parliamentary privilege. If the hon. Gentleman is a little patient, he will see shortly that we are considering that matter.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
Further to an answer that I received in September, in which the House of Commons Commission said that it costs the public purse a further £1.5 million for us to come back for the two-week September sitting, is it not time that we looked carefully at the programme of sittings of the House so that we are not constrained—
Mr Speaker
Order. I do not wish to be unkind to the hon. Lady. I am sure that her question is of great importance to her and possibly to others, but it suffers from the disadvantage of bearing absolutely no relation to the question on the Order Paper.
John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
3. How many hours of business he plans to allocate to (a) general debates on subjects determined by the Government and (b) Back-Bench or private Members’ business in January and February 2012.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)
My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will announce the business for January and February 2012 in the usual way, during business questions on a Thursday.
John Mann
It is obvious to all of us that this coalition has run out of steam when it comes to legislation and everything else. Given that many Back Benchers on both sides of the House have good and sensible proposals for legislation, why does the Leader of the House, instead of bed blocking debating time, not give us the opportunity in January and February to bring forward that legislation?
Mr Heath
What a load of nonsense. I am afraid that I do not agree. Over the past two weeks, the House has had the opportunity to debate important and topical issues, including the economy, Europe and immigration. This afternoon, thanks to the Government’s establishment of the Backbench Business Committee, the House will debate financial education in schools, an issue that has received more than 100,000 signatures on the Government’s e-petition website. I believe that this Government have placed Parliament back at the centre of our national life.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
Thank you for your indulgence, Mr Speaker. Again, September sittings will cost £1.5 million. Is it not time that the House moved its sittings so as not to cost the public purse an extra £1.5 million?
Mr Heath
There is a slight sense of déjà vu about that question. This is matter that the hon. Lady ought to put to the Procedure Committee, which is currently looking at the calendar of the House of Commons. She will be able to present her case to that Committee, and we look forward to its report in due course.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
Despite this being the longest Session in post-war history, the Government’s legislative programme is a shambles. While we twiddle our thumbs in the Commons, the Lords are taking apart the Government’s ill-conceived, badly drafted and mean-spirited welfare reforms. Just yesterday, the Government’s policy of imposing a bedroom tax was defeated by an all-party alliance that included a former Conservative Secretary of State for Social Security. Is it not time that this Government listened to reason, dropped the more punitive parts of the Welfare Reform Bill and instead built a genuine consensus to make real progress on welfare reform?
Mr Heath
I make no apology for Bills receiving proper scrutiny in both Houses of Parliament, and we are committed to that. When legislation is receiving that scrutiny in the other place, it is right for us to wait until it has finished its deliberations, listen to what it has to say and then, in due course, address it in debate in the normal way.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
4. What plans he has for future pre-legislative scrutiny of Government bills.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)
The Government recognise the value that pre-legislative scrutiny can add and are committed to seeing more measures published in draft. This week the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), published for pre-legislative scrutiny draft measures on the recall of MPs. In addition, so far this Session we have published draft measures on Lords reform, financial services, defamation, the detention of terrorist suspects, individual electoral registration and electoral administration, civil aviation and a groceries code adjudicator. The Government expect to publish further measures in draft this Session, including on parliamentary privilege.
Diana Johnson
As my hon. Friends the Members for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) and for Bassetlaw (John Mann) have indicated, the Government’s legislative programme has ground to a halt. Would it not be sensible for us to spend some time scrutinising the draft Detention of Terrorist Suspects (Temporary Extensions) Bills now, rather than wait and debate them in a hurry when we are faced with an emergency?
Mr Speaker
Expecting patience from the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) might be a triumph of optimism over reality, but I leave that question for the House to consider.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
6. How many apprentices are employed in the House of Commons service.
John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)
There are currently no apprentices employed by the House service, although two are employed by Parliamentary Information and Communications Technology as software developer apprentices. The last group of three apprentices in the Parliamentary Estates Directorate completed their training in 2010 and have subsequently been appointed to permanent posts. Catering and Retail Services has offered a two-year apprentice chef scheme, but there have so far been no successful applicants. The House service is keen to employ more apprentices and continues to take steps to do so.
Robert Halfon
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Will he take further steps to work with the charity New Deal of the Mind and support and encourage other MPs to employ apprentices in their own offices?
John Thurso
I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for that suggestion. Employment by MPs is not a matter for the Commission, of course, but certainly the House will do everything it can to assist in such efforts. I am sure that as he has put the matter on the record, colleagues will be aware of his very sensible suggestion.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
7. Whether he has considered bringing forward proposals for the Third Reading of a Bill in the House of Commons to be taken after its consideration by the House of Lords.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)
Any Bill first published in this House must currently pass through all its stages, including Third Reading, before it is sent to the House of Lords. We are aware of the suggestions made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), but the Government have no plans at present to bring forward proposals to change the current arrangements.
Dr Huppert
Currently, Members in this House are forced to decide on a Bill when it is not in its final form, and in many cases Government amendments have been promised that we have yet to see. Does the Deputy Leader of the House agree that the primacy of this House would be strengthened if our Third Readings always happened last, and will he consider how that could be brought about?
Mr Heath
I understand the principle behind my hon. Friend’s question. No Bill can become law until this House has agreed to all its provisions, including any amendments proposed by the House of Lords to a Bill first published in this House. I am not sure that I immediately see the value that would be added by a further general debate on a Bill, but I advise my hon. Friend and my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark that if they wish to pursue the matter, it should perhaps be considered by the Procedure Committee and by the other House.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
8. What progress he has made on implementing the coalition agreement commitments on parliamentary reform.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)
Since taking office, this Government have made substantial progress on implementing the coalition’s commitments on parliamentary reform, which have helped to make the House more effective, transparent and accountable. Measures have included establishing the Backbench Business Committee, launching the e-petitions system and transferring responsibility for Members’ pay and pensions out of our hands and into those of the independent regulator.
Working with the Deputy Prime Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), we have also piloted a public reading stage for the Protection of Freedoms Bill, published proposals to allow the recall of Members of Parliament and started work to establish a commission on the West Lothian question. We will also shortly bring forward proposals on how we will proceed with the draft parliamentary privilege Bill.
Harriett Baldwin
There certainly has been a great deal of parliamentary reform. One commitment in the coalition agreement was to establish the West Lothian commission. A written ministerial statement on 8 September said that that would happen in the weeks following October, but certainly by the end of the year, so exactly when will we get that commission?
Mr Heath
I should first congratulate the hon. Lady, who since her election has demonstrated her commitment to this issue, not least during the passage of her private Member’s Bill, the Legislation (Territorial Extent) Bill. As she correctly says, the coalition programme for government set out our commitment to establishing a commission to consider the West Lothian question, and my hon. Friend the Minister who has responsibility for political and constitutional reform updated the House in a written statement in September. The Government intend to publish the make-up and terms of reference of the commission shortly.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
The Deputy Leader of the House obviously could not list all the Government’s parliamentary reform achievements because that would take up a great deal of parliamentary time. One that he missed was the commitment to introduce a Business of the House Committee. When will that happen, and what process will the House undertake to scrutinise it? Will he define “shortly” if he uses that word in his response?
Mr Heath
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Time simply does not permit us to set out all the important reforms that this Government have introduced to the House, and there is much still to be done. One of those things is the establishment of the House Business Committee. We are clearly committed to doing that during the third year of this Parliament, and are happy to ensure that that is the case. We are looking forward to introducing proposals after we have listened to those on both sides of the House who have an interest in the matter.
Petition
Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)
I have the pleasure and honour of presenting to the House the petition of Ian Coleman and ex-service personnel in Blackpool on the subject of war memorials. It incorporates more than 3,000 signatures, which Mr Coleman and his colleagues in Blackpool have collected.
The petition states:
The Petition of Ian Coleman and ex-service personnel in Blackpool,
Declares that the nation’s war memorials and their surroundings should be treated as special places and respected in a manner which befits those whose lives they commemorate.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to ensure the protection of war memorials via a more rigid enforcement of existing laws or by bringing forward new legislation to ensure that war memorials are adequately protected.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P000992]
Business of the House
(13 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week and a bit of next year?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)
The business for the week commencing 19 December will be:
Monday 19 December—General debate on apprenticeships.
Tuesday 20 December—Pre-recess Adjournment debate. The format has been specified by the Backbench Business Committee.
Colleagues will also wish to be reminded that the House will meet at 11.30 am on 20 December.
The business for the week commencing 9 January will include:
Monday 9 January—The House will not be sitting.
Tuesday 10 January—Second Reading of the Local Government Finance Bill.
Wednesday 11 January—Opposition day [un-allotted day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.
Thursday 12 January—Motion relating to a statutory code of practice for pub companies, followed by motion relating to parliamentary representation.
The subjects for these debates were nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.
I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 12 January will be:
Thursday 12 January—Debate on the Home Affairs Committee report on “The Landscape of Policing”.
May I take this opportunity to wish you, Mr Speaker, the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) and all right hon. and hon. Members a very happy Christmas and new year, and thank all those who have kept the House running smoothly during the year, including the Clerks, the Officers and staff of the House, the Doorkeepers and the cleaners? A merry Christmas to all with peace and good will.
Ms Eagle
Many of us are incredibly relieved that we have finally spotted a Government Bill arriving in the House, even if we have to wait until next year to see it. May I take this opportunity—the last business questions before Christmas—to echo the Leader of the House’s Christmas wishes? I wish you, Mr Speaker, your Deputies, the staff of the House, the Leader and Deputy Leader of the House, and all Members and their staff a very happy Christmas and contented new year.
The House rises on Tuesday. The Government will no doubt be tempted to slip out as much bad news as they can in the last hours when they think that no one is looking. With 27 written ministerial statements on today’s Order Paper alone, can the Leader of the House assure me that any announcement of significance will be made as an oral statement to this House?
Last week, I said that the Prime Minister was isolated in Europe, but I did not know then quite how alone he would end up. Last Friday, the Deputy Prime Minister was apparently firmly behind the Prime Minister’s premature use of the veto at the European Council, saying that he was fully signed up to it. A few hours later, as his own party erupted in outrage, he let it be known that he was “bitterly disappointed” by it. He claimed that he told the Prime Minister that his actions were bad for Britain.
As the Prime Minister came to the House to make a statement, his Deputy got into a gigantic sulk, went to the gym and then straight on to Sky News to moan about his own Government before drowning his sorrows at the Ministry of Sound. The Business Secretary was apparently furious with the situation. The Scottish Secretary has publicly denounced the Prime Minister’s use of the veto and the Energy Secretary has claimed on the Floor of the House that in Europe
“if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”—[Official Report, 12 December 2011; Vol 537, c. 574.]
On Tuesday, all Liberal Democrat Ministers and Whips, including the Deputy Leader of the House, and five members of the Cabinet refused to support a motion congratulating their own Prime Minister. The Ministerial Code says:
“The principle of Collective Responsibility…requires that Ministers should be able to express their views frankly in the expectation that they can argue freely in private while maintaining a united front when decisions have been reached.”
What a joke. Is it not the case that in this Government, the Liberal Democrats have got it completely the wrong way round? They argue in public, but in private they will not stand up to the Tories no matter how much the Prime Minister humiliates them. Will the Leader of the House now confirm that the Prime Minister does not need to get a doormat for Christmas because he already has one?
While the Deputy Prime Minister hosts a European re-engagement event for business, the Prime Minister is busy fomenting opposition to the deal to appease his Eurosceptic Back Benchers. Will the Leader of the House tell us when the Prime Minister is going to amend the Ministerial Code so that it more accurately reflects the cynically choreographed “licensed dissent” which is becoming more obvious by the day?
Unemployment has risen this week to well over 2.5 million, which is the highest level for 17 years and includes more than 1 million young people, who are now in the growing dole queue. The Employment Secretary spent yesterday saying that the figures had stabilised, but the Prime Minister told his party last night that
“2012 will be the worst since the 1980s”
On Tuesday, the Justice Secretary admitted that Britain was facing
“a long period of youth unemployment.”
Will the Leader of the House tell us why the Government have resigned themselves to a long period of high youth unemployment and a wasted generation? Instead of planning for this, would the Government not be better doing everything they can to stop it by adopting Labour’s five-point plan for jobs and growth, which would give 1 million unemployed young people some hope for an otherwise bleak 2012? Should not the voters of Feltham and Heston reject this do-nothing Tory pessimism and vote for Labour’s excellent candidate in today’s by-election?
As Christmas approaches, many of us are racking our brains to think of appropriate gifts for friends and family, but with the Cabinet it is very simple: flip flops for the Deputy Prime Minister; a shredder to be shared between the Business Secretary and the Minister of State at the Cabinet Office; and an espresso machine for the Justice Secretary so that he does not doze off in the Chamber again.
I was having trouble thinking of ideas for the Prime Minister until I discovered the Eton college online gift shop, where I found a very appropriate gift for him: “decision dice”. For those who are not familiar with the finer gifts available from the Eton college catalogue, the dice are described as:
“The ideal gift for the indecisive or those who just can't make up their minds.”
They are presented in a stylish chrome box engraved with the college coat of arms. For just £14.75, the dice are the ideal present for a Prime Minister whose U-turns this year have included: the sale of England’s forests; cuts to school sports; anonymity for those accused of rape; and the scrapping of the office of the chief coroner.
I know that the Leader of the House with his usual gallantry will be trying to think of a gift for me. May I tell him that all I want from him for Christmas is the date of the Queen’s Speech?
Sir George Young
I am not sure that there was a lot there about the business of the House, but let us have a go.
The hon. Member for Wallasey welcomed—I think—the announcement that a Bill would be given its Second Reading after the recess. I remind her that the House is not simply a legislation factory. We are not going to make the mistake that the last Government made of imposing too many ill-considered, ill-drafted Bills on the House. The Chamber has other things to do: the Chamber is here to hold the Government to account, to debate matters of national interest, and to represent the views of Members’ constituents, and we are determined that it should have adequate time in which to do those things.
The hon. Lady spoke of written statements being rushed out before the recess. It was precisely in order to avoid making the mistakes made by the last Government and to avoid a last-minute rush that 27 written statements were issued today, days before the House rises.
As for our being isolated in Europe, on my way to the House I just happened to see a headline in The Independent which read “EU 26 fight to stop pact unravelling”.
In response to the hon. Lady’s lengthy thesis on relationships, I simply make the point that the relationship between the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister is stronger than the relationship between Tony Blair and the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, who were members of the same party. [Interruption.] Several autobiographies chronicle the weak relationship between Tony Blair and the then Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The unemployment position has indeed stabilised, as the hon. Lady will see if she reads what was said in the House yesterday by the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). It can be found in column 844 of Hansard. My right hon. Friend told us that in the last month employment had risen by 38,000 and unemployment by 16,000, that the youth unemployment figure had remained static, that the jobseeker’s allowance claimant count had risen by 3,000, and that the number of people who had stopped claiming incapacity benefit and income support as a result of the Government’s welfare reforms was 10,000. The figures cover only one month, but they do show some signs of stabilisation in the market.
The hon. Lady referred to today’s by-election. I hope that voters in Feltham will use it as an opportunity to reveal whether or not they approve of the stand taken by the Prime Minister last week, and I hope that, if they endorse it, they will go out and vote for the Conservative candidate.
The hon. Lady said that her Christmas wish was to know the date of the Queen’s Speech. I admire her bravery, because it was not until 5.30 pm on Tuesday this week that the House was informed of the business for the following day, Wednesday, when the Opposition held a one-day debate. The Opposition give the House less than a day’s notice, and the hon. Lady wants me to give the House months’ notice of the date of the Queen’s Speech.
Observing who is sitting next to the hon. Lady, let me end on this note. Like the leader of her party, the shadow Leader of the House has a sibling who is also a Member of Parliament, and whom I welcome to the Front Bench. According to an interview with the shadow Leader of the House and her sister, published earlier this year,
“they haven’t had a… row in decades.”
The hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) said
“we do know how to be with each other. It doesn't mean you can’t disagree, but you know—you’re sisters”.
Given that admirable expression of family affection, I wonder whether the hon. Member for Wallasey might be able to give the leader of her party some advice on how to manage relationships.
Mr Speaker
Following those stellar performances from the shadow Leader of the House and the Leader of the House, may I gently remind colleagues that we are focusing on the business of the House for next week and the beginning of 2012?
Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
May we have an urgent debate on the activities of parking enforcement companies—particularly Citywatch and Securak—which could be likened to demanding money with menaces, racketeering and extortion? May I make a final plea on behalf of a constituent? Toyin Lawal’s car was pinched by Citywatch from a car park that it was not even licensed to patrol, and it wants eight grand to give it back to her. I want the police to go round and get her car back off these criminals.
Sir George Young
My hon. Friend’s constituent is fortunate to have such a proactive Member of Parliament championing her interests in the House. He might know that legislation has now gone through making it illegal to clamp cars on private space. I think that it comes into effect in March next year.
Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
There is only one full year before the Government have to introduce proposals on the establishment of a House business committee. Will the Leader of the House therefore consider early next year establishing a time-limited Select Committee like the Wright Committee, on which he and I served, to consider proposals for what such a House business committee would look like? It could inform the Government and the House on how to move forward.
Sir George Young
I am grateful to the hon. Lady, who reminds the House of the commitment in the coalition agreement to establish such a Committee by the third year. She has proposed one way of implementing that commitment. There might be other ways, but I can assure her that I am actively considering how we deliver on that commitment, and at the appropriate time I would very much like to involve her in those discussions.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
Christmas is a time when we think about the most vulnerable not only in the United Kingdom but abroad. Although Syria is not Libya, does my right hon. Friend agree that we need an urgent debate to discuss Syria and to ensure the end of the killing of thousands of innocent men, women and children?
Sir George Young
I understand my hon. Friend’s concern. I cannot promise a debate before the House rises, although there is the pre-Christmas Adjournment debate on Tuesday. I shall pass on his concerns, however, which are widely shared on both sides of the House. We have made clear our view that the President should step aside in the light of what is going on and allow a democratic Government to take over. I shall pass on his concerns to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Leader of the House arrange for an early debate before the House rises on the importance of buying goods made in the United Kingdom? There are about 10 days of shopping before Christmas and we have a £30 billion trade deficit with China. I have conducted an experiment that shows that it is possible to buy presents made only in the United Kingdom, or, at a push, Britain and Europe. May we have a campaign and debate to get people to buy things made here, because it provides employment for young people and creates jobs?
Sir George Young
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who has already launched such a campaign with his questions. I hope that all those tuned in will do what they can to promote jobs and prosperity by, where possible, buying goods made in the UK. On the trade deficit with China, he will know that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and many Cabinet members have made repeated visits to China to promote inward investment and to help companies based in this country to win export orders from China, so we hope to make progress in reducing the trade deficit between the two countries.
Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
May we have a debate on the Portas report into our towns and cities, particularly recommendation 9, which states that in-town car-parking charges are too high, act as a deterrent to in-town shopping and should be abolished? Unless that debate is soon, will he circulate that recommendation to all Labour-led local authorities so that they know that their anti-car policies are putting local shops out of business?
Sir George Young
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who might have seen the written ministerial statement accompanying the publication of the Portas review earlier this week. There were several recommendations, some of which were aimed at local authorities, particularly the one to which he referred, and others of which were aimed at the Government. The Government will respond in the spring to the recommendations, and in the meantime I shall ensure that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government is aware of my right hon. Friend’s strong views about the disincentive effect that high parking charges can have on the prosperity of high street shops.
Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
Has the right hon. Gentleman seen early-day motion 2527, standing in my name and those of several other hon. Members, which expresses revulsion at the murder by Israeli soldiers of a peaceful demonstrator, Mustafa Tamimi, at whose head they fired point-blank a tear gas canister, and following which they manhandled his grieving sister?
[That this House expresses its revulsion at the deliberate killing by Israeli soldiers of Mustafa Tamimi, aged 28 years, while the Palestinian was taking part in a peaceful demonstration at Nabi Saleh on Friday 9 December 2011; notes that an Israeli soldier specifically and deliberately aimed a gas canister at Mustafa Tamimi's head, which hit him point-blank inflicting horrific injuries; further notes that these Israeli soldiers blocked access to an ambulance, pushed around Mustafa Tamimi's sister, who was deeply distressed by her brother's appalling injuries, and laughed and gloated at her; and calls for international action, rather than mild remonstrances, to prevent further Israeli murder of innocent Palestinians.]
Is he aware that at the funeral, Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and sewage through hoses at mourners? Will he ask the Foreign Secretary to tell the Israelis that they have to stop this sadistic thuggery, which no doubt they will resume again tomorrow?
Sir George Young
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his question and for raising that issue. He may know that there was a debate in Westminster Hall yesterday on Government policy on Israel, which would have been an appropriate opportunity to raise the matter. Given that he might have been unable to be there, I shall of course pass on his concern to the Foreign Secretary and ask him whether, if appropriate, representations might be made to the Israeli ambassador.
Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
This House welcomed the Arab spring. May we have a debate in the new year on the Arab winter? I am referring to the Bedouin of Palestine-Israel, 30,000 of whom, or thereabouts, face the prospect of being removed in the new year from lands that they have occupied from before the formation of the state of Israel. This is ethnic cleansing and apartheid. Let us debate the Arab winter.
Sir George Young
The answer I give my hon. Friend may be the same as the one I have just given to the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman). There was an opportunity to raise the issue in the House of Commons yesterday, in Westminster Hall. We have arranged fairly regular debates on north Africa, the middle east and Afghanistan. I hope that there will be other opportunities in the new year to have similar debates, which will provide my hon. Friend with a platform to raise the legitimate concerns that he has just brought to the attention of the House.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
May we debate the Russian winter? I am not referring to the weather; I am referring to last week’s elections, which were profoundly corrupt. All who went to witness the elections say that there was massive vote-rigging. In Chechnya, for instance, 95% of the vote came in for Mr Putin’s party, despite the fact that everybody noticed massive vote-rigging. May I also suggest gently to the right hon. Gentleman that he take this matter up with his colleagues? There are Members of this House who sit on the Council of Europe in the same grouping as members of Mr Putin’s party, and there is no reason why we should hide from the fact that there has been corruption in Russia. We need to ensure proper democracy.
Sir George Young
The hon. Gentleman will have seen the protests in Russia over the weekend about the conduct of the election. I am not sure whether this gives him any satisfaction, but I understand that President Putin has ordered a review of how the elections were conducted, although one should perhaps not set too much store by that. I shall draw the Foreign Secretary’s attention to the concern—I suspect shared by those on both sides of the House—about the conduct of the elections and, again, see whether appropriate representations might be made to the Russian ambassador.
Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
Small and medium-sized businesses in my constituency have very much welcomed the Chancellor’s announcement of the £20 billion national loan guarantee scheme to get cheaper loans to businesses. That is particularly important in parts of the country such as Cornwall, where there are many seasonal businesses involved in, for example, tourism. May we have a debate on this excellent new scheme and find out more?
Sir George Young
I hope all of us can remind businesses in our constituencies that £20 billion, which is a huge sum of money, is available through the national loan guarantee scheme. These are loans that the Government will stand behind; therefore, the banks can offer them at a lower rate of interest to companies in my hon. Friend’s constituency. We all have a role to play in promoting the scheme and in enabling businesses to take advantage of it and go ahead with investment projects that they might otherwise have been unable to afford.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
Westminster city council’s proposed new evening and weekend parking charges have aroused universal condemnation, with genuine fears about the impact on job losses in the west end economy. The Secretary of State for Transport has gone on record as saying that she believes that such charges are a fund-raising measure, in which case they would be ultra vires. May we have an urgent debate, not only about the impact of such parking charges on the west end economy, but about the extent to which some local authorities are using parking charges to plug the black hole in their finances?
Sir George Young
I am a strong believer in local democracy, and I believe that it is for Westminster city council to take decisions about the appropriate level of parking charges. I am sure that the hon. Lady will make her own representations to the city council, although I would be surprised if it did anything that was ultra vires. However, at the end of the day, this is a matter for Westminster city council, not the Government.
Mr Edward Timpson (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)
Can my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on the regulation of service charges for residents of private retirement accommodation who are on fixed incomes, such as those of Wright Court in Nantwich, in my constituency? Often they are not properly consulted by the providers of such accommodation about either the services that they require or the services that they can afford.
Sir George Young
As a former Housing Minister, I am aware of the problems facing many leaseholders, who find themselves confronted with service charges that they believe to be unreasonable. There are a number of protections in legislation, but my hon. Friend may know that there is also the Leasehold Advisory Service—which I set up when I was Housing Minister—a specialist body sponsored by the Department for Communities and Local Government that can perhaps advise his constituents in dealing with the challenges that face them.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
May we have a debate about the impact of the disastrous consequences of the Prime Minister’s decision to isolate the UK from the rest of Europe on the ambitions of the devolved nations? The Leader of the House and other hon. Members refer to “separatists”, but are not the only real separatists in this House the little Englander separatists on the Conservative Back Benches?
Sir George Young
I think that that charge might be made against the hon. Gentleman. One might think that his was a separatist party, if I might say so. However, we had such a debate on Tuesday, on an Opposition motion, when he would have had the opportunity to raise the matter, although as I said a moment ago, it is by no means clear that we are isolated in Europe.
Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)
Last Monday the Design Commission launched a report called “Restarting Britain”, which is about the importance of design in the UK. Given the importance of design in securing growth, particularly in partnership with manufacturing, will the Leader of the House give some Government time for a debate on design and its importance for our economy?
Sir George Young
As my hon. Friend may know from the Localism Act 2011, design is one of the key issues that we think should be taken into account, and I thank him for his well designed question. I cannot promise an early debate on the issue, but when the House returns, he might like to apply for a debate in Westminster Hall or see whether the Backbench Business Committee can allocate a debate on this important issue.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
May we have a debate on the behaviour of the energy companies? My constituent Mrs Larkin, from Hyde, has seen her monthly tariff rise from £65 to £79—an increase of more than a fifth—despite having always been in credit, and the energy company will not take any lesser amount as a more reasonable compromise. Given these times that we are in, when living standards are being squeezed, surely the energy companies should be behaving more responsibly.
Sir George Young
One of the initiatives that the Government took a few weeks ago with the energy companies was to make it easier for consumers to shop around and get a better supplier. That is an option that the hon. Gentleman’s constituent may like to reflect on. In the meantime, however, I will pass on his concern to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and see whether he can play any role in resolving the issue that he has raised.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
May we please have a statement updating the House on when the driving test centre in Bury is likely to reopen? The centre was damaged owing to the ingress of water last Christmas. In the summer, driving instructors and their pupils, who were being greatly inconvenienced by the closure, were told that the centre would be reopened this year, but it is clear that this will not now happen.
Sir George Young
I understand that the delay was caused by structural issues that came to light at a late stage. Work is expected to commence in January, and I understand that it is hoped that testing at the Bury driving centre will resume in February 2012.
Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
Given that the Leader of the House seems to have some time to play with, may we have a debate in Government time on the landscape for Government support for carbon capture and storage? The inability of the Chancellor, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the Energy Secretary to make clear how much of the £1 billion previously allocated will now be available following the announcement in the autumn statement is causing uncertainty in the industry. We need to get ahead with this if we are to maximise the export potential of that crucial industry.
Sir George Young
This issue was raised at Energy and Climate Change questions relatively recently, when it was confirmed that the £1 billion is still available for suitable schemes.
Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)
May I reiterate the call for a debate on the Portas report? In my constituency of Aberconwy, the town of Llandudno is still doing comparatively well, as the main retail centre for north Wales, but other towns, such as Llanrwst and Penmaenmawr, are seeing a decline in the retail sector, which might be combated by adopting some of the proposals in the Portas report.
Sir George Young
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who adds weight to the representations made a few moments ago for a debate on that important report, which is also something that the Backbench Business Committee might like to consider if representations are made. The report was published alongside our own research and showed that some high streets are weathering the downturn—he referred to one in his constituency—whereas others have seen 40% less retail spending. We will respond to the recommendations in due course—probably in the spring—but in the meantime, I agree that the House might like to debate the issue.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
I thank the Leader of the House for his assiduous answering of my questions over 2011. I want to ask him for one more urgent debate or urgent statement on behalf of my constituent Sheila Wither, who is disabled and has to pay £1.20 for a return journey on Ring and Ride, whereas the able-bodied over-60s can travel free by bus. Centro has consulted, but Sheila tells me that she agreed to the slight charge only because she feared losing the service. The Department for Transport cannot intervene. Will the Leader of the House do the right thing so that people with disabilities can travel free, just like their able-bodied counterparts?
Sir George Young
I am flattered by the hon. Lady’s confidence that the Leader of the House can succeed where the Department for Transport has apparently failed. I will, of course, make appropriate inquiries to see whether we can help the hon. Lady’s constituent.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
May we please have an early debate on value for money in the Metropolitan police? It has emerged that for its most senior staff alone—those on salaries of between £80,000 and £260,000—the Metropolitan police has paid just under £70,000 for private health insurance. It is hard to justify that money, which could be spent on providing constables to fight crime on the front line.
Sir George Young
My hon. Friend will know that the ultimate decision rests with the Metropolitan Police Authority, but I agree with my hon. Friend’s message that, at a time of downward pressure on public expenditure and the need to preserve resources for the front line, this issue should perhaps be given careful scrutiny before it is decided to carry on with it.
Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)
May we have a debate on the effectiveness of the Health and Safety Executive? A recent report highlighted that approximately 1,500 people die in work-related accidents every year but that the Health and Safety Executive investigates only one in 19 cases. Will the Leader of the House seek clarification of those figures and, if they are correct, what more will the Government do to protect people at their workplace?
Sir George Young
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for drawing attention to a quite impressive statistic on the numbers investigated and the total numbers reported. I will raise the matter with the appropriate Secretary of State and ask him to write to the hon. Gentleman.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Most of my constituents in Dover and Deal work in small and medium-sized enterprises. Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on how to help SMEs expand and on what the Government are doing for those enterprises to encourage more jobs and money?
Sir George Young
There was an opportunity in the debate on the autumn statement to put in the shop window some of the schemes that the Government have initiated. I remind my hon. Friend of the £1 billion business finance partnership for investing in exactly the type of businesses to which he refers, but through non-bank channels. That might be an appropriate avenue for my hon. Friend to explore for directing funds to mid-sized businesses in his constituency. The process of allocating those funds will begin early in the new year.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
Now that the Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill has been scrutinised by both the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills and the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, is it not time that it was brought before the House so that this measure, which is very popular with the public, can become law?
Sir George Young
As the hon. Lady rightly says, this Bill has had consideration in draft and it was a popular measure welcomed on both sides of the House. There will be a second Session of this Parliament, and the Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill is a strong candidate for consideration as part of it.
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
May we have a debate early next year on social care and paying for the costs of care homes? We have been promised a White Paper in the spring, but it appears that this is going to be no more than a progress report and will not contain substantive policy decisions. It is sometimes argued that it is difficult to establish cross-party agreement on this issue, but if we were to have a debate, we could see whether there was cross-party agreement on the funding of social care and the cost of care homes. As co-chair of the all-party group on carers, I very much hope that this issue can be resolved before I leave Parliament. At the present rate of progress, however, I will be contesting further elections in Banbury before this matter is resolved.
Sir George Young
Regardless of whether the problem is solved, I hope my hon. Friend will continue to fight a large number of elections in Banbury. He will know that one of the first actions we took was to establish the Dilnot commission, which reported in July. There is a commitment to publish a White Paper in the spring, which will outline the Government’s response to the important issues. There have been a number of debates on this important subject, but I would welcome a further one. We inherited a situation in which there were lots of White Papers but no action was taken during 13 years.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Can we have a statement from the Leader of the House—or whoever he delegates it to—on how we can hold the Government to account over participation in school sport? We put questions to the Secretary of State at DCMS Question Time this morning, but he refused to answer any about how we are going to monitor participation at school age. The Secretary of State has put £11 million into school games: it was announced by him and it is on his Department’s website, so it is not unreasonable to expect answers to DCMS questions about it. Will the Leader of the House make a statement on who is going to be accountable for answering questions on this subject in future?
Sir George Young
That sounds a little like unfinished business from the question and answer session that we have just had. I caught the end of DCMS questions and I thought that my right hon. and hon. Friends were answering questions with their usual competence and accuracy. I will, however, draw the hon. Gentleman’s comments to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to see whether there is anything he wishes to add to what he said a few moments ago.
Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
A very important matter for many Members is the law criminalising assisted suicide. Bearing in mind the expectation of a campaign to try to change this law, will my right hon. Friend ensure that Members have an opportunity to express their views on this issue early in the new year?
Sir George Young
I understand my hon. Friend’s concern. I think that this issue was debated during proceedings on a private Member’s Bill during the last Parliament, although I am not sure whether we have had a debate on it in this Parliament. It sounds to me an admirable subject for a debate on which strong views are held on both sides. I suggest that my hon. Friend presents himself to the Backbench Business Committee to put in a bid. I think he will find support on both sides of the House in seeking consideration of that important matter.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
Can we have a debate about how commitments made on the Floor of the House by the Prime Minister to Back Benchers are adhered to by Ministers? On 7 November, I asked the Prime Minister:
“If the eurozone continues to fail to deal with the crisis, what actions will the Prime Minister take to protect the interests of the UK?”
At the end of his answer, he said:
“If he wants to discuss privately with a Treasury Minister the elements of any plan, he is at liberty to do so.”—[Official Report, 7 November 2011; Vol. 535, c. 39-40.]
I took up that invitation and wrote to the Chancellor on 8 November, but I have had no reply, even though we are about to go into recess and this is a very important matter. I am concerned about whether this is going to be a broken promise by the Prime Minister—or, worse still, that it means that the Government have no plan to deal with the eurozone crisis.
Sir George Young
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made a statement to the House on Monday and answered questions for almost two hours. There was adequate opportunity for the hon. Gentleman and, indeed, others to press him on the matter. The Prime Minister answered questions on Monday, and I cannot believe that there is any uncertainty left about where the Government stand on this matter.
Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)
This week I attended the screening of “The Iron Lady” and was disturbed by the way in which the film portrayed its subject. Can we therefore have a debate on respect, good manners and good taste, as I found the film—although brilliantly acted—to be disrespectful to a Member of this Parliament?
Sir George Young
Unlike my hon. Friend, I have not had the benefit of seeing the film, although I know a number of hon. Members saw it earlier this week. There were conflicting views about it. Some found it to be a good film; others, obviously like my hon. Friend, found bits of it to be distasteful. I would welcome a debate, but I think Ministers should be cautious about expressing views that might be seen to be a form of censorship of films produced by independent producers.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
The Nagoya protocol on access and benefit sharing was designed to take millions of people in the world out of poverty and to release new medicines and products on to the market for the benefit of humanity. The Government signed that protocol at the convention on biodiversity at Nagoya in 2010, but it has yet to be ratified. Will the Leader of the House look into this as a matter of urgency, as ratification is vital if we are to get the protocol into force?
Sir George Young
I am very happy to raise that matter with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State at DEFRA and to get a response to the hon. Gentleman before the House rises.
Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)
Metal theft is a scourge across the entire country and yesterday my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South (Chris Kelly) and I met the Minister responsible at the Home Office, Lord Henley, and found much agreement with the provisions in the Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones), which has widespread cross-party support. Will my right hon. Friend ask the Home Secretary for a statement on this subject as a matter of urgency when the House returns in January?
Sir George Young
I think I am right in saying that there was an exchange on metal theft during Home Office questions on Monday. I can confirm that we are considering a range of measures, which include banning cash payments, supporting scrap metal dealers in identifying stolen metal and seeing how we can make it more difficult to steal such types of metals. We are also working with the Association of Chief Police Officers and the British Transport police have set up a new unit, but I will pass on my hon. Friend’s suggestion that we reconsider the private Member’s Bill to see whether we can make swift progress.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House explain to me why the House is returning on Tuesday 10 January? It seems to me that Monday 9 January is the day that we should come back.
Sir George Young
The House agreed to come back on 10 January in a motion that was put to the House last month. That date has been agreed. The House will still be sitting more days than in the first two years of the preceding Parliament, so there can be no suggestion that we are slacking.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
With over 90% of its shop units occupied and 100% of the units in the Newlands shopping centre full for Christmas, Kettering’s town centre is weathering the economic storm better than most. May I join the calls for a debate in Government time on the Portas report into Britain’s high streets before the Government publish their response, so that the Government can be informed of Members’ views and opinions?
Sir George Young
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reinforcing a suggestion that was made earlier, and I am pleased to hear about the prosperity of the shopping centre in Kettering. He is a member of the Backbench Business Committee and is probably better placed than I am to organise a debate on high street shops between now and the time when the Government respond. I hope he will therefore look sympathetically on colleagues who come to him with such a request, in view of the statement he has just made.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Can we have a statement from the Leader of the House next week on an important issue? The Government have refused until now to say who would take over if the Prime Minister were incapacitated, and after last week’s performance some of us would be very worried if it were the Deputy Prime Minister, in case he was in a sulk. Will the Leader of the House tell us who would take over? Would it be the Deputy Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary or perhaps Mrs Bone?
Sir George Young
I think Mrs Bone might be towards the bottom of the list of possible successors, admirable though her qualities of leadership might be. My hon. Friend has asked me this question before and I refer him to the answer I gave on that earlier occasion.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
Given the media headlines yesterday on young people’s unemployment, it is easy to forget that young people aged 18 to 24 have experienced high unemployment as a percentage of the population since 2006—for many years now. It is obviously a structural issue, so may we have a debate on how we can help young people’s aspirations? I hope that we could debate in a non-partisan way measures such as those incorporated into the youth contract and take into account the cross-party report on the future jobs fund published by the Select Committee on Work and Pensions.
Sir George Young
Some of those issues were touched on in yesterday’s debate. We all have a role to play in tackling youth unemployment in our constituencies by drawing to the attention of potential employers that element of the youth contract that gives employers a subsidy of £2,250 a year, to cover the national insurance contributions, if they employ somebody aged between 18 and 24 who is on the Work programme. We can all publicise that scheme and encourage employers to take advantage of it, thereby playing a role in reducing youth unemployment in our constituencies.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
In December 2005, the then Government applied the influence referred to by the shadow Leader of the House to negotiate away £7 billion-worth of 1984 EU rebate in return for some illusory promises on common agricultural policy reform. Six years on, would it be appropriate to have a short debate on which of those promises resulted in action? I suggest that it need only be a short debate, since there has been very little action.
Sir George Young
My hon. Friend reminds the House that the previous Government surrendered a very valuable rebate some time ago. We want a substantial reduction in the size of the CAP, with a higher proportion of CAP funds for the cost-effective delivery of public goods, and we want a fair deal for our farmers and for taxpayers within a smaller budget. We hope to continue to deliver environmental public goods through an ambitious agri-environment programme. We will press on with our agenda of getting a square deal for this country in CAP reform.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Given recent revelations about exam boards and in the light of information that I have obtained that shows that exam boards have been allowed to increase their charges to maintained schools by more than 10% a year for each of the past five years, may we have a debate about what has gone wrong with the exam board system? May we also have an investigation into who knew what and when, and who is responsible for denigrating our exam system that badly?
Sir George Young
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. There is concern, particularly in the light of recent reports, about what is happening. I think that I am right to say that today one of the Select Committees is taking evidence on that very subject, and we await its report. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education has asked Ofqual to investigate some of the allegations and to report back. It is crucial that we restore the credibility of the exam system and that is what my right hon. Friend wants to do.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
In the Harrogate district, there are nearly 8,000 small businesses employing about 70,000 people. Please may we have a debate on small businesses and the measures the Government are taking to support them? In particular, I am thinking about the cut in small business corporation tax and the extension of the rate relief holiday. I have started businesses and worked in small businesses and I know that those measures will be very helpful. May we please treat this as a matter of urgency, because small businesses are the engines of growth in our economy and we must do all we can to help them thrive?
Sir George Young
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding the House of some of the initiatives that the Government have taken to help small businesses. He could also have referred to the changes we have made to the enterprise investment scheme and venture capital trust regimes to increase the flow of capital. We have also launched the new seed enterprise investment schemes to encourage investment in start-up companies. As I said a moment ago, we all have a role to play in drawing to the attention of employers in our constituencies the measures the Government are taking to tackle unemployment and promote prosperity in the areas we represent.
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
Last Friday, I visited the Alternative school in Barnoldswick and met head teacher Kirsty-Anne Pugh and the staff there. The school provides education for a number of young people who, for one reason or another, have not succeeded in mainstream education, and I feel that it has real potential to apply in future to become a free school. May we therefore have a debate on free schools and how they are fostering diversity, fairness and aspiration in our education system?
Sir George Young
I would welcome such a debate and I am grateful for what my hon. Friend has said. Half of the first 24 free schools are located in the most deprived 30% of areas in the country. I was interested to hear what my hon. Friend had to say about that school wanting to become an academy, and I welcome that, but he also reminds the House of the potential of our education reforms to help not just children in mainstream schools but those in special schools, who need every single piece of help they can get.
Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)
At this time of year, I know that the thoughts of the entire House will be with British armed forces serving in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world. I was one of a number of MPs who recently visited Camp Bastion, and it is certainly at the forefront of my mind. In the light of that and as a gesture of seasonal good will, will my right hon. Friend consider allowing a debate in this House to update us on operations in Afghanistan and the welfare of British troops?
Sir George Young
My hon. Friend speaks for the whole House in reminding us of the sacrifice that our armed forces have made and the fact they will continue to work over Christmas. May I suggest that she comes to the House on Monday for Defence questions, where she might have the opportunity to convey directly to Defence Ministers her appreciation of the armed forces and to get an authoritative response from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State?
Brandon Lewis (Great Yarmouth) (Con)
In my role as chair of the enterprise zone group and from talking to businesses in tourism, engineering and energy across Great Yarmouth, I can see clearly that among SMEs and individuals there is a real aspiration for growth and development in their businesses—it is almost tangible. Bearing that in mind, as well as projects such as the seed enterprise investment scheme and others that have been mentioned today, may I echo colleagues’ and hon. Friends’ earlier words about the importance of a debate in Government time on business and what the Government are doing further to highlight the great opportunities for businesses in our country?
Sir George Young
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for highlighting some of the initiatives we have already taken to help small businesses, and I was interested to hear about his experience. I cannot promise an immediate debate, but I am sure that when the House returns it will want to debate the economy, giving him a platform to talk about the schemes that have already been introduced and the further steps he would encourage the Government to take in order to make more progress in his constituency.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
I wrote in June to the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), because Network Rail was missing eight out of 10 of its targets. In November, the Office of Rail Regulation said that its projections showed that Network Rail would fail to meet many of the targets that had been reset for it. The latest report from the ORR said:
“Train performance continued to deteriorate”.
That is having a massive impact on my commuters, as 60% of delays have been attributed to it. When can we have a statement? Network Rail is being monitored still for failing so many targets. May we have an urgent statement on its performance in the new year?
Sir George Young
I am sorry to hear about the problems that my hon. Friend’s constituents face because of the failures of Network Rail, which has a somewhat unique governance structure that makes it difficult to hold it to account. I will share her concerns with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport. My hon. Friend will know that additional funds were announced in the autumn statement to help railway infrastructure. I hope that some of that might filter through to her constituency and reduce some of the problems she has mentioned.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
May we have a debate on Saif Gaddafi and the London School of Economics given that the university refused to divulge information as to the circumstances in which he was awarded his PhD, despite freedom of information requests? Will the Leader of the House speak to the Minister with responsibility for higher education and urge him to call on the LSE to publish what really went on in this disgraceful episode of taking blood money for PhDs?
Sir George Young
I understand my hon. Friend’s deep concern, but I am not sure that I can comment on individual information requests. I do not know whether he has approached the Information Commissioner’s Office. He has a right of complaint to that office and from there to the first-tier tribunal. In general, when a request is made for the release of the personal information of others under the Freedom of Information Act, such information can be released only if that would be in compliance with the provisions of the Data Protection Act. We are looking at the FOI Act as part of post-legislative scrutiny and I can only suggest that my hon. Friend pursues the avenues I have just touched on.
Mr Speaker
I thank the Leader of the House and reciprocate his good wishes to me. I take this opportunity to express good wishes for a merry Christmas and a happy new year to all colleagues and to all who serve the House.
Backbench Business
Parliamentary Standards Act 2009
(13 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
It may be for the convenience of the House to know that the Backbench Business Committee has recommended that the second of our two debates should last for at least three hours, which means that this first debate should finish no later than 3 pm. It may also be for the convenience of the House to know that I have selected the amendment to the motion in the name of the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb).
Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House approves the recommendations of the First Report from the Members’ Expenses Committee on the Operation of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009, HC 1484.
It is a pleasure to open the debate. I do not intend to detain the House for too long, as there has been a lot of debate on this subject. I welcome this opportunity from the Backbench Business Committee to present the findings of our very thorough and carefully conducted review of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009. The Committee on Members’ Expenses was tasked with reviewing the operation of the Act to work out what were its aims—what was intended by Parliament—and whether those aims were being fulfilled, and to make any recommendations that were felt necessary.
I am delighted that the House has the opportunity to debate this issue and I thank hon. Members on both sides of the House for their support and input during the process of constructing the report. I thank in particular my fellow members on the Committee. We worked very hard in very busy circumstances to try to put together a report that truly reflected the evidence we received. Hon. Members will be aware that in many cases when one is on a Committee one has to pull back one’s personal preferences to ensure that what is delivered is fair and balanced and truly reflects the evidence and information provided. I thank the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee for making it possible to bring these issues to the House in a non-confrontational environment in which we can talk about matters that relate to the House and, primarily, to Back Benchers. This is a good forum in which to do that.
The party leaders and the House in general deserve some recognition for the initiation and passing of the Parliamentary Standards Act in 2009 and the amending Act in 2010. The House clearly decided to get rid of the old discredited system, to have independent regulation of Members’ expenses and to have that level of remuneration set independently. It also decided clearly that it wanted there to be more accountability for that body and these things than there had been in the past. I thank in particular the former Leader of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), for stating very clearly what the intentions of the Act were prior to its enactment in 2009. I thank also the shadow Leader of the House at that time, the current Leader of the House and the former shadow Leader of the House in the current Parliament for being entirely consistent in their presentation of the aims and objectives behind the legislation and for being persistent in trying to ensure that those aims and objectives were met.
Contrary to most media reports, the review that I present on behalf of the Committee is not particularly controversial. It is completely in keeping with the aims of the Act, as they were laid out. There are seven fairly clear aims about, for example, value for money, accountability, not deterring Members from making claims, being open about what is going on—the transparency side of things—and not creating a system that is unfair for Members who do not have independent means or who do not have families. We were very mindful of those objectives when we conducted the review and I highly recommend that hon. Members read the first section of the report, which runs through the history of payments to MPs. That section also runs through each of the Act’s aims and analyses the extent to which they are currently being met.
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
My hon. Friend has thanked various people. Will he accept my thanks and those of many colleagues for all the work he has put into this report? This is an extremely controversial matter and he has shown great leadership and sacrifice in doing all he has done.
Adam Afriyie
I thank my hon. Friend. If I could, I would probably flush up at this moment, but luckily hon. Members would not know if I had.
The objective of the review and its recommendations was to make sure that the aims of the Act, on which the majority of the House agreed, were being met in reality. Let me dispel a couple of the misleading ideas that are bouncing around about the report before I go through its recommendations so that the House is fully aware of what we might be accepting or putting over to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority a bit later.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend on the hard work that he and his Committee have done over the past few weeks. During the expenses scandal, issues that came up included not only the misappropriation of public funds by a minority of Members in the House but the cost of politics. Could my hon. Friend set out whether his recommendations would drive up or drive down the cost of politics?
Adam Afriyie
That is one of the key issues that we looked at. If Members go through the recommendations—I will run through a few of them in a moment—they will find that their primary motivation is to find ways of reducing the costs of bureaucracy for the taxpayer and to achieve better value for money. At the moment, there is a huge burden on Members because of the unnecessarily long time that it takes to navigate the expenses system, and that places a cost burden on our constituents—the taxpayers. It also takes Members, and their staff, away from serving their constituents and performing the functions that they were elected to perform. My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) hit the nail on the head with his remarks, because at the forefront of our minds was the question, “What recommendations can we make that will reduce the overall costs and ensure that the system is still accountable?”
Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
I want to put on record my appreciation of the front-line staff of IPSA, who have to work a system that is not fit for purpose. In addition to there being costs to Members of Parliament and their staff, the National Audit Office believes that in 38% of cases the cost of processing a claim is higher than the amount for which the claim is being made. Will my hon. Friend confirm that?
Adam Afriyie
That is a fascinating statistic. We had a session in which we looked in particular at value for money, and that message came through loud and clear. Anyone in the House with a background in business or in a medium-sized organisation that runs an expenses system will recognise that something needs to be looked at if the cost of processing a large minority of the claims is higher than the value of the claims themselves. Some of the recommendations are very much directed at helping IPSA to move to a system that is less expensive to operate and in which taxpayers’ resources are being spent as they would wish: on activities such as supporting democracy and ensuring that constituents are serviced, rather than supporting unnecessary bureaucracy.
Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)
What would the hon. Gentleman say to the argument that the public might well see it as rather self-serving of MPs if his cost-saving proposals had the effect of there being less scrutiny of the money that they spend? Would not the public, in the wake of the scandal, be particularly concerned about that?
Adam Afriyie
That is absolutely right. The right hon. Gentleman could have been a member of the Committee, because that was exactly the attitude adopted by every member throughout. We asked ourselves, “Can we, with our recommendations, improve the transparency and the accountability to the public beyond what is being offered under the current regime?” That was exactly the direction of travel and I urge the right hon. Gentleman to have a good look through the 19 recommendations, because he will see that we seek to address that issue.
Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
As a member of the Committee, I add my thanks to the hon. Gentleman for all the work that he has done. Does he agree that it is unfortunate that some of the media reporting has perhaps given the impression that the Committee was making recommendations for something that would be less transparent, when nothing could be further from the truth? We want to see more transparency, better value for the taxpayer and independence in setting pay, allowances and expenses for MPs.
Adam Afriyie
The hon. Lady makes the point very well. Those who actually read the report will see that that is exactly what we were attempting to achieve. I think that we achieve it elegantly in our recommendations to IPSA on how to improve the way it operates, and we achieve it in quite a moderate fashion in the recommendations that the Government may want to take up in the months and years to come.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) about anything that we say here not being derogatory about IPSA staff, who face the same problems we do. I draw the attention of my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) to the answers in annex 1, which show that four out of five MPs think that IPSA is not effective in helping us to do our job. I tried to ring IPSA this morning, because I see that 99 times out of 100 it answers the phone within 60 seconds. I started calling at 9 o’clock; it is now half-past 12. That is three and a half hours. It is a bit like the train operating company that said, “No trains this morning were late because we didn’t run any.” IPSA will not answer the phone before 1 o’clock, and then we discover that the person we want is at lunch. If the amendment is carried—I am not sure whether it should be—will my hon. Friend try to persuade IPSA to pay attention to the detail of the report? Does IPSA have to be the only public service that for half the day is not available to somebody who wants to ring it?
Adam Afriyie
That is another point very well made. I hope that the direction of travel in the recommendations will precipitate such an outcome when IPSA reflects on them.
I draw everyone’s attention to the survey in annex 1, on page 66, which contains some telling statistics. We conducted a brief survey towards the end of the inquiry to ensure that we were picking up contemporary, rather than historical, points of view of Members of Parliament. There are some striking figures. For example, 81% of MPs do not believe that the board of IPSA has been effective in supporting MPs in conducting their duties. Even if the intention was to be supportive, it is quite telling that over 80% of MPs do not think that it is. Another fascinating statistic is that 93% of MPs are subsidising their work here. That is a contemporary figure from two or three weeks ago.
Bob Russell
Does my hon. Friend know of any other profession or occupation—perhaps the world of journalism? —where 93% of the work force are subsidising the work that they do?
Adam Afriyie
It is incredibly unlikely. As I say, 93% are subsidising their work to some degree—some, about one in 10, to the tune of over £10,000 a year. One of the main reasons cited, by 83% of MPs, is that they are trying to protect their reputation. The bi-monthly publication cycle allows for misleading comparisons. The report calls for more transparency—perhaps we could publish in real time. However, the misleading bi-monthly publication routine means that MPs are trying to protect their reputation, which is the thing most valuable to them. Let us not think that that is a selfish act; it is an act that works to protect our democracy. If individual MPs are constantly being lambasted in their local media for making legitimate claims but having false comparisons made, that undermines democracy overall and harms the reputation of Parliament. That is why one of our recommendations is that IPSA should become a lot more transparent in its publications.
We make a recommendation about annual publications. At the moment, it is incredibly difficult for the public to see what is going on. They have to print out one page and then another, and try to compare them. That does not work, so we recommend that the annual publication is searchable and easily accessible to the public so that they can make sensible comparisons from year to year, rather than misleading ones drawn from the bi-monthly publications.
Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD)
There are many helpful suggestions in the report, not only on how IPSA can pursue matters in a most cost-effective way but particularly on the issue of transparency, which is crucial. I wholeheartedly endorse what the hon. Gentleman says about real-time publication and making it easier for the public to search. I am also delighted to see that the Committee has recommended to IPSA that the underlying receipts should also be published so that anybody can see all the evidence, obviously with credit card details redacted for security. That is essential.
Adam Afriyie
I thank the hon. Lady. The whole thrust of the report was to make sure that there is value for money for the taxpayer and that transparency is enhanced and improved. However, our primary aim, which we reaffirm in recommendation 1, is that we want the independent determination of the payments system for MPs’ costs and independent regulation to continue, and to continue to be robust. Let me dispel myth No. 1. Nothing in the recommendations seeks to undermine the independence of IPSA and the power of the regulatory function performed by that outside body. That was paramount in what we were doing. The Act was right in that intention, and it should remain, which is why we reaffirmed it in recommendation 1.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Many of us very much admire the hon. Gentleman’s work in this field. We all feel very exposed. We all have an individual relationship with IPSA. Being able to share in a debate such as this is very useful, but I constantly feel that we need a parliamentary association that can act for Members of Parliament across the Benches when these very important issues about how we best fulfil our functions come up.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I chair the liaison committee with IPSA, which includes Members from all parties, and know that it can be a deeply frustrating experience. We do our best, but one of the problems we have had is trying to convince IPSA that its primary motivation must be to allow MPs to do their job and have a system that is not bureaucratic, does not allow fraud or error and, above all, saves taxpayers’ money. That is why a central recommendation of the report is that there should be an independent cost-benefit analysis of whether a flat-rate, taxable allowance, so that there could be no fraud, error or detailed administrative costs, would save taxpayers’ money.
Adam Afriyie
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and for his work on the Committee. I think that together we came to a very moderate view that we hope will, if the recommendations are accepted, move the whole thing forward.
Mr Andrew Tyrie (Chichester) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the key message that must come out of today’s debate and go to the Front Bench as well as to IPSA is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) has just said, that IPSA’s primary duty must be to ensure that we can do our job, and the plain fact is that many of us find it has become an obstacle to our doing that? That is why the legislation needs to be changed. Does he also agree that it is extremely important that these recommendations are not kicked into the long grass, and does he share my hope that Front Benchers will do nothing to obstruct this early implementation, which is clearly sensible?
Adam Afriyie
That is another point well made. I will tackle the point made by the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) first and then move on to deal with that made by my hon. Friend.
If we think about the rest of society and the work we do as MPs—this is not a sob story, but I am sure that it will be reported as such—we will realise that every other body has a pressure group, a trade association, a trade union or a communications or public relations company working for them. We want our great British democracy to be an icon of honesty, transparency and straightforwardness around the world, so it is curious that Parliament appears to be the only organisation that does not have a similar function. IPSA, which is a small organisation, has two or three people dealing with its communications, but in Parliament there is no one to give the other side of the story. That is not a recommendation of the report, but simply my own observation to back up what the hon. Gentleman said.
Mr Sheerman
The trouble is that the three main parties in the House tend to be represented by the Whips, whose view of what goes on here is very different to that of most Back Benchers, so the call that I would like the hon. Gentleman to make for a parliamentary association might be what we need.
Adam Afriyie
The hon. Gentleman makes his point well. It is not in the report, but I accept it.
To return to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie)—[Interruption.] Have I just promoted him?
Adam Afriyie
Indeed he should.
The report contains two pretty uncontroversial recommendations, and again this brings me to the second misrepresentation. The first recommendation, which is for the Government, is that the primary duty of the independent regulator and its administration should be to support MPs to perform their duties cost-effectively and efficiently. The Committee on Standards in Public Life and the constitutional historians we spoke to recommended that, as virtually every body in the world has that kind of line in their legislation. There is no time limit on that, so we recommend that the Government should at some point get around to doing that, and I urge them to do so.
IPSA is unique in being both the regulator and administrator of an expenses system. The second recommendation is that the law should be updated to enable the separation of those two functions. We are not saying that the administration function should definitely come to the House of Commons. We say nothing of the sort. We are not going to recreate the old Fees Office, which would be absolute madness, so that will not happen. However, we should be able to separate those two functions within the legislation, and I urge the Government—there is no need to answer this now—to make headway and look at how we might facilitate that while ensuring that the regulatory role is entirely independent of the House.
Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)
As a member of the Committee, I would like to put on the record my thanks to my hon. Friend for his patience in trying to reconcile the views of the Committee. On the point he is making, in addition to the separation of IPSA’s regulatory and administrative functions, was not another stark factor presented to the Committee the extraordinarily expensive way IPSA administered a relatively small number of transactions and the fact that many other organisations, whether inside the House of Commons or elsewhere, could do that for much better value for money for the taxpayer?
Adam Afriyie
My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) was incredibly helpful during the Committee’s deliberations, for which I thank him. We all have strong views on these matters, some of which will be very different, so I thank him in particular because we all moderated our views somewhat to look at the evidence and see where it pointed us. We came to a good conclusion on how the system can be become more efficient. I should also point out that there have been arguments from the press again, and unfortunately from elsewhere, suggesting that somehow the report wants the House to regain control of expenses. That is utter nonsense. There is nothing in the report that seeks to do that. If there is any lack of clarity, I am happy to tidy it up or answer any questions. All the recommendations, other than 2 and 3, are for IPSA. It has the power to accept or reject them. We hope that it will accept them, but it has the power. There is nothing in the report that alters the relationship. If anything, one or two of the recommendations seek to increase the distance between Parliament and the regulator and urge IPSA to be more transparent.
Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)
I have a fairly straightforward question. Does the hon. Gentleman expect Sir Ian Kennedy and IPSA to respond publicly to the Committee’s recommendations?
Adam Afriyie
The amendment to the motion makes that point and proposes that IPSA should address the report in its annual review, and I have no objection to that and hope that it will respond. It seems to have indicated that it will respond at some point, which would be great. The House will await that response and then take a view on it, but it is for IPSA to decide whether to implement these cost-effective measures or reject them.
Alison Seabeck
Is not part of the problem, and part of the frustration that Members of the House feel with IPSA, the fact that we do not get responses from it? I have written to Sir Ian Kennedy on a number of occasions but have yet to receive a reply signed by him. I would like a public reassurance from IPSA that it will respond thoughtfully to the recommendations of what is an excellent piece of work by the Committee.
Adam Afriyie
Again, that is a perfect observation. In the survey that was conducted, MPs were asked on how many occasions in the last six months IPSA lost paperwork that they had submitted in support of a claim. Some 62% of MPs replied the IPSA had lost paperwork. In response to a question on the consistency of advice, the majority of MPs said that advice has been inconsistent. We updated the survey specifically to ensure that we were talking not about the history of the organisation and what happened when it was set up, but about the current reality for Members trying to get on with their work. What the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) said is reflected in the information and evidence within the report.
I will focus on two recommendations for the moment before concluding my remarks. I just wanted to dispel many of the myths that have been knocking about.
We recommend that IPSA should move as far as possible to a system of direct payments. There are lots of reports in the media about MPs and whether they are pocketing money, but, as we know, certainly since the beginning of the new Parliament, that has not been the case. Even IPSA would agree, because it has robust systems, but the Committee says, “Why keep paying money to MPs, who then have to pay it to their member of staff who bought a toner cartridge three months earlier?” Many payments could be made directly to suppliers, so that the money does not go via MPs. They are not MPs’ expenses, they are the costs of running an office, and I cannot imagine that anyone in the country buys their own office furniture and then reclaims the costs.
Bob Russell
“Expenses” is the wrong word; those costs are allowances for us to do our job. My staff salaries are not my expenses.
Adam Afriyie
That point is reflected in recommendation 8, in which the Committee states that there should be a “clear distinction” between those costs that are commonly associated with an MP personally, and those costs that clearly relate to running an office and paying staff. They do not come anywhere near an MP; they are merely the cost of providing a service to the public.
Jo Swinson
The hon. Gentleman’s remarks on the separation of the administration and regulation of expenses are interesting and helpful, and I understand why those roles should be separate, but some media coverage might have been generated in part by the recommendation stating:
“The best arrangement would be for that separate body”—
the administration—
“to be within the House of Commons Service”.
Some Members, and certainly I, feel that that is absolutely the last place to which the administration of expenses should go. A separate accounting firm might be able to administer them more cost-effectively, but please let us not return them to the House authorities.
Adam Afriyie
I thank the hon. Lady for her view, and I can understand the shudder that would go up the spine if it looked as though we were making such a recommendation, but we are not. The Committee’s opinion is that the House is probably the best place for such an administrative role, because the IT systems and infrastructure are already in place, but that is not our recommendation. It would be misleading to suggest that we recommend the return of such administration to the House; we simply say that we think that that is the best way. All that is needed is to enable the separation of the two roles.
If Members are concerned about that idea, I challenge them to find any other body in the world which is both regulator and administrator. IPSA is unique: we would never allow such an arrangement in any other walk of life, and it is certainly unique when it comes to Parliaments and payments to Members.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
May I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for his excellent work in this regard but, at the same time, strengthen and support what the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) has said? Among the general public, the thinking is that expenses are taxi fares and the rest, but they do not understand—understandably so—that expenses include the salaries that we pay our staff, without whose work we could hardly carry out our duties as Members. The sooner this silly and unnecessary term “expenses” is changed to a relevant one, the better we will be.
Adam Afriyie
That point is echoed and very well made as a recommendation in the report. IPSA is taking some steps in that direction, and I hope that the report encourages it to move more quickly.
Let us remember that all the changes we made in 2009 were about improving the public’s confidence in this institution, but that cannot happen if the way information is published misleads people into believing something different. I am concerned in particular about the new intake of MPs, and at some point I will ask IPSA, “How many members of the new intake do we honestly think have been terribly devious and tried to cheat their expenses?” I think that the answer is zero. The robust systems in place indicate as much, but every eight weeks Members are lambasted in their local press for claiming something, so something is wrong with the way information is presented, and that is what the report tries to tackle.
Daniel Kawczynski
I very much hope that as part of my hon. Friend’s recommendations to IPSA he challenges it also to interact with our suppliers to lower the costs that we pay to some of them, such as Cellhire, which I personally think are extortionate. I very much hope also that IPSA will use bulk purchasing contracts in future to drive down our costs.
Adam Afriyie
The report also makes that recommendation, urging IPSA to continue in that direction and, as far as possible, like most other organisations, to do some central purchasing and secure some wholesale agreements, as it has with rail travel. It is stepping slowly in that direction, but we urge it to move a lot more quickly, so that our time and that of our staff can be spent on constituents rather than on unnecessary bureaucracy.
It is very hard to see anything controversial in our report; it is incredibly moderate, calm and analytical. It also asks that IPSA be more transparent and explain to the public—on its website, or in a letter to us—its existing system of supplements for London, for the outer London area and for mileage; explain its rationale for those items, which it has introduced, because the public need to know why it has done so; and then to show very clearly the methodology behind the calculation that enables it to arrive at its figures for those supplements. That would be a very useful exercise, because then people might see how the numbers are calculated and where they come from.
In the second part of recommendation 17, we say that if the system that IPSA has already introduced to London and the outer London area were rolled out—so we are not making a decision on it, but saying, “if it were rolled out”—let us ask a third party, not us or IPSA, to undertake a cost-benefit analysis to see whether it saves taxpayers money and provides them with value for money. Even if it does, and it may not, that is not good enough, however, so we recommend that a third party evaluate whether the system continues to meet the aims of the 2009 Act. Again, that is pretty uncontroversial: we simply, and perfectly reasonably, ask for information, and for an analysis and evaluation to be undertaken.
Recommendation 17(c) may have caused a little concern. During my discussions with the Leader of the House and others, there was some concern that it implies that Members should take control of the expenses system again and “decide” what IPSA does. May I just be absolutely clear, however, and ask Front Benchers to reflect on the fact that, if that were the argument, I have made it clear—including in the amendment that I attempted to table—that that is definitely not the intention? If a word is slightly out of place, I would just say that the report is not legislation but merely a set of recommendations, and I apologise on behalf of the Committee.
The recommendation states that, once the cost-benefit analysis has been completed and we are able to work out whether the taxpayer would get better value while accountability, transparency and everything else are maintained, the House should express its opinion, which I imagine would be in the form of a motion or an early-day motion, stating: “In the opinion of this House, we think this piece of work is jolly good and IPSA should think about it.” We would not be overruling IPSA—nothing of the sort; it would be another recommendation in a report, and that would be it.
Sir Peter Bottomley
Will my hon. Friend explain recommendation 18, which states that MPs should have no increase in pay during a Parliament? I agree with that, but should it not read as IPSA setting, in advance of an election, what the pay will be?
When I searched for best matches for IPSA telephone operating hours, the search engine recommended that I go to the International Professional Surrogates Association, which deals with problems of “physical and emotional intimacy”. That is the problem we have with IPSA.
Adam Afriyie
I suspect that we have some of those problems in the House as well.
On recommendation 18, in the Welsh Assembly and many others throughout the world a figure is set for the duration of a Parliament. We now have fixed-term Parliaments for five years, but the Committee felt that, even if we did not, it would be far better to select a figure that remained the same for the entire Parliament. Then we would not have the constant moving around and unnecessary changes that we currently experience. The situation seems to work very well in Wales with the Welsh Assembly and elsewhere, so we recommend not that IPSA introduce the proposal, but that it look at it, so that we do not have stories every three months about another change—another shift in the level—and whether a figure relates to RPI or to CPI. Let us forget all that and just have a fixed figure that runs for a Parliament.
Mr Andrew Smith
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is being generous in giving way. I take him back to recommendation 17(c), which states:
“In not more than six months’ time, the House should have the opportunity to consider the merits of that cost-benefit analysis and evaluation”—
which the hon. Gentleman referred to—
“and to make a decision on whether there should or should not be a system of regional supplements instead of the existing travel and accommodation provisions.”
Does he accept that that is wrongly worded and inconsistent with what he has said? I, for one, would find it unacceptable because it compromises the independence of IPSA.
Adam Afriyie
We can quibble about one word in a report that is 100 pages long. I am telling hon. Members on behalf of the Committee that that was not the intention. The intention was simply to express a view about whether that was something that we would like to see. Basically, it would be like another recommendation to IPSA.
I hope that there is not going to be some massive argument about the issue; I have just made it absolutely clear to the House what was intended. By the way, I have also put the matter in writing to Front Benchers. Furthermore, I have now stated that I imagine that there would be a statement or early-day motion that said, “The House’s opinion is that we like it or do not like it.” The issue is for IPSA, not the House, to decide. We are looking for demons where they do not necessarily exist.
Mr Leigh
The right hon. Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) can be reassured because the House cannot order IPSA to do anything, except by an Act of Parliament. We could pass any motion we liked to express an opinion, but that could not force IPSA to do anything. The right hon. Gentleman talks about the House making a decision, but it is making a decision to express a point of view, and IPSA is independent.
Adam Afriyie
I draw hon. Members’ eyes back to the first recommendation—the first thing that we are insisting on is that that independence should remain. That is what this whole thing was about. We were not tackling that in any way, other than to say that in some ways that independence should possibly even be enhanced through a separation of the administration and regulatory functions, so that IPSA would be in an even more powerful position to do the regulation, audit and checking, rather than doing the administration.
Adam Afriyie
I will give way twice more, and then I will definitely stop. I give way first to my hon. Friend.
Mr Bone
My hon. Friend is making an extraordinarily powerful and well reasoned case. But is it not a fact that a vote on his motion would simply say that the House approves of the recommendations? It could not force the Government or IPSA to do anything. May I suggest that a lot of misinformation is being given out by the usual channels?
Jim Sheridan
Are there any recommendations in the report about the principles afforded to IPSA? Is it subject to the same transparency and accountability in terms of salaries, bonuses and hours of work, so that we can see exactly what it is doing?
Adam Afriyie
We did not make any recommendations in that field; I simply observe that, given how things are worded, IPSA should be equally transparent. We ask it to tell us what it is doing, explain its logic and show its calculations so that the public can make a judgment on whether that is the right way to do things. Point taken.
I shall conclude my remarks, as I have gone on a fair bit longer than I intended. I have seen the amendment to the motion. I was a touch surprised that it should have come from a member of the Committee, given that we had not spoken about it beforehand, but I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) for all his work on the Committee; he made a great contribution and we reached a moderate set of proposals.
My own feeling is that we have presented the recommendations to the House, and IPSA can see them now. The Government may want to consider a few things in the medium term about these minor, non-controversial legislative changes. If the amendment to the motion is agreed to, I would not be happy about that but ultimately I would not think it was the end of the world.
I know from some of the feedback that I have had in the past few days that Front Benchers have been quite disoriented in their vehemence; I am quite surprised about some of the stories in the newspapers. I just ask Front Benchers to take the issue in a reasoned, calm fashion. Let us not be combative. They have heard my view on the amendment. Let us get on with this gently, without fear or favour, in the interests of taxpayers, transparency and making this place work. Above all, we need to ensure that we do not get a two-tier Parliament in which those with independent means enjoy an easy ride relative to those who need to claim because they cannot afford to subsidise themselves.
Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
As almost all of us are recipients of expenses, I assume that it is appropriate to make a declaration of interest at the outset.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
You make a profit, do you?
Mr Raynsford
I assure my hon. Friend that I do not make a profit.
I thank the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) not only for his introductory remarks, which have given a good and fair outline of the Committee’s report, but for all his work, not just as Chair of the Committee but prior to its establishment, in ensuring that this important issue is looked at in a clear and dispassionate way. I believe that, under his chairmanship, the Committee achieved that objective. It looked carefully, rigorously and dispassionately at the evidence and has come forward with recommendations that I believe are sound and sensible and should be taken up.
However, a few key messages need emphasising. The first is that, contrary to what has been suggested by some commentators, who have rushed into print to condemn the report, the Committee was adamant—no pun intended—in its support for the retention of independent regulation of MPs’ expenses. As the surveys conducted by the National Audit Office earlier this year and the Committee itself more recently have demonstrated, there is a very wide degree of support among MPs generally for the principle of independent regulation. Some 77% of MPs who responded to the latest survey agreed that independent regulation was important for restoring public confidence.
Having said that, the way in which the independent regulator has operated the system since May 2010 has been fraught with problems. Those problems provided a huge amount of evidence to the Committee in the course of its considerations. They are all documented in the report and its annexe. The process for making claims, considering them and paying expenses has proved slow and cumbersome. Many MPs have been left substantially out of pocket because of the time lag between expenditure and reimbursement. The system is far from cost-effective. As the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) highlighted, the NAO concluded last summer that 38% of claims at that time involved processing costs higher than the amount being claimed.
The system also imposes heavy burdens on MPs’ staff, thus diverting them away from their primary responsibility of looking after the interests of constituents. It also, of course, imposes burdens on MPs themselves. There is a great deal of evidence that MPs are not able to perform other functions because of the time that they have to spend on cumbersome bureaucratic processes. There is also evidence that MPs are deterred from making claims because of time-consuming and tortuous processes and the lack of clear advice from IPSA on what claims may be appropriate. There is also the fear of being subject to media and public criticism, either for claiming too much, or—paradoxically—for claiming too little; we all know of examples of minor items that Members feel would be held up to ridicule if a claim were seen to have been made for them.
Both the NAO report last summer and the Committee’s report, published now, demonstrate a very high level of dissatisfaction on the part of MPs about the working of the system as currently operated—not, I stress, about the concept of independent regulation, but about the system as it is currently operating.
Sir Peter Bottomley
On dissatisfaction, I should say that the public interest is illustrated in paragraph 80, page 27, which points out that the cost of IPSA is £6.4 million. If we allowed £400,000 for processing payroll, that would leave costs of £6 million for other expenses of £19.5 million. I cannot believe that the House would allow that to happen in any other part of the public sector.
Mr Raynsford
I was going to come to this point later, but I entirely concur with the hon. Gentleman's view that the system is cumbersome and slow, and is not cost-effective. It is costing the country a great deal more than is necessary for a safe, rigorous and transparent system for overseeing MPs’ expenses claims.
Michael Connarty
On whether the system, which is costing that amount of money, is effective, IPSA cannot process a direct debit. It cannot process a BACS payment. The Scottish Parliament, when I shared an office with an MSP, used to process direct debits and send me a bill for half because we did not have the capacity to do that either in the Fees Office or in IPSA. It seems that for £6 million we get a system that does not work.
Mr Raynsford
My hon. Friend makes a telling point and countless examples have been brought to those of us who served on the Committee of ways in which the current system imposes unreasonable costs and burdens and is inefficient. Our objective as a Committee was to come forward with proposals that would be practical and sensible and could be implemented to achieve a better system of independently regulated expenses. That is the nub of what the Committee is proposing. As the report emphasises, the improvement of the process should deliver savings in expenditure because the current system costs more than is required to run an independently regulated, transparent and cost-effective system. Indeed, as the Chair of the Committee made clear, it is hard to find examples anywhere else in the world of a system where the regulator is also the payment agency—where the two roles, administration and regulation, are combined. There are unfortunately inherent inefficiencies in the way in which that is being done, which need to be addressed to create a fair but also more cost-effective system.
Therefore, it is sad, but not entirely unpredictable, that much of the media reaction to the publication of the report and today’s debate is to interpret them as an attempt to turn the clock back to the bad old days. May I say openly, as an MP who has not been subject to personal criticism for his expense claims over the years, that I have no wish whatever to revert to the old system, which was open to abuse and has rightly been replaced by one of independent regulation? All MPs suffered reputational damage as a result of the exposure of the abuses that some perpetrated under the old system. The restoration of public confidence is vital and that is what should be at the forefront of our minds. That is why we must stick with a system of independent regulation, but it is also why we should not stay silent now about the failings of the administration of the existing system.
The worry is that, because MPs are naturally worried about reputational damage in a climate where some of the media have used this as an opportunity in the last day or two to raise lurid headlines of “Back to the bad old days”, and “Greedy MPs want more money”, genuine concerns about the inefficiencies and unsatisfactory features of the current system will not be addressed. MPs find it easier and safer not to put their heads above the parapet and risk being attacked by the media for supporting sensible recommendations that will improve the system.
Alison Seabeck
I also declare an interest. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the taxpayer will not thank us in the long term if we kick the issue into the long grass and allow the additional costs that IPSA is racking up in processing our claims to continue ad infinitum? Something does really need to be done.
Mr Raynsford
I agree wholeheartedly. We have a responsibility to speak out openly and properly about the failings of the existing system, while at the same time making clear our commitment to a framework of independently regulated expenses that guarantee transparency, probity and all the objectives that were rightly emphasised in the preparation of the 2009 legislation.
The report proposes exactly that. First, any fair-minded commentator reading the report will see that it clearly is not arguing for a return to the old discredited system of self-regulation; that is not anywhere in the report. It is utter nonsense for some media commentators to imply that that is the objective. Secondly, it is not a case of “greedy” MPs arguing for more money. As any fair-minded observer of the report will see, it focuses on ways in which savings can be made and argues that we should be operating a system that gives better value for money to the taxpayer. Indeed, as the report highlights, the criticisms have been overwhelmingly about the processes operated by IPSA, rather than the amounts of money involved. Thirdly, the report does not argue for flat-rate allowances, although it has been misrepresented as doing so. I will come back to that issue in a moment because it is controversial, but it is important to put on the record that it is not the Committee’s recommendation that there should be flat-rate allowances, other than those that already exist. There are flat-rate allowances in the existing system that apply to London MPs and those living in the area around outer London.
Bob Russell
I am sure the media have not deliberately gone out of their way to misrepresent the report and thus mislead readers. Does the right hon. Gentleman think that the TaxPayers Alliance had not read the report when it made its comments? Clearly, as has been pointed out, the report would not impose an additional cost on the public purse; in fact it talks about greater efficiency and saving money for the public purse. Perhaps those at the TaxPayers Alliance are the people who are at fault and not the national media.
Mr Raynsford
I note, but I cannot say I am persuaded by, the hon. Gentleman’s touching faith in the integrity and probity of journalists, not all of whose expense claims would survive the slightest degree of the scrutiny that they advocate in the case of MPs. However, I agree that there are some forces outside this place that are only too keen to rush to judgment. They do not make a proper considered appraisal of the evidence in the report, or weigh up the merits and arguments and debate those rationally, but rush into caricature and vitriolic attacks on MPs because they have an agenda, which I do not wish to elaborate on further today.
The report proposes, first, separation of the regulation of the expenses system, which should remain in independent hands, from the administration, which as we have heard repeatedly and saw in the evidence submitted to the Committee, could be handled in a far more cost-effective way. The report does not propose a return to the Fees Office but it does suggest having a cost-effective administrative body appointed to run the process of handling claims and making payments, subject to the independent regulator's overall remit. That kind of structure applies almost universally in comparable organisations. It does not require a return to administration in this House. It could be done entirely independently. The case for separating the regulatory function from the administrative function was made forcefully by a large number of extremely experienced people who gave evidence to our Committee, many of whom said that the present arrangement was indefensible and not cost-effective.
Secondly, the report recommends the extension of direct payments to cut down on bureaucracy and costs without any risk of MPs gaining a financial advantage. That must be common sense. The report also proposes more extensive central procurement of equipment and supplies to save public money—again, a recommendation that should command widespread support. It proposes the annual publication of claims, backed up by receipts that have been redacted to remove personal details. That of course goes far further than the current system, which does not involve the publication of receipts, so the suggestion that we are trying to get away from transparency in making that recommendation is curious.
The framework proposed in the report would be more transparent than the current arrangements. At the same time, it would reduce the scope for potentially misleading indications of MPs’ expenses, which is the product of bi-monthly publication. That can result in some MPs who have particular surges, peaks or troughs in expenditure looking as though, in any one set of published figures, they are spending much more than their neighbours. Therefore, a simple, more accurate and fully transparent annualised publication system, together with a move towards real-time publication, as is proposed, must make sense.
The report recommends strongly the clear separation of expenses, which are items such as travel, subsistence and accommodation costs, from office expenditure. The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) and many others have made the point that such expenditure, bizarrely and uniquely to Members of Parliament, is treated as an expense. Where else would the costs necessary to carry out one’s job, such as for one’s desk, staff, office supplies, printers and so forth, be treated as an expense? Those are not, in normal parlance, an expense, but necessary costs of carrying out our functions. They should be identified separately so that we no longer see the highly misleading figures that are produced by some journalists to imply that MPs benefit from expenses of £120,000 a year, when that is a reflection of the costs of running their office and of their staffing. Those costs should not be subsumed by, or confused with, expenses.
Mr Winnick
Like the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell), I intervened when the Chair of the Select Committee was speaking. What is IPSA’s response to that point? Does it accept that it is farcical to describe staff salaries and office accommodation as expenses?
Mr Raynsford
If my hon. Friend reads the transcripts of the evidence, he will see that the Committee took evidence from Sir Ian Kennedy in two sessions. He will have to draw his own conclusions from the views set forward by Sir Ian Kennedy. I have to say that we did not feel that there was a meeting of minds that would suggest the likelihood of a smooth and easy transition from the current arrangements to ones that would work properly and effectively, and in a way that guaranteed the public confidence in Parliament that we all want to see.
The report recommends the establishment of a liaison group between IPSA and representatives of MPs’ staff. I found it extraordinary that no such group exists, but that probably explains why IPSA, in some of its evidence to us and in some of its responses to MPs, appears to be surprisingly ignorant of the practical implications for the staff in this place of operating the systems that it has set up. The establishment of a liaison framework between IPSA and MPs’ staff, who do the bulk of the work in making claims and processing applications, is surely commonsensical and ought to be done.
I cannot see how the many pragmatic and sensible reform proposals in the report merit the intemperate language that has been heaped on them by some media commentators. However, let me in conclusion focus on two recommendations that might appear to be more controversial. The first is the proposal to amend the legislation to make it clear that the independent regulator should, in line with the recommendation of the Committee on Standards in Public Life,
“support MPs efficiently, cost-effectively and transparently in carrying out their parliamentary functions”.
The way in which that recommendation was transposed into legislation allowed a loss of clarity.
Adam Afriyie
It struck us in the evidence sessions that even the chairman of IPSA acknowledged that he did not quite have the mandate to justify supporting MPs in the way that he wanted, because the legislation says that he must “have regard to” the principle of supporting MPs cost-effectively and efficiently, rather than it being a primary duty. It is clear from all the observations and evidence that there can be no other primary duty for such a body than to support MPs cost-effectively and efficiently in doing the duties that their constituents expect.
Mr Raynsford
I agree very much with the hon. Gentleman. It is clear from the evidence that there is a lack of clarity in the legislation, and that needs to be resolved. It cannot be satisfactory for the chairman of IPSA to talk in fairly broad terms about balancing a number of different considerations, some of which are in legislation and some of which are not. That gives no clarity about what the role and responsibility of the independent regulator should be.
There is a persuasive case for making this change. This is not MPs arguing for support, which some journalists have interpreted it to be. It is not us saying that we need customer care, as has been suggested. This is about clarity in the role of IPSA and in the balance that needs to be struck in its work between ensuring that MPs have the support necessary to carry out their functions properly, in a cost-effective and transparent way, and ensuring that all the other objectives that we want are satisfied. The lack of clarity needs to go. The arguments are set out very persuasively in paragraphs 8 to 13 of the report, and I commend them to right hon. and hon. Members.
The second recommendation that might be seen as controversial is in respect of flat-rate allowances. The first thing that I should say is that it is sometimes ignored that there are existing flat-rate allowances. As a London Member, I obviously receive one such allowance. Members from outer London and the immediate surrounding areas are also eligible for an additional allowance. Those elements exist at the moment.
It was put to the Committee that there might be a case for extending that principle of allowances to cut out much of the considerable cost involved in checking and processing individual claims for travel and accommodation costs. I can see an argument for that, but I am not wholly persuaded that it should be done. I do believe, and I think that the Committee believes, that it is right for the idea to be evaluated independently. That is why the recommendation in the report states clearly that there should be an independent evaluation of it.
Cathy Jamieson
Like my right hon. Friend and as a member of the Committee, I was not persuaded that we should move to that system. However, does he agree that if it is not evaluated and analysed independently, we will continue to have these arguments and the debate will continue in the media? We therefore need to consider it in more detail.
Mr Raynsford
My hon. Friend makes a very persuasive point. I hope that all Members, including those who are nervous about possible media criticism of any steps that we take in this matter, accept that there is a world of difference between a recommendation to introduce such a fairly fundamental change to the way in which expenses are paid and a recommendation that the likely costs, benefits and adverse consequences of it should be evaluated independently. That is the nub of the Committee’s recommendation.
I accept entirely the point made by the hon. Member for Windsor that there might be ambivalence about the recommendation that the House should have an opportunity to debate this matter. The point has been made forcefully that whatever the House decides, it will be for IPSA, ultimately, to determine whether any such recommendations should be supported. That, to my mind, means that the motion is acceptable. I would prefer it to the amendment, which has the whiff of the long grass about it. I am only sorry that a member of the Committee who signed up to the report as written and as presented to the House has moved an amendment that goes in a slightly different direction. I believe that the report stands. I accept entirely the ambiguity in the role of the decision by the House. I support very much the hon. Member for Windsor in his view that the House should consider the recommendation, but that ultimately it will be for IPSA to determine whether it should be applied as the basis for an expenses scheme.
In conclusion, I believe that this is a sensible, pragmatic and important report that deserves serious consideration. It should not either proceed to the long grass or continue to be the subject of vilification from certain quarters where it is seen as simply a rerun of the debates of two or three years ago, when completely unacceptable malpractice under the old system was exposed. That has passed, and we are in a different era. The principle of independent regulation is accepted and the new system is in place. It is not working as well as it should, for reasons that have been outlined, and it is right that we should be serious about finding ways of improving it. We need to ensure that we have a system for MPs to be able to carry out their functions, responsibilities and duties in a proper way and to be reimbursed for expenditure that they have of necessity to incur to perform those duties.
Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)
I beg to move amendment (a), to leave out from “House” to end and add
“thanks the Members’ Expenses Committee for its First Report on the Operation of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009, HC 1484; and refers it to IPSA to be considered as part of its Annual Review.”.
It is not often that I rise in the House as the villain of the piece, and that was certainly not my intention. If I have in any way shown a lack of courtesy towards my Committee Chairman, I want to apologise in front of the House. There is not another Member who is more courteous to other Members, and his chairmanship of the Members’ Expenses Committee was a model of courtesy. I apologise if my e-mail of this morning was slightly too late in arriving at his desk.
I want to make it clear that I signed up to the report and support it, and that I have been astounded by the vilification in the press of the modest proposals made in it. However, it is important to point out that there are recommendations in it that need to be taken seriously and taken forward. During the course of yesterday, it became increasingly apparent that there was a real likelihood that a vote would be called on today’s motion, and that it might be defeated.
Bob Russell
Would my hon. Friend like to inform the House whence that information came?
Guto Bebb
I am grateful. It came from various colleagues, and indeed from some Parliamentary Private Secretaries, who despite the fact that there is a one-line Whip are staying around today. That might indicate why I had my concerns.
The report is an important piece of work and contains proposals to better the situation. Crucially, and in contrast with the media comments on it, a large part of the Committee’s work examined not the unfairness of IPSA towards Members—we have spoken at length about that in the Chamber—but how it has discriminated against our staff. That issue has been ignored time and time again when we have discussed how IPSA operates. It has created real barriers to promotion for staff members, and they have found themselves worse off for child care. There are serious proposals on that in the report, which IPSA should take into account.
It is frankly astounding that IPSA has not formally spoken to any organisation responsible for our members of staff. There are recommendations in the report that it should be allowed to think carefully about and take forward. I would not want to end up with the report being rejected by the House, allowing IPSA to ignore its responsibility to consider those recommendations seriously.
Before becoming a Member of the House, I ran a small business for 17 years, so I believe in a pragmatic approach to what can be done. There are 19 recommendations in the report, and I stand by them, although I would say that we need to explain recommendation 3 in detail. I take full responsibility for the wording of it, because I was a member of the Committee, but it has allowed the media to attack us on the basis that we want to bring the expenses system back in-house. A Committee of Members came up with that wording, and I am as responsible as anybody else.
We need to consider carefully whether the administration and governance of the system can be split, and whether better value for money can be achieved by allowing IPSA to subcontract the work of administering it. The media’s conclusion from looking carefully at the wording of recommendation 3 has been unfortunate—I do not believe the conclusion that has been drawn was the intention behind the report. As my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) and the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) have made perfectly clear, that was not the report’s purpose. If there were transcripts of our discussions in Committee, they would make that apparent.
Adam Afriyie
I respect the work that my hon. Friend has done with the Committee. I have already pointed out my slight frustration and disappointment with the fact that we have not spoken—there would have been other ways of achieving his goal, but his actions ruled them out.
I simply observe that the report is not a legal document. It is not a Bill or a piece of legislation but a general set of recommendations for small changes to legislation that are not that controversial. The absolute precision of the wording—one word here or there—does not make any difference. The report does not commit anybody to doing anything with such precision.
Guto Bebb
I am grateful to my hon. Friend and accept his comments, but that has not been my argument. My argument is that Members need to have a great deal of confidence in IPSA to believe that it would not see a rejection of the report by the House as an excuse not to take its recommendations seriously.
Mr Andrew Smith
To clarify what the hon. Gentleman’s amendment means, is not the crucial difference that the original motion would have the House approving the recommendations in the report, whereas agreeing to the amendment would mean that the House was not approving them but simply passing them to IPSA for consideration? I might be able to live with the amendment, but I would not have been able to vote for the motion; indeed, I would have voted against it.
Guto Bebb
I am grateful for the intervention and delighted that the amendment will make it easier for Members to ensure that IPSA examines the issues in the report. I joined the Committee with a great deal of reservation, because as a newly elected Member the last thing I wanted was to be vilified as being part of an attempt to make MPs’ lives easier.
Mr Bone
I entirely understand the position of the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith), but I really do not understand that of my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb). He voted for the report in December and supported it, so how can he move an amendment that would prevent the House from voting on it? It is very bizarre.
Guto Bebb
I have attempted to explain my reasoning. I believe that there are several recommendations in the report that should be taken forward, but I have clearly stated my concern and suspicion that if the House divided on the motion, the report would be rejected. That would be a great shame.
Bob Russell
Pursuant to my previous point and the one made by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), I am not sure whether the Committee had 12 members, but of the Members who were prevailed upon to sign the amendment, only one is in the Chamber. Can my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) tell me who leaned on him to table the amendment? He had sufficient time to find people to sign the amendment, but no time to discuss it with the Chair of his Committee, which produced a report that he had previously approved.
Mr Bone
My hon. Friend is being exceptionally generous in giving way. Will he tell the House when the wording of the amendment came into his mind? It is great that Back Benchers are moving amendments, but did he have a little help? Did anybody perhaps give him a draft of the amendment?
Guto Bebb
Again, I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. In reality, when Members table amendments they do so in their own name and stand by them, so the implication of his comments does him a disservice.
I shall refrain from speaking about the report in general, because I agree with the comments that my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor and the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich made. There is a lot to be commended in it, and it contains 19 recommendations that can stand up to scrutiny, but it appears that three of them create a problem. I would rather IPSA considered them, and implemented 15 or 16 of them for the next financial year, than not consider them at all. That implementation would make a difference not just to Members but to our staff. More importantly, it would create more transparency and better value for money, and it would result in our constituents looking upon the House with more confidence. We would once again have proved that we are not looking to feather our own beds or change the situation in our interests. We are looking to change the situation in a way that is practical, effective and deliverable. In my view, delivering some of the recommendations soon is better than taking the view that we have to ensure that all of them are delivered now.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
I am grateful to be called at this stage of the debate, but it is worth saying at the start that because the report was published only on Monday, the Government have not had the opportunity formally to respond to the Committee and to set out our views. I thought it would be helpful for the debate and the House if I were able to do so at a relatively early stage of the debate.
My hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) referred to the press coverage, but I can assure him that the Government are not responsible for that. We have said publicly that most of the recommendations of his report relate to the expenses scheme, and are therefore for IPSA to consider, and suggested that it might want to do so as part of its annual review. We have said that we will look carefully at the section of the report that is directed at the Government, that we are totally committed to an independent and transparent expenses system, and that we could not accept any recommendations that would be incompatible with that. I leave Members to judge, but I do not consider that to be particularly harsh. It is a perfectly calm and balanced response to the report.
Mr Harper
May I make a little progress, because I need to set out the Government’s concerns about the report? [Interruption.] I will come to that.
The problem is that the motion asks the House—I will come to the amendment in a minute—to approve all the recommendations in the report. It is perfectly true that the Committee’s report in itself has no effect, but Parliament and the House of Commons are being asked to approve every single recommendation. It is therefore necessary to look at what they are and at whether they are acceptable.
It would have been more helpful if the Government had had a little more time, but the motion was tabled for debate today. Between noon on Monday and today, we have had to study the report and the recommendations that are directed at the Government. Because I need to be able to set out our position to the House, we have had to take a view on them, and I will do so.
Bob Russell
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. He is a Minister for whom I have the utmost respect, and I would hate his future prospects to be diminished in the eyes of the House if he aligned himself with the amendment. Does he agree that what he has just said sounds remarkably like the wording of the amendment? Is that a coincidence, or was some pressure brought to bear on the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb), who moved the amendment?
Mr Harper
I have not commented on the amendment yet. It is a fact that most of the report’s recommendations are for IPSA to consider. One or two are for the Government to consider, and I shall set out our view on them because the House has been asked to take a view.
It is probably appropriate at this point to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor. Not only has he chaired the Committee very well, but he has taken a great deal of interest in this issue since the debate earlier this year and the House’s decision to set up the Committee and give it the mandate that it has. I also thank all members of the Committee, some of whom are present, for their work. They have carried out a great deal of research, taken a great deal of evidence and put a great deal of work into their conclusions.
The Government are unable to support the motion. It is helpful for the House that my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) has moved the amendment, because I fear that otherwise, I would have urged my hon. Friends, and indeed every Member of the House, to vote down the motion, because there are flaws in some of the recommendations and it would not have been appropriate. The amendment enables the report to go to IPSA for its consideration. Indeed, IPSA has said that it is very pleased to consider the report as part of its annual review.
Cathy Jamieson
Before the Minister moves on, will the Minister explain to the House exactly which recommendations he feels are flawed and why?
Mr Harper
I will. In summary, the recommendations that trespass on IPSA’s independence are recommendations 2, 3, and 17(c). It is worth drawing the House’s attention to one other thing. My hon. Friend the Member for Windsor and the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) made it clear that they did not in any way want to trespass on IPSA’s independence, but however frustrating we find an independent regulator, we cannot give it instructions—
Mr Harper
Hang on. Let me finish this point and I will give way. Paragraph 204 of the report acknowledges that some of the Committee’s “recommendations require legislative changes” but also states that other recommendations do not require legislation
“but could be brought about in that way if IPSA does not act.”
The report also says that the Committee believes that legislation should be introduced to implement its recommendations if
“IPSA’s Board has not implemented”
them.
Mr Harper
I have said that I will take my hon. Friend’s intervention if I am allowed to finish my point.
We cannot have an independent regulator and expenses system, and then say that if it does not follow the views and advice that we give it, we will legislate to implement them. Those things are not compatible. In paragraph 205 of the report, the Committee states:
“We urge the Government and Parliament to have the courage to reform the system of payments…by implementing our recommendations.”
From the way I read that—I am happy to be put straight by hon. Members—it seems that there is a conflict between the recommendations in the report and an independent system. It says to IPSA, “If you don’t do them, we will legislate to do them anyway,” which trespasses on the independent system.
Adam Afriyie
I shall be polite in this intervention, but frankly, my hon. Friend has had to work very hard to find a tiny little thing to object to, but it does not say what he is suggesting. Nowhere in the report does it say that we should not have independent regulation and nobody is saying that—the first recommendation is that independent regulation should be reinforced.
Paragraph 204 merely states the obvious. In a parliamentary democracy, Parliament ultimately has the power to do anything. It does not recommend that the Government make legislation. Only recommendations 2 and 3 recommend change. Paragraph 204 is not a recommendation but an observational statement. The Minister could dig out a sentence from any report to try to make a point that simply is not there.
Mr Harper
I want time to set out our recommendations, but the report states:
“Some of our recommendations require legislative changes; others are not dependent on legislation, but could be brought about in that way if IPSA does not act.”
If the Committee had stopped there, my hon. Friend’s point would have had some force, but it did not. The report goes on to say:
“We believe that step should be taken”—
meaning that legislation should be introduced—if IPSA
“has not implemented the recommendations of this report by 1 April 2012.”
Mr Andrew Smith
I strongly support the line of argument that the Minister is advancing. Quite apart from the unacceptable proposals within the recommendations—the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) tries to belittle them, but they are there, they mean what they say, and the House is being invited to approve them—is it not crucial that this House does not give the impression that it is seeking to use its legislative power to lean on IPSA? That would be wrong, and we must make that clear.
Mr Harper
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s point, which is an important one.
The House set up a proper way in which to express its views when it legislated to create IPSA—statutory consultees include Members. IPSA also has an annual review, as the amendment makes clear. The proper thing to do is to state our views through that. IPSA has published a document in which it acknowledges quite a number of the concerns that Members have raised today and in the report, including, for example, those on staffing. IPSA has made dealing with staffing one of its focuses. It seems to me that Members need to respond to IPSA. The consultation stage is open until 20 January. I urge every Member of the House who has a concern about how the system works to take full advantage of that opportunity and to feed their views back to IPSA.
Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)
I am not following the Minister’s argument. Is he saying that the 2009 Act, alone among every Act over the past 100 years, is the one piece of legislation that is so perfectly crafted that it will never require any amendment ever again? Unlike any Criminal Justice Bill or any other Bill that has been introduced by the previous Government, this particular Act is sacrosanct. It has been set in stone and must never, ever be considered for amendment. Is that really the Government’s position?
Mr Harper
No, it is not the Government’s position and it is not what I said. If we were simply transmitting this report to IPSA, I would have no problem with it; the report has a number of sensible recommendations. However, if we were considering the motion, which asks this House to approve every single one of the recommendations in this report, I would have a problem and I would be urging members of the House to vote against it. What this says is that if IPSA has not implemented all the recommendations, the Committee thinks that legislation should be brought in to implement them. I am simply saying that that is not appropriate if we are going to have independent regulation.
Adam Afriyie
I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell). The point is that this is not a recommendation of this report. It is merely an observation that members of the Committee have made. If the Minister goes through the 200 or 300 pages of the report, he will find plenty of other observations that people have made. This is not a recommendation, so the Minister is working a little bit too hard on an argument that does not really exist.
Mr Harper
It is one of the conclusions of the report. I will now move on to the three recommendations. Most of the recommendations in the report are for IPSA to consider. As Members on both sides of the House have said, many of the recommendations are very sensible and I hope that IPSA looks at them and takes them into account. In response to the report, IPSA has said that in some areas, it and the Members’ Expenses Committee are in agreement. Indeed, it has already introduced some of the suggestions that the Committee has made. IPSA has gone on to say, and has confirmed, that it will consider the recommendations of the Committee as it carries out its annual review of the scheme, which is very welcome.
Bob Russell
Is the Minister saying that IPSA has already responded to the report?
Mr Harper
Yes, IPSA put out a press notice, which is on its website for everyone to see. It has confirmed—[Interruption.] Will the hon. Gentleman let me answer his first intervention? IPSA has confirmed publicly that it will look at this report and consider the recommendations of the Committee. Indeed, it has said that it is in agreement with the Committee in a number of areas, which is a constructive response. It has learned from some of its previous responses, and is indicating that it wants to work with Members. It recognises that there are issues with the way in which the scheme works and it wants to improve it.
Bob Russell
I understood the Minister to say that the Government had not had time to consider this report, yet IPSA has had time to consider it.
Mr Harper
No, IPSA has not considered the report. IPSA has said that it will consider the Committee’s recommendations, as it considers the annual review of the scheme. As I have said, the Government have had to consider the report because the House is being invited today to decide whether to approve it. I simply said at the beginning of my remarks that the Government would have welcomed having had more than three days in which to do so, and that would have done justice to the report. Many Members said that they wanted a careful and thoughtful review, so I am gently suggesting that giving the Government three days was perhaps not entirely helpful in achieving that objective.
The Government’s interest in IPSA concerns equipping it with its statutory framework. IPSA is accountable to the House and the Speaker’s Committee, which was set up under the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009. The Government are primarily concerned about recommendations 2 and 3, which are for the Government. I will say something about recommendation 17, which deals with the decision that the House would be invited to take.
Recommendation 2—the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich addressed this point—states:
“The Act should be amended in accordance with the Committee on Standards in Public Life’s recommendation to provide that IPSA’s primary duty is ‘to support MPs efficiently, cost-effectively and transparently in carrying out their parliamentary functions.’ It would continue to be IPSA’s role to determine what assistance for MPs was necessary.”
It seems that there are two schools of thought about what that recommendation means. It is either a modest change that is meant to correct the emphasis of the legislation—
Mr Harper
I see the right hon. Gentleman nodding to that. Or it is a substantial change that would alter significantly the way in which IPSA functions.
If it is a modest change, it is unnecessary and would have no practical implication. Hon. Members will be aware that one amendment made to the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009 by the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 was the insertion of section 3A. That section sets out the general duties of IPSA, which are twofold. One is that IPSA must, in carrying out its functions, have regard to the principle that it should act in a way that is efficient, cost-effective and transparent, when it is running its systems and setting them up. The second duty is that in carrying out its functions, IPSA must have regard to the principle that Members of the House of Commons should be supported in carrying out their parliamentary functions efficiently, cost-effectively and transparently. Although the duty to have regard to the principle that we should be supported to do our jobs comes second in order, it is none the less just as much a legal duty as the first; it is not an optional extra that IPSA can put to one side. That is why the change of emphasis would be unnecessary and would simply have no practical effect in how it operates.
Mr Raynsford
Does the Minister accept the point that is articulated in paragraphs 8 to 13 of the report? There is ambiguity, which was reflected in Sir Ian Kennedy’s response in trying to define the primary principles that should guide IPSA. That lack of clarity is not helpful. There is a need for a change. I am talking not about fundamental changes in the principles, but about a clarification, so that there is no longer any ambiguity.
Mr Harper
That was a helpful intervention. Let me pick it up as I move on to my second thought on this matter. If recommendation 2 is going to make a significant difference, and is not a modest change, it is misplaced. IPSA has a number of objectives that must be balanced. The Committee recognises that itself. Paragraph 97 of the report states:
“Restoring public confidence in MPs and Parliament was the fundamental purpose of the 2009 Act and the establishment of IPSA. It was so basic that it did not need to be explicitly referred to in the legislation.”
It is quite clear that IPSA has a number of things that it is trying to achieve. Yes, it wants to support Members of Parliament to do their jobs efficiently, cost-effectively and transparently. Indeed, it has a legal duty to do so. It is also interested in both restoring—there is some evidence that there has been progress in that direction—and maintaining public confidence in MPs—[Interruption.] A comment has been made from a sedentary position. I am not going to repeat it for the benefit of the House. I am afraid that I am simply reading out what the Committee said in its report. Let me repeat paragraph 97 for the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell):
““Restoring public confidence in MPs and Parliament was the fundamental purpose of the 2009 Act and the establishment of IPSA. It was so basic that it did not need to be explicitly referred to in the legislation.”
Those are not my words—
Adam Afriyie
What is clear from the statement in the report, and clear overall, is that the purpose of creating the legislation was to improve the public standing of Parliament, but the primary duty of the body administering and regulating must be to support. The CSPL said that there cannot be any other primary purpose than to support Members in performing their functions. The Minister is slightly confusing the two issues—one is the purpose of creating legislation and the other is a primary duty provided to IPSA, rather than a statement that it must have regard to something, which it may or may not decide that it wishes to.
Mr Harper
I do not think that the two are mutually exclusive. Indeed, I would argue that if Members are to be able to carry out their parliamentary functions efficiently, there must be public confidence in them. If the public lose confidence in us and in this institution, we shall be in deep trouble.
Alison Seabeck
The Minister is making an important point, but it is slightly at odds with his suggestion at the beginning of his speech that we were becoming frustrated with IPSA’s status as an independent body. I do not think that we find independent scrutiny at all frustrating. Will the Minister correct his earlier statement? It was a bit misleading and, as I have said, it is contradicted by what he is saying now.
Mr Harper
The Committee has done an excellent job in putting together what I acknowledge to be some very good recommendations, and I hope that the House will send those recommendations to IPSA. IPSA has said that it will look at them, and that is absolutely fine. However, we must accept that, if IPSA is indeed independent, and if it considers those recommendations and decides not to implement them, we must live with its decision. It seems to me that if we say, as the report says in paragraph 204, that if it does not implement them by next April we will pass primary legislation to make it do so, we shall no longer have an independent regulator for our expenses system. I think that I speak not just for the Government but for most Members when I say that we cannot start telling IPSA what to do.
Mr Raynsford
I thank the Minister for giving way again. He is being very generous. May I return him to the question that I asked earlier about the lack of clarity? When giving evidence to the Committee, Sir Ian Kennedy was asked to define the basic principles that guided IPSA. He was reminded that some were contained in legislation, and that some nine or 10 others were listed in a document that he had submitted. He gave us the slightly odd response that all of them were fundamental, which—as I pointed out to him—implied a lack of clarity in regard to what really were the fundamental principles. Will the Minister please accept that, given that the recommendation of the Committee on Standards in Public Life was not transcribed into legislation in precisely those terms, there is genuine uncertainty about what should be IPSA’s dominant objectives?
Mr Harper
I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says, but I have made it clear that IPSA has a legal duty to carry out its work and to ensure that we are “efficiently, cost-effectively and transparently” supported in the carrying out of our functions. However, IPSA must balance that duty with a range of other duties, one of which is restoring and maintaining public confidence. It will not be possible for it to have a sole objective.
Mr Andrew Smith
In common-sense terms, does it not come down to the question of whether IPSA is seen as working for us—which should not be the case—or as working for the British public? Yes, it has a responsibility to ensure that we do our job in an accountable and transparent way and so forth, but ultimately, if public confidence is to be restored, it must be seen to be working for the public and not for Members of Parliament.
Mr Harper
The right hon. Gentleman has put it very well. I cannot really add anything to what he has said.
A number of Members talked about costs and how efficiently IPSA did its job. I should emphasise that IPSA itself has a legal duty to be efficient and cost-effective. The National Audit Office’s report, which has been mentioned by a number of Members, noted that IPSA had significantly reduced its cost per claim, observing:
“This is impressive by the end of its first year of operation”.
The report went on to say, however, that
“IPSA is dealing with a much higher number of claims”
than were made in other UK legislatures in the UK,
“and should therefore be able to be the most efficient in the future.”
Given that, as I said, IPSA itself has a legal duty to be efficient and cost-effective, I think that it will be mindful of the thorough work done by the National Audit Office and the important recommendations that it has made.
I shall read out recommendation 3 so that Members can be clear about what it says:
“IPSA’s current administrative role should be carried out by a separate body, so that IPSA is not regulating itself, and the Act should be amended to permit this. The best arrangement would be for that separate body to be within the House of Commons Service, both because such a body would avoid imposing undue burdens on MPs and because it would benefit from the economies of scale of being part of a larger organisation in areas such as human resources and IT. Independent regulation by IPSA and transparency would ensure that it did not replicate the deficiencies of the old expenses system.”
I entirely accept that the Committee’s intention is not—here I paraphrase a media report—to go back to the old Fees Office, but it did not exactly go out of its way to make it difficult for the media to draw that conclusion, and I think it would be difficult for the House to agree to a recommendation that contains such a reference.
Another point requires clarification. IPSA’s administrative role falls into two categories: deciding whether claims should be allowed—what is called in the legislation “determining” claims—and paying those allowed claims. IPSA already has the power to contract out the payment of those claims, which is set out explicitly in the legislation. It can also contract out the payment of our salaries and the administration of our pensions, now that it is responsible for those. Under the legislation, however, it must retain direct control of the scheme for our expenses and decisions on the claims.
I believe that the deciding of claims should remain with IPSA, and the best way of explaining why I believe that is to quote paragraph 74 of the report, which quotes the Committee on Standards in Public Life:
“The CSPL noted in 2009 that both the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales”—
the way in which the Scottish Parliament carried out its work was referred to in our debate in May, and has also been touched on today—
“had felt able to retain self-regulation by adding safeguards, but noted that ‘the difference is that neither ... has suffered a crisis of trust remotely comparable to that which has affected Westminster.’”
I think that, for that reason, the determination of our claims should remain with IPSA. The payment can already be contracted out if IPSA considers that to be more cost-effective and sensible. Other Members have said that we should not return to the old Fees Office approach, and I accept that the Committee did not mean to suggest that we should, although some may have interpreted its observations in that way.
Words mean what they say, and we must judge them on that basis. The House is being asked to approve these words in paragraph 17(c):
“In not more than six months’ time, the House should have the opportunity to consider the merits of the cost-benefit analysis and evaluation”—
as proposed in recommendation 17(b)—
“and to make a decision on whether there should or should not be a system of regional supplements instead of the existing travel and accommodation provisions.”
My hon. Friend the Member for Windsor said that what was meant was that the House should simply express a view—nothing stronger than that—but I am afraid that that is not what the report says. The right hon. Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) spotted that point and drew it to the attention of the House, and I think that it raises a fundamental issue.
Adam Afriyie
I understand my hon. Friend’s point, but both I and other members of the Committee have made it absolutely clear that nothing in that recommendation suggests that IPSA would be bound by it. He will know that earlier in the week when we were discussing these matters, I tried to table an amendment to change the motion to make that clear, but it was firmly turned down. I can only suspect that the aim is to engineer a difference. Furthermore, primary legislation would be required to enable this place to force IPSA to do anything, and that is not what the recommendation suggests. I realise that the Minister will persist in his noble attempt to make this a bigger point than it is, and I respect that, but I think that we need to be clear about it.
Mr Harper
I know that my hon. Friend has set out clearly what he intended by the report, but his motion asks the House to approve the words in the recommendation, and those words mean what they mean—they ask the House “to make a decision”. Although he said that only primary legislation could bind the House, his Committee wrote, in paragraph 204, that if IPSA did not implement the recommendations, primary legislation should be used. The Committee has set out its view clearly. It might not have meant to say that, but it did say it.
Adam Afriyie
I will leave the Minister alone from hereon in because the point has been well made. Let us be clear: in paragraph 204 the Committee merely states, “We believe”. It is not a recommendation. He is working hard and doing a good job at creating the sense that this is legislation that is going through when it clearly is not. I commend him on his efforts, therefore, but the House should be clear on that point.
Mr Harper
I am happy to agree with my hon. Friend that we have explained the matter enough to the House. I have set out my view of what the Committee report states, and he has set out his. The House will be asked shortly to take a view on that, and I am happy for it to do so.
The creation of IPSA was an essential step in cleaning up politics by bringing to an end the discredited system of self-regulation. IPSA has handled expenses for some time now, and the House recently resolved to commence IPSA’s powers to determine our pay and pensions. Those powers had been on the statute book since the previous Parliament, and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House commenced those powers after consulting Members from across the House. I mention that because the Leader of the House said, in moving that motion, that under the relevant legislation MPs would not vote on their pay again, and his opposite number, the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle), confirmed that the principle of independent determination was right. During those debates, several Members on both sides of the House were very firm in their view that the House should never again vote on our pay, pensions or expenses, and I think that recommendation 17(c) is incompatible with that, which is why the Government cannot accept it.
Mr Tom Harris
I apologise to the Minister for intervening now, but it took me some time to find the reference to his previous point about recommendation 17(c). He seems to be saying that he opposes the recommendation because it advocates a particular allowance system in six months. Actually, he seems to oppose it because it recommends that in six months
“the House should have the opportunity to consider the merits”
of the recommendation
“and to make a decision”.
Surely he is not saying that the House should be denied an opportunity to consider whether this is acceptable. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. A lot of private conversations are going on in the Chamber. It is very distracting, particularly for those who wish to take part in the debate. If people want to have private discussions, perhaps they should leave the Chamber, so that the Minister can be heard.
Mr Harper
I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
If the recommendation simply stated that the House should have a general chat about the proposals, that would be one thing, but it specifically states that the House should be asked to make a decision on whether to change the system of allowances. If we have an independent system, we can write to IPSA asking for something different—for example, a different system of payments or a cost-benefit analysis. That is one thing. We could make those recommendations to IPSA, which could then consider them and, as an independent body, make a decision. If we decide, however, that the House can decide to change the system of allowances, we do not have an independent system any more. Members cannot have it both ways. I listened to the previous debates, and Members on both sides made it clear that we did not want to vote on our pay, pension or expenses. That is where we want to be and it is where we want to stay.
I shall conclude my remarks so that others can speak. [Interruption.] I have been generous and taken many interventions. The Government believe that recommendations 2, 3 and 17(c) are unacceptable. I therefore urge the House to support the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy, but if it does not, I urge it to vote against the motion tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
Many of us remember only too well the collective trauma experienced by the House during the previous Parliament over expenses. It is worth remembering that the then Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), had support from both sides of the House when he introduced plans for an external and independent body to have responsibility for Members’ allowances. It was rightly seen that a system of self-regulation had been thoroughly discredited and that a fundamentally different approach was required—one that could command public confidence and one that meant establishing a body that was truly independent of Parliament. That body was the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority.
Today, the Opposition still strongly support that approach and are firmly behind the principles that underlie IPSA’s operation, but it is fair to say that because Parliament moved swiftly to address the wholly understandable public concerns about the House’s expenses regime, after IPSA was established there were a number of shortcomings in the administration of the new system. I am encouraged that IPSA has listened and that significant improvements have been made and are still being made. For instance, the system for the submission of duplicate documents relating to Members’ accommodation has been simplified and Members’ mileage claims are now much more straightforward. These are just two examples of how things have gradually improved over the past 12 months.
That is not to say that the process of improvement should come to an end. On the contrary, we need to consider carefully two reports that highlight the fact that ISPA can and should make further improvements. The first report is that from the National Audit Office, published in July. It suggested that IPSA ought to consider a number of points. For example, it stated that IPSA needed to consider how it could improve relations with MPs and provide reassurance that it was truly committed to doing all it could to facilitate our work as MPs. Similarly, it suggested that IPSA ought to consider the introduction of centralised procurement contracts. It was argued that such contracts would allow more progress to be made in achieving IPSA’s goal of a cost-effective scheme. Other points in that report are also worthy of consideration.
John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for robustly supporting the coalition position in this debate, which I, too, endorse. However, does not his point about the National Audit Office go to the crux of the dilemma? There are many different views on what a good system would be. My personal preference would be for local supplies, rather than national supplies, to boost local economies; the National Audit Office, backed by some, is suggesting something centralised and national. Does that not go to the crux of the matter, and is that not precisely why IPSA should remain independent?
Mr David
My hon. Friend makes a good point, which underlines the point that IPSA should always effectively be independent of Parliament, as he says. The only point I would make—and which the National Audit Office has also made—is about the general principle of collective procurement, which could be done more effectively to save taxpayers’ money. IPSA has made advances in ensuring a cost-effective scheme, but more can be done, and this is a clear example.
The second report that we are discussing today is that from the Committee on Members’ Expenses. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) and his Committee for their assiduous work. Their report is reasonable in tone and contains a raft of practical proposals to improve IPSA’s performance. However, I have some reservations about aspects of the report. For example, I am somewhat concerned about the recommendation that a separate body be established within the House of Commons service. That body, the report says, would be independently regulated by IPSA, and
“transparency would ensure that it did not replicate the deficiencies of the old expenses system.”
I welcome those words of reassurance, which are honestly expressed, but I am not convinced that we should run the risk of creating a perception that MPs could once again exercise influence over their expenses. For me, independence means independence, full stop.
Adam Afriyie
I do not think there is any disagreement, actually. The recommendation is merely that the legislation should enable the separation of those functions, because IPSA is unique in the entire world in its existing set-up. The Committee goes on to suggest what we think might be the best way to work more cost-effectively, but that is not the recommendation. The recommendation is merely that the legislation should enable a separation to take place, just to tidy things up a little.
Mr David
I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, but it still worries me that we are talking about at least an aspect of IPSA’s work coming in-house, to this place. Indeed, recommendation 3 says clearly:
“The best arrangement would be for that separate body to be within the House of Commons Service”.
However, if that body is in the House of Commons service, it is under the control of Members of Parliament, and I do not think that is desirable, nor is it something that would be easily understood by the general public.
That said, the report makes a number of good practical suggestions. For example, it is suggested that IPSA should extend its use of direct payments to cover as near to 100% of transactions as possible. That is to be welcomed. It is proposed that Members’ office and staff budgets should be merged, which would also be welcome. The report proposes that IPSA should make it easier for MPs to find out online how much of each budget has been spent. That would be a step forward. It is also suggested that IPSA should always ensure that MPs’ staff should have their expenses reimbursed directly and that this reimbursement should be made promptly. We would all endorse that. Those are just some of the practical and positive suggestions that are well worth active consideration and, I hope, implementation.
There are many policies and proposals in the report that I believe require careful deliberation. However, because of that, I am of the view that simply approving all the recommendations in their entirety might not be the best approach. That is why I have sympathy with the amendment, tabled by Government Back Benchers, which asks that the report be considered by IPSA as part of its annual review. I also hope that the Government will not merely wrap the report in warm words, but ensure that active consideration is given to those proposals that relate directly to the Government—in particular, recommendation 2—or the duties of IPSA.
I believe that the House has begun the process of restoring the reputation of Members of Parliament in the eyes of the public. However, to be honest, we still have a long way to go. That is why I believe that IPSA’s independence must be unequivocally maintained and that this House should not have any determining influence over any aspect of its expenses regime.
Bob Russell
Would the hon. Gentleman like to follow that argument through? Had it not been for the determination of the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) in getting the House to agree that this Committee should be established in the first place—we should remember that the Front Benchers did not want this Committee to exist—we would not be having this debate now and we would not have been able to discuss the important points to which the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David) has alluded, including allowing Members to make progress and enhancing public confidence. It is not thanks to Front Benchers, but thanks to the House collectively—and the hon. Member for Windsor particularly—that we are having this debate and that this Committee was set up in the first place.
Mr David
I certainly endorse that point. The House has been mature in its approach to the issue and, as I made clear at the start, I genuinely commend the work carried out by this Committee. I would make the point, however, that for the next stage, it is not for us to accept everything before us on a blanket basis; we should pass matters on for further in-depth scrutiny and appropriate implementation. That is my important point.
I come back to the central issue of the independence of IPSA. That is a cardinal principle, and I would not want any message to go out from this House, either deliberately or inadvertently, that undermines that independence. That is important both for the practical implementation of expenses and for public perception. The standing of Members of Parliament is, I believe, something that we are all genuinely concerned about.
Finally, we all recognise that the system needs to be improved and made more effective. That is why Labour Members and I personally welcome this report from the Committee on Members’ Expenses and why I shall support the amendment.
Adam Afriyie
I have enjoyed hearing the constructive contributions to the debate. One thing that has been emphasised over and over again is that nobody wants to undermine the regulation of payments to Members and that everybody would like greater transparency, greater efficiency and greater value for money for the taxpayer.
The amended motion would not be my preferred route, but it would not prevent other actions from being taken by the Government as they revisit some of these issues. On balance, I shall not object to the amendment. I hope that we can therefore move swiftly on the next business.
Amendment agreed to.
Main question, as amended, put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House thanks the Members’ Expenses Committee for its First Report on the Operation of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009, HC 1484; and refers it to IPSA to be considered as part of its Annual Review.
Financial Education
(13 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House notes that young people today grow up in an increasingly complex financial world requiring them to make difficult decisions for the future, often without the necessary level of financial literacy; believes that financial education will help address the national problem of irresponsible borrowing and personal insolvency and that teaching people about budgeting and personal finance will help equip the workforce with the necessary skills to succeed in business and drive forward economic growth; further believes that the country has a duty to equip its young people properly through education to make informed financial decisions; and calls on the Government to consider the provision of financial education as part of the current curriculum review.
First, I would like to thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing us to have this excellent opportunity to raise the profile of our ongoing campaign calling for greater provision of financial education and to make it compulsory in the national curriculum. I also extend my thanks to Martin Lewis of MoneySavingExpert.com, whose e-petition secured the magic trigger of 100,000 signatories. It is only the fourth to have done so.
A number of people have asked me why this subject caught the public’s imagination. A couple of recent studies perhaps explain that. It was found that 94% of people agree that financial education is important; that 69% of parents feel that their children will get into debt; that fewer than a quarter of parents feel confident in educating their own children in money matters; and that 72% of parents do not believe that enough has been done to educate young children.
I am personally passionate about this subject because I believe society is changing. Here are some examples. This year was the first in which debit card usage exceeded cash usage. Only a few generations ago, people were paid weekly in cash. They often ran out of money, so were effectively forced to try to manage money in a controlled manner. Nowadays it is easy for the money to come in and flow out very quickly. We are seeing a greater prevalence of direct debits and standing orders, so if people get themselves into financial difficulty—the majority because of an unforeseen change of circumstances, such as the loss of a job, a bereavement or a family breakdown—they think that they will apply the financial brakes and not go out that weekend for a meal or to the cinema and that they will not spend any money, but the direct debits and standing orders are still flowing out of the account. People quickly become overwhelmed.
We are seeing ever more complicated marketing messages from different sectors, which are often misleading.
Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and I congratulate him on tabling this motion, which I strongly support. Does he agree that one of the big problems is that a lot of people, faced with the marketing to which he refers, simply do not understand the rate of interest they are being charged? That underlines the importance of basic mathematics in the curriculum alongside the financial education that he is rightly advocating.
Justin Tomlinson
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely spot on with that point and I am just about to come on to it.
We have already had a number of debates in this Chamber on debt management companies, doorstep lending and payday loans. In fact, on annual percentage rates, we have already seen worrying evidence that consumers often think the higher the APR, the better. When people take out loans, they are not necessarily taking them out for a simple 12-month period. Most people could probably calculate 10% on a £100 loan, but it becomes complicated. Sometimes, the high-interest rate loans can be better than what people think is a safe bet. A good example of that is someone who wishes to borrow £100 for two days. They can borrow it from one of those well-known payday lenders who charge 4,635% plus £5.50 for the product fee, or they can go into their unauthorised overdraft facility at their local bank, which will charge them an understandable flat fee of £10 a day and a £2.50 fee for the privilege of using their debit card. Nearly everybody would accept the bank’s offer, because it is understandable.
Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
I feel obliged to intervene, given that my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) is not here, but how many people does the hon. Gentleman believe sit and make the calculation when they are working out whether to take a loan from Wonga? How many of them does he think roll over their loans at the end of the borrowing term?
Justin Tomlinson
I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention and that is exactly the point. It is so complicated. In my example, the bank was not the right option, but on many other occasions, it would be the other way around. The majority of consumers cannot calculate the interest rates to make those informed decisions. The market benefits from that and targets its marketing to take advantage of the situation.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
I have a great deal of sympathy with my hon. Friend’s motion and I congratulate him on tabling it. Does he agree that the fundamental problem is not so much financial literacy and numeracy skills, although they are important, but that basic literacy and numeracy need to be improved, as evidenced by the unsatisfactory key stage 2 results that we saw in May?
Justin Tomlinson
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and I agree with him 100%. My speech and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) will cover those exact points.
To conclude this part of my speech, consumers too often take advantage of what they see as instant pain-free solutions without understanding the implications of what they are taking on.
Jim Dowd (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
Before the hon. Gentleman moves away from payday loans, does he not agree that anybody who finds themselves even contemplating taking one out—I accept his point that there are different ways of calculating the best way out of a situation—needs to address their whole financial position? It tends to be indicative of a problem, although I would not necessarily say that it was systemic. Once someone starts robbing from next week, they will be short then and it will go on and on. They need at that very moment to get the most careful and wise advice on their personal finances.
Justin Tomlinson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution. Let me be clear. Everyone has individual circumstances, priorities and challenges, and what one member of the public thinks is the right thing to do might be different to what the next person thinks. For me, the driving force is the idea that we have a duty to equip people to make informed decisions so that they can understand the implications of what they are doing and therefore do the very best according to their own priorities and circumstances. As we find in our debates, however, all too often people are not in a position to do that. MPs often end up referring to our casework because time and again we see people who have made wrong decisions not necessarily through any fault of their own, but because they did not have the skills to make the right decisions. Indeed, Citizens Advice has highlighted that 60% of its work is finance-related.
We have a competitive market and the Government have been encouraging people to take advantage of competition within the energy market. We say to people, “Go and shop around and look at energy tariffs,” but the market is incredibly complex and people need to be clued up if they are to be savvy consumers. I recently attempted to look at energy tariffs, but they are not all like for like, so consumers need a good level of skills to unravel that complicated market and seek out the best deal.
Another reason why I am passionate about this subject is that my generation could be pretty rubbish at handling money. We could go to university, drum up huge amounts of debt, including expensive debt on credit cards, and then secure our first graduate jobs—in my time that was relatively easy to do—get on to the housing ladder with a 100% or 100%-plus mortgage and watch house prices increase. When we had learned the error of our ways, we could reconsolidate our mortgage, pay off all our expensive debts and carry on, but that option will not be available to the next generation. As things stand, it is very difficult to get into the housing market and there is no guarantee that house prices will rise so that one could take advantage of that should one get on to the housing ladder. It is harder for young people to get credit and harder for people to correct any mistakes they may have made.
Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)
I commend my hon. Friend, who is a near neighbour, and all the MPs involved in this issue—this is the House of Commons working at its best. Does he agree that this is a big issue for women and girls, who are often the particular target of very expensive consumer demands, such as, “You must have this big handbag,” or “You must buy these incredible clothes”? I think we do our young women and girls a real disservice in this area. Not only do we not educate them about finance but we encourage them to borrow and spend as much as possible.
Justin Tomlinson
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point. This is part of the problem. We want people to be equipped to make informed choices and also to be savvy consumers who understand how to get the best for their money.
I want to say a little about how we got to today’s debate. Just over a year ago, I innocently asked a parliamentary question calling for greater financial education within our schools. I was then contacted by the national charity, the Personal Finance Education Group, which told me when we met that it had been campaigning on this subject for 10 years. Its representatives said, “That was a very good question. Would you like another 30 to ask?” for which I was very grateful. I submitted those questions, which made me look very intelligent. I was then contacted by Martin Lewis of MoneySavingExpert.com, who said, “Can I come and meet you? I’m very impressed by the 31 questions you’ve now asked on this subject. You sound very knowledgeable and I’d like to get behind you.” We decided between us that I alone could not champion this cause and that we should launch an all-party parliamentary group. Following a little gentle persuasion from the 6 million subscribers to MoneySavingExpert.com, MPs keenly queued into a very busy Jubilee room. We clocked up a staggering 225 Members from different parties, making us the largest such group.
At that point, we were tempted to go and knock on the Minister’s door, offer him a cup of tea and some biscuits and talk about how overwhelmingly we were supported by people, but we knew that the Minister is often contacted by people championing worthy causes. I have called for basic cookery and life-saving skills to be taught in schools so I have been guilty of making lots of requests of the national curriculum. We thought that instead we would be patient and launch a constructive and positive eight-month inquiry so that when we met the Minister and said, “This is our worthy cause,” we would have answers to all the questions that could be raised.
The inquiry was chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole who, despite having been called a supply teacher by the Prime Minister, has an extensive knowledge of a variety of roles within schools. We conducted a significant amount of research. More than 900 teachers responded, telling us what is happening, and what they think could and should happen. More than 50 relevant organisations met us, face to face, in oral sessions. We set ourselves up as a mini-Select Committee. We heard from organisations from the banking sector, financial institutions, teachers unions, financial education providers, the Financial Services Authority and the Money Advice Service. We heard from mathematicians so intelligent that the lights in the room started to flicker. We are extremely grateful for the support given by Carol Vorderman, who had previously been commissioned by the Conservative party when it was in opposition to look into mathematics standards. She was ably supported by Roger Porkess and Stella Dudzic, who wrote the mathematical example questions in our report.
We met representatives of the personal, social and health education sector, and we also talked to young people themselves because if we championed this cause but young people did not wish to engage, it would be a flawed campaign. We were overwhelmed by their support. In particular, I thank Katie Emms and Alex Harman, who took part in the oral sessions, but who on Monday, promoting our launch, got banned by Twitter for tweeting rather too enthusiastically about how good our 52-page report is.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Has the hon. Gentleman had an opportunity to look at the evidence presented to the Education Bill Committee at the end of the last Parliament? An attempt to get PSHE, including economic education, on to a statutory footing in the national curriculum was debated at length, but unfortunately his party prevented that from going through in the wash-up. A lot of very good evidence was presented to that Committee.
Justin Tomlinson
I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. That was part of the evidence that we considered, but that was a rather simplistic description of what happened in the wash-up. That was not a stand-alone issue, and we referred to that in the report.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
We did indeed look at that issue but was it not the case that we were not convinced from the start about simply putting financial education into PSHE? We wanted to discuss examinations and mathematics and all the rest of it, which is why we have come up with a solution that I think is much better than that offered before the election.
Justin Tomlinson
Absolutely. It was important to include that as part of the evidence, but as we are about to set out in our recommendations, it was not the conclusion that we came to.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
I commend the hon. Gentleman on his work and on the report that he has produced. Does he not accept that if his Front-Bench colleagues had not taken that position, compulsory financial education would have been delivered through PSHE in secondary schools since last September?
Justin Tomlinson
I thank the shadow Minister for his intervention. We are trying to reach consensus on the very best way to deliver that education. We considered that approach as part of our report and concluded that it was not the right way to go. I am about to set out what we feel should be done. I am aware that a number of other Members will also go into detail to explain why we came to that conclusion.
I am going to whizz over the key recommendations. My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole will explain the mechanics behind them because he chaired the inquiry. We believe that the Government should promote the provision of high-quality financial education in schools in England. They should do that by acting on, or supporting, the following recommendations. I hope that the Minister’s pen is poised.
With regard to national provision, personal financial education should be a compulsory part of every school’s curriculum. Resources produced by outside organisations and visits of providers to schools should be available and accessible if considered helpful by teachers and quality-marked by a trusted body. There are many and varied examples of volunteers and financial institutions that already go into schools to do a good job. There is also evidence that some people felt that that was sometimes a marketing exercise.
It was also clear that provision was very patchy. We saw lots of evidence that if a school governor happened to have a connection to a particular financial institution, their school was more likely to have that opportunity than others. That said, those institutions can play an important role as long as the teachers lead. For example, a PE teacher providing a wide variety of sports may be particularly competent in football and rugby, but if his students want to take part in, say, trampolining, he may invite the local trampolining club to come in and give a lesson. That should be under the control of the teacher and be quality-marked so that we can be sure that it is not a marketing exercise.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that such lessons should be teacher-led. I had the pleasure of seeing a teacher-led money management workshop run by the charity Credit Action at St. Joseph’s college in my constituency a week or so ago. The year 8 group were really engaged. I could see that there was strong merit in the approach that was being taken in that lesson. I am delighted to support my hon. Friend and congratulate him on all the hard work he is doing.
Justin Tomlinson
I thank my hon. Friend for that important intervention. A number of members of the all-party group, including several who took part in the inquiry, visited local schools to see at first hand the enjoyment and fulfilment of young children who had such an opportunity. If we ask them whether they are interested in mobile phone contracts, the cost of driving lessons or the fact that ultimately they will have access to credit cards and loans, we see that they are enthused by money and buy into financial education.
The report recommends that:
“Primary teachers should build upon their teaching of basic money and mathematics skills from an early age across the curriculum in preparation for secondary education.”
On that point, I welcome the Minister’s decision to restrict the use of calculators in primary schools, because it is clear that the ability to do mental arithmetic makes a huge difference when it come to providing the building blocks of the good mathematical skills that are essential to become an informed and savvy consumer. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) championed that in a Westminster Hall debate in which I had the pleasure of offering my support. I know from my experience of learning maths in school, and being reasonably savvy when it comes to financial matters, that such skills are built on the ability to do mental arithmetic.
The report continues:
“We welcome the Government’s current proposal to increase the minimum requirement of mathematics GCSE to grade B for primary school teachers and encourage that it should be adopted. It would be advantageous to use the opportunity of training days to refresh the mathematics skills of primary school teachers, although we respect the right of the schools to provide training in a way they feel is appropriate.”
On secondary schools, the report recommends:
“Personal finance education should be taught cross-curricular in mathematics and Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) education with the financial numeracy aspect of personal finance education situated in mathematics and subjective aspects taught in PSHE education. It should be packaged in an obvious and clear way to young people.”
Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate and on all the work he has done on this subject. Does he agree that financial education needs to be embedded in mathematics rigorously and that it should be seen as one of the forms of applied mathematics in the way that mechanics has been historically? We should see finance as another means of doing that as well. Does he agree that it is particularly concerning that girls perform worse in GCSE maths than boys, despite the fact that they do much better in other subjects?
Justin Tomlinson
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. I could not agree more. That point is right behind our findings. I will set out the split that explains that. The report states:
“Personal finance elements of maths should be clearly highlighted to emphasise how they relate to real life decisions. If viable, the Government should implement the Smith Report and Maths Review’s recommendation for the twin GCSEs: ‘Application of Mathematics’ and ‘Methods in Mathematics’ to improve financial numeracy and ensure it is examined.”
Crucially, we saw that in the evidence on the factual side, such as calculating the cost of a loan. We set out some examples in the report that covered the cost of standard loans, calculating exchange rates, credit cards, savings, taxation, compound interest rates and APR, which was referred to earlier. Those are factual questions with factual answers that are right or wrong and should be properly examined. We think that that would drive up standards.
Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
May I say what a fantastic job my hon. Friend and the all-party parliamentary group are doing? Does he agree that these issues also come up with pensions? One of the great concerns with auto-enrolment is that people who have not previously saved will need to understand the products, so this sort of education will be very valuable.
Justin Tomlinson
That came through in the evidence. If we go into primary schools and start talking about pensions, we might not necessary engage, but one thing leads to another, and if young people have the basic skills, they can go on to use them later in life.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
When I was going around the country earlier this year doing some work for the Government, I talked with young people not about pensions, but about paying for life after leaving school at 16. The overwhelming message I heard was that they wanted financial education not for the long or even medium term, but for dealing with their questions on where to study, how much it will cost, about apprenticeships and what the impact on the family income of those choices will be. That is really urgent, really important and universally supported.
Justin Tomlinson
I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention and echo those comments. We have seen that response as we have made our visits.
Personal, social and health education should be clearly defined as four separate strands, one of which should be personal finance. By reworking the PSHE syllabus, more focused training and assessment can be developed, and individuals would have an opportunity to learn about the implications of their decisions.
Earlier, I pointed out that we are all individuals, with our own individual challenges, priorities and things that we consider important, so there is not necessarily a right answer in this area of education. I shall use yet another example from Martin Lewis to illustrate that point. An individual has been unable for 12 months to find a job; they have been offered a job in a neighbouring town but with only a three-month guaranteed contract; and the only way in which they can get to the town is if they take out an expensive car loan. Does that individual take out the loan? There is not necessarily a right or wrong answer. Are they confident that they will be so good in their job that they will last beyond three months? That is probably the determining factor, but such examples offer young people the opportunity to talk through the day-to-day, real-life challenges that they may face when they enter the big, bad world.
Kevin Brennan
The first key recommendation of the hon. Gentleman’s committee is that personal finance education should be part of every school’s curriculum. Is he including academies and free schools?
Justin Tomlinson
That is exactly the sort of question that, in setting out the mechanics of the recommendations, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole will cover—if the shadow Minister could just be ever so slightly patient.
We also call for a school co-ordinator or champion to be appointed to each school, preferably from the senior leadership team. They should be given responsibility for ensuring that outcomes are achieved in maths and PSHE; for ensuring that there is a clear link between the elements of personal finance taught in mathematics and PSHE; and for sourcing resources. We make it clear that such education should be cross-curriculum, so there should be a point of contact who can champion it.
Dr Murrison
Teachers will argue that there is huge pressure on the curriculum, and I have a lot of sympathy with that, so how much time will it be necessary to carve out of an already pressurised curriculum to deal with the issue? I assume my hon. Friend is suggesting that primary children should be taught not about gilts and derivatives but about fairly basic stuff, so how much time will be required to bring them up to the acceptable level of numeracy which he envisages?
Justin Tomlinson
I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution. We considered a stand-alone subject and, in our utopian world, we would have loved to see a stand-alone financial education qualification, module or however it might have been, but we recognised that greater freedoms have been given to schools, so we thought it best to build such education, in the most relevant and rigorous way, into the subjects currently on offer.
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
Does my hon. Friend not agree that such education is about understanding mathematical concepts in a practical way, so it does not need to displace any part of the curriculum? If one is looking at the cost of leasing the car, at whether to place a spread bet or whatever other type of bet, or at anything else, one needs to understand percentages, multiplication and all those things. They are lifetime examples that should be taken into the classroom.
Justin Tomlinson
I thank my hon. Friend for that, because it answers in part an earlier intervention.
Mrs Chapman
The hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) mentions spread betting, but will the hon. Gentleman confirm that we are not suggesting teaching primary school children gambling?
Justin Tomlinson
I am sure that was not the thrust of the earlier intervention.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. One intervention at a time. Is the hon. Gentleman giving way?
Tessa Munt
I accept absolutely the point about not teaching primary school children spread betting, but young constituents of mine have made appalling errors due to the betting that is available online, and I complain constantly that on mainstream television there are 31 hours and 55 minutes of online betting shows late at night. Does my hon. Friend agree that, unless one understands the implications of what one is doing, one is in deep trouble?
Justin Tomlinson
I thank hon. Members for their interventions; I shall try to give one response to the three of them. In secondary schools, anything to do with betting or credit cards could be relevant. It is very important, however, that we as a society do not necessarily judge what is right and wrong for individuals. However, the PSHE side of things offers an opportunity to discuss the implications.
How much time should be spent on such education? I am conscious that I was called to speak ahead of my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole. I do not want to steal all his best lines, and he is keen to set that issue out in detail. However, in summary, I emphasise again that in primary schools the priority is to provide the building blocks for secondary schools, and that is very much on the mental arithmetic side—perhaps just an introduction to the concept of money.
In secondary schools, as has been pointed out, financial education should be integral. In many ways, some of that work already takes place. For example, we already expect students to do calculations in mathematics; we would like those calculations to be applied to real-life situations. Rather than asking what is 10% of 100, it might be better to ask how much a loan of £100 at 10% interest would cost someone. That is the same calculation, but the point is brought home.
There is another element to that. I am very supportive of mathematics; I studied it at A-level and I am a great believer that our success as a nation relies on our encouraging more young people to take up mathematics. One of the biggest challenges is that young people are put off the subject because they think that it is a lot harder than it really is, because they do not apply it to everyday life. When we ask young people whether when they look at different tariffs on mobile phone contracts they realise that they are carrying out a mathematical calculation, they find that they are interested in the subject. Such approaches can be used as an opportunity and a hook to encourage more people to go on to do the further maths that this country so needs.
In conclusion, I have been absolutely bombarded with statistics from supportive organisations; I met more than 100 of them before we even started looking into producing our report. They have been helpful with statistics. The one that stands out more than any other is that 91% of people who have got themselves into financial difficulty feel that if they had been better informed, they might well have taken a different path. Hindsight is wonderful. We all think, “If only I had done that”. But I certainly think that the principle of that statistic is right; so many people who get themselves into difficulty could have done otherwise. We have an absolute duty to equip the next generation of consumers to make informed decisions. Driving up standards in mathematics and PSHE goes hand in hand with our campaign for compulsory financial education. I urge the Government to embrace our positive and constructive report as part of the national curriculum review.
Diana Johnson
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I apologise to the hon. Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman) who is due to speak in a moment, but I would like to raise an important matter with you. Written ministerial statement No. 11, which relates to the Olympics, security and the Ministry of Defence, is supposed to have been published this morning. It is still not with the House. During Department for Culture, Media and Sport questions this morning, Members were given an opportunity to ask questions about the Olympics. Like my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), I am concerned that the media are trailing several stories about warships and several thousand military personnel being in east London during the Olympic games. Could you use your offices, Madam Deputy Speaker, to see whether the statement could be made available forthwith?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving me notice of her point of order. Notice was given this morning of a ministerial statement on this matter. I have made inquiries and it still has not arrived. I notice that the Leader of the House and Deputy Leader of the House are in the Chamber. I am sure that they have taken note of the comments that the hon. Lady has made. Perhaps they could make inquiries about this matter. Let us return to the debate. I call Jenny Chapman.
Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I congratulate the hon. Members for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) and for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) on the work that they put into the report. However, before this turns into a complete love-in in which we all congratulate each other on our efforts, I should observe that I see financial education as being about 20% of the solution to the problem with debt in this country. We also need to look carefully and quite quickly at regulating certain parts of the industry, especially payday loans and the high-cost lending sector. I would also like to improve advice services and secure advice services that are under threat at the moment. I would look at advertising, too. I think that it is at the root of some of the severe problems that people get themselves into with debt. On loans, some very dodgy products are made to look commonplace, and young people are encouraged to take out short-term loans for things such as going to a music festival, which sends completely the wrong message. We need to do something about that fairly urgently.
As a nation, many of us lack the knowledge we need to properly manage our finances. About two thirds of people in the UK say that they feel too confused to make the right choices about their money and more than a third say that they do not have the right skills to properly manage their cash. Only 36% of people understand that the term APR relates to payments. Within families, about 19% of parents have never discussed how to spend money with their teenagers and 32% have yet to discuss how to budget or even describe what one is. Research has shown that 43% of parents do not know what basic financial terms such as APR or PPI mean. On Tuesday, I was in a financial education class in a women’s prison and I was quite impressed by how well informed some of the inmates were, but there was quite a long discussion about PPI, which seems to be a huge issue on which many people feel they have been misled. They say they would have benefited from clear information at a young age.
Frighteningly, about three quarters of us say that a lack of basic financial understanding is to blame for our debts. The gaps in our national financial knowledge are worrying but are made all the more troubling in these times of austerity. The citizens advice bureau in my constituency tells me that in the past 12 months it has dealt with just under £9.5 million of debt. Between 2004 and 2010, individual insolvency levels rose sharply. Apparently, in the 12 months ending in quarter 3 of 2011, about one in 361 people became insolvent, which is significantly higher than the annual average of one in 1,655.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
Has my hon. Friend noticed, as I have, even more people coming to her surgery with financial issues than previously? Is she as worried as I am that they are coming to us at a time when even less independent financial advice is available for them to access?
Mrs Chapman
My hon. Friend makes a good point. She tempts me to break a promise that I made to myself when I came into the debate not to have a rant about the economy and make a wider political point, because I thought that that probably would not be what this occasion demanded. However, she makes that point for me and I thank her for it.
Education is the armour against being misled and I believe that advertising is misleading us. I refer the House to my ten-minute rule Bill of about a year ago, which I am sure all hon. Members have followed closely, which would curb some of the advertising on financial products. Financial education provides protection against some of the most traumatic circumstances a person can find themselves in, from paying an additional fee on an unauthorised overdraft because one is not aware of how the charges work, to losing one’s home or having one’s belongings repossessed and being declared bankrupt. Many of us have been able to learn from our mistakes because either the economy has been in a good state or we have been able to rely on family or friends. We have been lucky but young people now, as the hon. Member for North Swindon said, are in danger of financial mismanagement having a much longer-term effect on their lives. On finishing education, young people immediately face tough monetary decisions. At 17, they are already in debt and tied into contracts that they did not fully understand for things such as mobile phones. I take the slack given to me by the hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) who made a good point about gambling. If that is an issue at primary level, which I had not appreciated, it is right that that be included in the curriculum. Therefore, we need to be properly prepared to deal with these decisions. Put simply, an informed borrower is a safer borrower.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
I appreciate the hon. Lady’s point, but does she not agree that if we have a problem with children under the age of 11 gambling, the most important place to start is not the curriculum, but access to online gambling?
Mrs Chapman
I agree completely. That goes back to the first point that I made about financial education being one of four strands of the solution, the others being debt advice, advertising and regulation. The hon. Gentleman is right to point that out.
In schools across England, the provision of personal financial education is ad hoc. We saw some good examples when writing this report. I took it upon myself to visit schools in my constituency and I was impressed with what I found. There is little teacher training on personal financial education and there is therefore limited subject knowledge and confidence among some teaching staff. It is stating the obvious to say that schools face significant barriers to teaching financial education, such as curriculum time, the absence of a statutory mandate and the lack of awareness of suitable resources.
Elizabeth Truss
Does the hon. Lady agree that the current requirement of a grade C in mathematics to teach in primary schools may need to be amended? Is she concerned, as I am, that we have the smallest proportion of students studying maths from 16 to 18 of any country in the OECD? We therefore do not necessarily have people moving through the system with the right mathematical understanding.
Mrs Chapman
I agree with that to a point. I have A-level maths and I am very glad that I studied that. One does not have to be a maths expert to deliver good financial education, but one does need to have confidence in the subject, have a good grasp of the knowledge and be a good teacher. A good teacher who can get the ideas across can probably teach the things that we discuss in the report quite well.
Lyn Brown
Given that I could not tempt my hon. Friend to have a rant on the economy, perhaps I can tempt her one more time to deviate on to the Government’s record on this matter. In November 2011, applications for training courses for secondary maths teachers fell by more than a quarter on last year. Is she as concerned as I am about the implications of that?
Mrs Chapman
I am very concerned about that. I am not only concerned about mathematics. My region has seen a drop of about 20% in higher education applications. We are assured that there will be a last-minute surge in applications. If that is not the case, I fear that we will face a serious problem.
Oliver Heald
Does the hon. Lady agree that there is also an important issue about an entrepreneurial society? If we do not have enough basic financial information and knowledge in our community, it is a brake on innovation and entrepreneurialism. It also means that people who do set up a business often cannot prepare a decent business case and that their business does not sustain itself. That is important to our economy, as are the matters that she is raising.
Mrs Chapman
I do agree with that. There are plenty of examples of entrepreneurs who have done incredibly well with little formal education. I do not know this for sure, but I do not think I am pushing the boat out too much to suggest that Duncan Bannatyne, who has his head office in my constituency, does not have a maths degree. Such exceptions aside, most people would benefit from having this sort of knowledge. I think that it would assist in the way that the hon. Gentleman indicates.
I will conclude because much of what I was going to say has already been said, and probably much more eloquently, by the hon. Member for North Swindon. [Interruption.] I was not expecting a response to that. On the advice of teachers, the all-party group on financial education for young people felt that it was necessary to have a champion for personal finance in each school. I had my doubts about that when the report was drafted, because I was not sure that schools would welcome having that burden loaded on to them. However, it was pointed out to me that teachers had argued strongly for that recommendation to be included. With that in mind, I am happy to support it.
The all-party group also believes that the subject should be examined, and I agree. Ofsted has stated that courses leading to formal accreditation have inspired
“a more coherent curriculum and sharper focus on the learning outcomes students were expected to achieve”.
As one head teacher has explained:
“Unless you test it, it will not happen”.
The introduction of dual mathematics GCSEs would promote the right objective and ensure that the subject is properly examined and taught.
I urge the House to examine the matter closely, take it seriously and include it in what I hope will be a package of measures that will help address the serious problem that we have not just with the lack of financial education but with debt more broadly. I hope that we will consider matters such as advertising, the provision of advice and the regulation of the high-cost lending market.
I wish to conclude with a lovely quotation that I have found, which I could not help but try to give at some point. Benjamin Franklin said:
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”
I think that is quite a nice way to end.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) raised a point of order a short time ago about the availability of a written ministerial statement from the Ministry of Defence about the London 2012 Olympics. I have since had the opportunity to look into its whereabouts. It was, in fact, issued just after 1.30 pm today, but for some reason the IT did not allow it to get through to the Vote Office. That has now been corrected, and it is now available in the Vote Office. I hope that if the hon. Lady goes to either the Vote Office or the Library, she will get a copy, but I have a further copy here if she would like it.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
I am grateful to the Deputy Leader of the House for that. I am sure that he agrees that, notice having been given by a Department of a written ministerial statement, it should have been here a considerable time before 1.30 pm. However, we are grateful to him for his prompt action and for the fact that Members will now be able to look at the statement.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)
May I start by apologising for having been a couple of minutes late to the debate?
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman). She is right that an investment in knowledge pays the best interest—certainly better than the interest that some of my retired constituents are receiving on their bank balances at the moment. She made an important point, and I hope that the national curriculum review will ensure that our new national curriculum increases the amount of knowledge that children receive.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) not only on his balanced and passionate speech but on his leadership, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), of the all-party group on financial education for young people. I thank the all-party group for its report on financial education in the curriculum. Both have been powerful advocates of the cause, and together with Martin Lewis have managed a powerful and effective campaign. I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole later if he catches your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Martin Lewis is an energetic and highly effective campaigner for financial education in schools, the result of which has been an e-petition with more than 100,000 signatures. From meeting Martin Lewis recently, it is clear to me how passionately he believes in the importance of financial education for young people to help them deal with the complexities and dangers of money and debt management. I know that the all-party group has also been well supported by the Personal Finance Education Group, which has worked for a number of years to promote and develop finance education in schools.
The Government are currently conducting two reviews—that of the national curriculum, which of course includes the core subject of mathematics, which is a cause about which my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) is passionate, and that of personal, social, health and economic education, which includes financial capability. The all-party group’s report provides important insights and recommendations to both reviews, and the Government are grateful to it for its thorough and high-quality report. We will examine it very carefully indeed.
I know that we all agree about the importance of good-quality personal finance education and the critical role played by a sound grasp of basic mathematical skills. Support from the finance industry and a range of good resources play their part in supporting schools to teach pupils how to manage their money well.
It is true that young people are growing up in a materialistic world for which they are often not fully prepared. As my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) said, the “Got to have it now” culture means that young people have high aspirations for branded or designer goods, often without the means to pay for them. They have unrealistic expectations about the lifestyle that they can afford, which are fuelled by the glittering trappings of celebrity.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon made the important point that our generation—I like to associate myself with his generation—was cushioned from its financial mistakes by rising house prices, which provided equity to pay off consumer debts. That is not available to the current generation.
We all have a job to do in moving young people’s aspirations away from that empty and often destructive perception of what success means. Our determination to raise academic standards in all schools and for all young people, regardless of their background, is about high achievement and stretching aspirations. Developing children’s intellectual capabilities and interests is a direct antidote to materialism. Alongside that, young people must acquire a sense of responsibility. They need to contribute to society as responsible citizens and not take wild risks. They need to learn to live within their means.
Kevin Brennan
I understand why the Minister will not today give us the conclusions of the curriculum review that is under way, but does the first key recommendation of the report—that personal financial education should be a compulsory part of every school’s curriculum, which I take to mean all taxpayer-funded schools, including free schools and academies—fall within the terms or the remit of the curriculum review and the review of PSHE?
Mr Gibb
We made it very clear when we announced the review of PSHE education in schools that it is not possible for PSHE to become a statutory element of the national curriculum. However, it is in the remit of the review to recommend that elements of PSHE should be compulsory if it believes that strongly.
Kevin Brennan
Just to be clear, does that include making those elements compulsory in free schools and academies?
Mr Gibb
The national curriculum applies only to maintained schools. The rules that apply to academies go through their funding agreements. The review will consider that issue. The extent to which those elements will apply to academies depends on the funding agreements, which maintains the approach to academies taken by the previous Government.
Tessa Munt
Might one solution be to ensure that young people, as they pass through the curriculum stages from primary through to university education, have some form of examination—a module could be included in the examination process—that allows them to show some level of expertise in such life skills, which they will need to take forward? I have a passion for middle schools, so I suggest that that should happen when children are aged from nine to 13. In that way, whatever course they choose after the age of 13, be it vocational or academic, they will at least have proven that they have those life skills.
Mr Gibb
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. Those are the kind of issues that the PSHE review will consider. We want to ensure that the quality of PSHE teaching in our schools improves. That is the key driver of the review.
The hon. Member for Darlington quoted Benjamin Franklin, but I shall quote Mr Micawber from Dickens’s “David Copperfield”:
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”
Those aphorisms are as true today as they were in the nineteenth century. Borrowing more than one can afford to repay is one of the most serious social problems facing the UK today. British consumers are considerably more indebted than those in continental Europe. Between 1999 and 2007, household debt increased by 125% while household income increased by only 40%. The Office for National Statistics estimates that around 10% of all households have problem arrears and are unable to make minimum payments in one or more of their financial commitments. The Government are serious about taking action to help people to manage their debts.
We want to ensure that individuals facing financial difficulty can get advice early rather than waiting until their problems become more difficult to resolve. The new Money Advice Service has a statutory function to enhance people’s understanding and knowledge of financial matters and their ability to manage their own financial affairs. It provides free and impartial information and advice. Those consumers who find themselves in high levels of debt will continue to need specialist debt advice, and the Money Advice Service, with its consumer financial education remit and national reach, is well placed to take a role in the co-ordination of debt advice services as part of its existing services.
I have another quote; this time it is from Shakespeare. As Polonius advised his son—
Kevin Brennan
It is good advice from Polonius, but we must remember that he is widely regarded as an old hypocrite. Perhaps he is not the best person to quote. He was a silly old fool.
Kevin Brennan
Perhaps Iago might be more appropriate.
“Who steals my purse steals trash; ‘tis something, nothing;
‘Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.”
Mr Gibb
Very good indeed. The green-eyed monster is there as well. The hon. Gentleman also makes the case for rote learning of English literature. That is missing from our schools. The more poems we can recite in our early years, the better. The hon. Gentleman must have learned that passage many years ago.
To be successful and to achieve aspirations, young people need to be able to stand on their own two feet. They must organise themselves, prioritise, manage money and work independently. That needs to start from an early age. Primary schools must lay the foundations by raising standards of arithmetic and securing a confident progression on to secondary schools. I am also mindful of the many reports of young people leaving school without the most basic knowledge of mathematics. We are committed to improving attainment levels in maths and to ensuring that all children leave primary school fluent and confident in arithmetic. We are studying evidence on the most effective ways of teaching arithmetic in primary schools and we have read the reports and listened to the speeches of my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk.
In the current secondary mathematics curriculum, pupils must achieve fluency and confidence in a range of mathematical techniques and processes that can be applied in a wide range of circumstances, including managing money. The kinds of calculations that people should be able to do are set out in the report “Financial Education and the Curriculum” by the all-party parliamentary group. There is a suggested example of a GCSE question. It asks what Sophie should do with £4,300 that was left to her by her grandfather. She has a choice of two accounts. The first pays 3.1% on a monthly basis and the second pays 3.25% annually. The formula on page 41 is “AER=100[(1 + r/100n)n - 1]”. If one can master that, one knows all one needs to know about how to calculate compound interest.
Young people need to be confident and competent consumers. They need to be able to work out when a supermarket deal is not what it seems. For example, when supermarkets offer a deal on buying two small packs of something, they need to work out whether it is really cheaper per litre or per kilogram than buying one larger pack. In fact, I have found in some supermarkets that it is more expensive to buy one larger pack than to buy two smaller ones.
The Government are currently reviewing the national curriculum, including the curriculum for maths. The all-party report on financial education and the curriculum will feed into the review, and the review will ultimately ensure that the GCSE reflects its conclusions. We will consult widely on the number of maths GCSEs in the light of the review, and will consider evidence from the pilot of the pair of maths GCSEs referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk. Application of mathematics and methods in mathematics will also inform decisions. We will look carefully at the evaluation of the pilot.
Kevin Brennan
What have not been mentioned so far, but have been endorsed by the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), are the qualifications in personal finance offered by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Has the Minister had a chance to examine them and form a view on how suitable they are for pupils?
Mr Gibb
We will examine them as part of the curriculum review, but our first priority is to establish what knowledge children need. That will then feed into the qualifications. We have also benefited from Alison Wolf’s review of qualifications in schools. A process is under way to ensure that every qualification offered by schools is of sufficient size and quality, and commands respect in the real world among employers and further and higher education institutions. Those are the factors that will determine whether a qualification continues to be recognised in performance tables.
Simon Hughes
The Minister rightly concentrates mostly on primary and secondary schools, for which he is directly responsible, but does he accept that it is also important for young people to receive financial education elsewhere, for instance through the youth services? After all, they spend much more time outside school than at school. Will there be, as it were, a draft proposal for consultation after the Government have formed a view but before they finalise their proposals? I realise that this is controversial, but it seems to me that it would be wise for the Government to say “This is our thinking now that we have taken all the evidence, but before we form a final view there will be a debate in the House and a short time in which the public can respond.”
Mr Gibb
My right hon. Friend has made a legitimate point, with which I agree. Our intention is to consult widely on the curriculum review. There is an important set of decisions to be made. We have received nearly 6,000 responses to the call for evidence, and we will report on them shortly. The draft programmes of study will be published during the next year and beyond, and there will be wide consultation on them. Even before they have been published, there will be a great deal of consultation with stakeholders and subject specialists. We want to establish a consensus in the country about what we want children to be taught. However, we must slim down the curriculum and differentiate it from the school curriculum in order to identify a body of knowledge that we want all children to have acquired. How it is taught is a matter for teachers, and will depend on their professionalism.
Financial education is also an important strand of personal, social, health and economic education. We know from the Ofted report “PSHE in Schools”, which was published in July 2010, that provision for financial education is patchy. Some schools have not yet got to grips with the economic well-being and financial capability strand of PSHE, which was introduced in secondary schools in 2008. The aim of the review is to determine how we can help schools to improve the quality of PSHE teaching, while giving teachers enough flexibility to enable them to judge for themselves how best to deliver PSHE. We have finished collecting evidence, and will publish proposals for public consultation next year. The financial education curriculum report will play an important part in helping us to draw conclusions for the purpose of the PSHE review.
Good-quality teaching is also fundamental. If we want an education system that ranks with the best in the world, we need to attract the best people and give them outstanding training. There is strong evidence that links teacher quality, above all other factors, with pupils’ attainment. Our plans for initial teacher training show the Government’s commitment to recruiting the very best graduates into teaching, securing better value for money from ITT and reforming training. There is a focus, then, on the most important elements of being a teacher.
In 2012-13, we will prioritise places on primary ITT courses offering a specialism in mathematics and science, and in 2013-14 we expect to adjust financial incentives to favour trainees on specialist primary courses with a good A-level in mathematics, science or language over those on generalist courses. For serving teachers, the mathematics specialist teacher programme aims to improve the practice of primary maths teaching by improving mathematical subject knowledge and pedagogical approach and by developing teachers’ expertise to provide effective professional development. More than 3,200 teachers are currently on that programme.
The all-party group’s report on financial education and the curriculum is an important report. It is grounded in solid research and data, with practical solutions and a commitment to ensuring that young people receive the education that they need to become confident consumers. Much can be achieved by supporting finance education, working with those in the finance sector, finance education experts and schools. There is huge enthusiasm among teachers and young people, and we will give careful consideration to the report and all its recommendations.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
May I first apologise to House as I may need to leave before the debate’s conclusion, depending on how long we run on for?
I congratulate the all-party group on financial education for young people on producing its report, and I pay tribute to the hon. Members for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) and for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) and my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman) for the work that they put into it. [Interruption.] Did I miss somebody out? I beg the pardon of the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier). Does anyone else want a mention while I am on my feet? I pay tribute to everyone who has been involved in the report. It is very thorough and much work went into taking the evidence. It is of the standard of a Select Committee report—perhaps even better than some Select Committee reports.
I also congratulate Members on getting Martin Lewis to help with the report, although it sounded as though that was not too difficult for the hon. Member for North Swindon, and on getting 100,000 people to petition for today’s debate. More broadly, I pay tribute to the role that Martin Lewis has played in improving public awareness of finance issues through his website and other media. When I was a Minister with responsibility for consumer issues, he was very supportive of a reform that I introduced and from which I hope some Members here might have benefited. I refer to the measure on 0% credit card offers under which repayments by consumers henceforth went on the most expensive debt first—exactly the opposite of what used to happen, when credit card companies would pay off the 0% debt first and leave people with a very high rate of interest on any remaining balances. That is the kind of understanding that consumers need to have when taking up so-called 0% credit card offers, including on arrangement fees.
Knowing how to manage money and be a savvy consumer are vital life skills in an increasingly complex world, but why do more young people not start learning this at school? That is the question at the heart of today’s report. As a former head of economics in a Cardiff comprehensive school, I am well aware that this issue has been on the agenda for many decades. I can remember some of the earlier initiatives on improving financial education in schools, including the early days of school banks, when young people were encouraged to make deposits in the school bank, often supported by the local branch of their bank or building society.
Education is about giving young people the skills and knowledge that they need to get on in life, which is why every child should learn not only the three R’s at school but about pensions, saving, borrowing and mortgages. As the report shows, despite many of these initiatives down the years, the provision of financial education across the country is still extremely patchy, as the Minister acknowledged when he referred to the Ofsted report. That is why we would have had compulsory financial education in every school last September, through personal, social and health education, under plans that the previous Government set in train in the then Department for Children, Schools and Families before the last general election, again with the help and support of Martin Lewis from MoneySavingExpert.com.
We said that financial education should be a compulsory part of the curriculum, as part of PSHE, with improved training and tools to give teachers the confidence to teach it. The law to make that happen was going through Parliament when the general election was called last year. However, as we heard earlier, those on the Conservative Front Bench, including the current Schools Minister, refused to support it—probably for other reasons, to do with their objection to the sex education provision in PHSE—and so the plans were scrapped.
There have been 18 months in which no progress has been made, which is why the report is so welcome. It gives us an opportunity to try to find a way forward, and perhaps a cross-party consensus, on a vital issue for the long-term good of our country. I am therefore pleased that the e-petition calling for financial education to become a compulsory part of the curriculum has been a success and that it has sparked today’s debate. The report is also timely, as there is a review of the curriculum under way, as the Minister said, which gives the Government a perfect opportunity to listen to the thousands of people who are backing the campaign. As I said, every child should learn how to manage their money. It will set them up for the rest of their lives, and financial education lessons might also enable them to teach their parents a thing or two.
Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue)—who is on the Front Bench, in the Whips’ corner—sent me an e-mail yesterday after we talked about this issue. Hon. Members will be aware that the Prime Minister praised her yesterday for her work with citizens advice bureaux. She said:
“One of the side effects of the project I managed delivering to schools/colleges was a rise in demand for debt advice from the parents…They talked to their children and realised there was a problem.”
She continued:
“There has to be sufficient quality free debt advice available to cope with this demand in the local area—and the signposting needs to be sensitive and appropriate too. Teachers need to think about how they would deal with the issue—perhaps a session from the local CAB?”
To which she adds:
“if it’s still around that is!"
This is therefore a timely moment for a debate on financial education, with the review of the curriculum under way. We in the Opposition will be looking carefully at what the Government come up with when they conclude their review.
However, I think there is a paradox and perhaps some confusion at the centre of the Government about the curriculum. As I understand it, the Schools Minister and the Secretary of State are driven in their review of the curriculum in part by a desire to give more freedom to teachers, head teachers and schools to teach as they think appropriate for their local communities, with more autonomy for schools and head teachers. However, at the same time, Ministers—driven perhaps by the desire to generate the right kind of headlines—continually demand a specific approach to teaching all sorts of subjects, including history, as favoured by the Schools Minister and the Secretary of State. At the same time, there is a big push, backed by money, for more and more schools to convert to academy status or become free schools, thereby no longer being required to teach the national curriculum. On the one hand, therefore, the Government’s policy seems to be to exempt most schools over time—if their current plans continue—from teaching the national curriculum, while on the other hand they are revising the national curriculum to ensure that schools teach more closely what they want them to teach. At some point, some genius in the Department for Education will have to square that circle and explain how those two things will be delivered.
It is paradoxical, and perhaps even absurd, that if the Government get their way, we will have a national curriculum that the vast majority of schools will not have to teach. It will not matter what anyone recommends in a report should be made compulsory: it will not be deliverable unless there is some stick in the system. The Government cannot decentralise and at the same time dictate from the top, because ultimately the whole project will collapse in on itself.
Elizabeth Truss
Is it not about leadership, as the reality is that many academies and, indeed, private schools follow or tack along with the national curriculum? It is the role of the Education Secretary and the Department to indicate what kind of things students should know when they leave school.
Kevin Brennan
I am sure the hon. Lady is right; she thinks deeply about these subjects and makes intelligent contributions. The report, however, states:
“Personal finance education should be a compulsory part of every school’s curriculum.”
If that is going to be delivered, there must be some transmission mechanism. I am afraid that history teaches us, and future events will teach us, that exhortations from Secretaries of State—no matter how talented or eloquent they be—are not sufficient to make things a reality on the ground. As I say, there has to be a mechanism to make it happen.
In thinking about this issue, the Minister will need to clarify what the role of the national curriculum will be in a schools landscape where most institutions will not be required to follow it. How will that fit in with the original vision of a national curriculum to be taught by all schools across the country, as introduced by Kenneth Baker, now Lord Baker, who was the Secretary of State when I was a teacher back in the 1980s? How can the Minister ensure adequate teaching of financial education if most schools will ultimately be free to follow their own path?
Damian Hinds
The shadow Minister says that a transmission mechanism is required. Does he agree with me that if practical maths were made part of the GCSE syllabus for each of the main awarding bodies, such a transmission mechanism would exist?
Kevin Brennan
That is for 14 to 16-year-olds. If GCSE maths is taken between the ages of 14 and 16, young people would indeed receive some of this provision. The hon. Gentleman is correct about that, but the report goes much further in its recommendations for making financial education compulsory across all ages in the curriculum.
Kevin Brennan
I will give way again in a moment if the hon. Gentleman is dead keen. All right; I will carry on.
The Government are correct in their desire for people to take responsibility for their finances in order to reduce unaffordable debt, but they have to get the ball rolling, which means that they need to find some way of getting this going in our schools.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that although we might want to teach many subjects as part of the curriculum, unless we specify them there is always the risk that they will not be taught? Practical maths has been mentioned, but different parts of the subject might be taught. Some subjects— I would include emergency life support skills among them—are so important that we must specify that they have to be taught.
Kevin Brennan
I have sympathy with the Minister over the difficulty created by having more and more subjects shoved and squashed into the curriculum. Education Ministers of all parties will know that it is a difficult task as they come under pressure to include all sorts of subjects in the curriculum. My point is that we need to be absolutely clear what we are talking about. If the Government accept the report, they will have to go a lot further than simply including some practical questions in GCSE maths papers. What my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) said is absolutely correct.
There are examples of good practice out there. I shall not go into them in too much detail, but some schools around the country could link up with local credit unions. This has not been mentioned much in the debate, but it is a great way to encourage responsible saving in community-based organisations and to teach young people about the responsible use of money and about saving.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
My hon. Friend touches on the matter of teaching. Does he agree that, as statistics from the Graduate Teaching Training Registry obtained by The Times Educational Supplement show, from November 2011 overall applications for training courses for secondary maths teaching fell by more than a quarter? Bearing in mind that the teaching of personal financial education is going to require an element of teaching maths, does he agree that the Government should encourage more teachers to apply to teach the subject?
Kevin Brennan
We have heard about those worrying statistics in the course of our deliberations, but my hon. Friend is absolutely correct to emphasise their importance and the need for urgent action by the Government.
We need to get to a point at which all children realise that by saving now they can be prepared for the future, but that is only possible if they get the right sort of financial education. In particular, we should not let children from neighbourhoods of lower socio-economic class suffer because their schools do not offer good financial education. The hon. Member for North Swindon quite correctly said that with the huge increases in tuition fees that young people going to university are facing, there is even more need to give serious thought to what will happen when our children go to university and have to deal with the debts they will incur as a result. In fact, Martin Lewis himself said that
“in the 20 years since student loans came in, we’ve educated our youth into debt when they go to university, but never about debt.”
It is extremely important that we do that.
Tessa Munt
Was it not also the case that Martin Lewis had a very robust session on the “Politics Show” about a month ago when he explained quite clearly that young people should not be afraid of going to university because under the current regime it is cheaper? If they understood the fact that the threshold was £21,000, not the £15,000 it was under the previous Government, the 9% calculation would allow them to be a lot wealthier under the new system than they would have been under the old.
Kevin Brennan
I am not sure they are going to be a lot wealthier, quite frankly, but it is absolutely right that the reality of the Government’s proposals should be explained and that there should not be scaremongering. I think we would absolutely agree about that. I agree that it is important that young people should consider applying to university because, ultimately, it is quite clear that that benefits them in the long term. We should be absolutely clear about it. Yes, the changes have reduced the payments but ultimately the fees being paid are much higher. The hon. Lady must accept that the reality is that the overall debt that they are incurring has increased greatly as a result of her party’s collaboration in the changes to student finance since the general election.
I want to make a couple more points before I conclude. The Consumer Financial Education Body previously funded the Personal Finance Education Group’s budget, but that has fallen by 80% since the spring and the staff has been cut since the CFEB became the Money Advice Service. So far, as I understand it, the MAS has declined to state how much of its £44 million budget was spent on school budgets. I think we would all welcome some clarity on that.
The survey from the all-party group found that in England the provision of personal finance education is ad hoc, with only 45% of teachers reporting that they have ever taught the subject. New research by HSBC has shown that 5.1 million savers under 25 do not know the interest rates on their savings account. If they had received good financial education while growing up, they would be more aware of interest rates. Furthermore, the survey found that a high percentage of people across all age groups had no saving goals.
We need greater financial education and this is a very good and thorough report from the all-party group, but we need the Government to show that they are genuinely committed to ensuring that every child is entitled to a good finance education. I think that is the ambition of the hon. Members who compiled the report we are considering today.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this important debate and I am pleased to see that so many Members have attended, particularly on the Government side of the Chamber, and especially on a day on which there is a one-line Whip and, apparently, a by-election. It is good to have so many people here to debate this important issue. I am also pleased to follow both the Minister and the shadow Minister. I thank the Minister, in particular, for his warm words about our report and for the assurances he has given us about the role it will play in the curriculum review. I also thank the shadow Minister for his warm words, although I think he was trying to push at the edges of political point-scoring—
Andrew Percy
Alas, perhaps it is. I must say, however, that I will not be able to match the exchange of Shakespearian quotes between the two Front Benchers—
Andrew Percy
I am certainly not, as my hon. Friend interjects, the bard from Brigg. It is not going to happen, alas.
To return to the report, I thank the Minister for meeting me and my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) shortly before its publication. The Minister will recall that I said that if the Government did not take it seriously, I might well end up dousing myself in petrol and setting myself on fire, but I will not have to make that protest any more, not least because I cannot afford the petrol at the current prices and because we have had a positive response.
I thank all my friends on both sides of the House who sat on our inquiry. They included my hon. Friends the Members for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier), for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) and for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) and the hon. Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman), as well as myself and my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon. It was a thoroughly valuable experience and I think we all enjoyed taking part in a cross-party inquiry on such an important issue. Because we conducted it in the way we did, on Select Committee terms and by hearing evidence, I think we all felt that the hours we spent doing that were probably some of our most valuable since getting elected. One can wonder whether a lot that goes on in here is having any impact or making any difference, particularly in some people’s cases, but on this issue we all felt that the experience was valuable and that we were engaged in something important.
Some hon. Members will have read our report, which is very comprehensive. I am not allowed to use props so I shall not hold it up. As can be seen from the executive summary, we have recommended that this subject should form part of the national curriculum. We want it to be compulsory across schools, and I shall say something about the mechanics of that in a moment. It is important to get some statistics into the debate about why this is so important. As people who have read our executive summary will have seen, it states that, according to a learndirect study:
“Two-thirds of people in the UK feel too confused to make the right choices about their money and more than a third say they don’t have the right skills to properly manage their cash.”
Sadly, we have seen higher and higher levels of insolvency in recent years, and we know that personal debt levels have exploded in the past 10 or 15 years.
I am not part of the generation about whom my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon spoke. I am part of the generation after, having got on the housing market only last year but with considerable debts, which I have spoken about before. I am not one of those who will see the big increases in house prices that will take care of all those nasty credit card debts.
Let me explain why I got involved in all this. It has been a good partnership with my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon because he is extremely financially competent, as anyone who knows him will know. Having shared a flat with him, along with another of our hon. Friends, I can certainly attest to his competency in all things financial—and perhaps to his being frugal as well. I am the antithesis of that, having made some incredibly bad financial decisions when I left school and went to university, including getting on the conveyor belt of credit card debt while at university and getting student loans even though that was the year before tuition fees came in. So I left university with an awful lot of debt and then did two years of postgraduate study, which I funded myself, which meant getting into even more debt. I am still paying off those debts today, and I do not mind the education side of them—it is all those other lifestyle debts that one builds up on credit cards that I am still lumbered with to this day.
It has been good to have a partnership of two people with different experiences of managing their debt looking at this issue. I was proud to be in the top set of my comprehensive school in Hull. I was quite bright and managed to get a GCSE in maths at grade C although I have always struggled with maths. I got good A-levels, a degree and postgraduate qualifications but I am still completely and utterly incapable of working out interest payments, APR and all the rest of it. I could not tell you what I pay in mortgage interest, Mr Deputy Speaker—I just pay up every month. I suppose I am an example of the people we have talked about and at whom the report is aimed. This is not moralising about debt. We have been very clear: this is not about saying that people should not get into debt or about educating people never to get into debt; it is about providing people with appropriate skills.
Kevin Brennan
Is the hon. Gentleman at all worried that he has put his name to a report that includes a recommendation that would bar him from teaching in a primary school?
Andrew Percy
I understand that that would not be applied retrospectively—and a very sound recommendation it is on those terms. I shall come on to that in a moment, because I taught in a primary school the year before I was elected, and I had to teach maths. That experience has led me to the conclusion that we should absolutely ensure that primary school teachers have better maths qualifications. Although I did not do them a disservice, the children I taught would have benefited from being taught by somebody who had not struggled with maths as I did. I managed to scrape a GCSE C grade. That is why we have supported the minimum grade of B for primary school teachers.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon outlined most of our recommendations and stole quite a lot of my speech in the process. He also talked about the inquiry process and stole my three bullet points on that too. I have been left with something to say, however. It is important to remind ourselves why this subject is so important. A lot of the research that we looked at in preparing the report was quite frightening. The situation out there is even worse than I expected. Research by EdComs in June 2009 found that by the time children reach the age of 17, more than half of them are or have already been in debt. A YouGov survey in 2008 found that 70% of 18 to 24-year-olds were already in debt. As we have heard, with tuition fees and the way life is today, that figure will not go down any time soon.
A survey by M&S Money found that some 14 to 18-year-olds are given no help with basic money matters by their parents. Indeed, 19% of parents have never discussed with teenagers how to spend money, and 32% have yet to discuss how to budget or even describe what a budget is. Most telling of all is the report compiled in March this year by Credit Action which found that a lack of financial education has cost Brits nearly £250 million in bank charges and penalties alone. I know that we are all grateful to Martin Lewis for helping us to get our money back in those matters.
The lack of financial education is a growing problem. We seem to be sending young people out into the world, which is increasingly financially complex, without providing them with the skills they need. I support the Government’s drive to reduce burdens on schools, to slim down the curriculum and to mandate less to schools, but in that process we must never allow ourselves to scale down to the extent that we remove the basic capabilities that we expect our young people to have when they leave school. Our view is that the financial education component should be a key measure.
I listened to the shadow Minister’s comments about PSHE. We gave some consideration to that. One of the big fights in our inquiry, not only between panel members but between those who gave evidence to us, was about whether financial education should just sit in PSHE. As a former practitioner who was expected to deliver PSHE, I felt strongly that it was not suitable, not least because it is not examined. As the hon. Gentleman, as a former teacher, will know, and indeed as head teachers told us during the inquiry, if a subject is not examined, schools do not necessarily accord it the importance they should.
For three years, I taught in a very difficult school in Hull, in one of the most deprived catchments in the country. I had to deliver PSHE, but we had so many other pressures on us to raise standards, such as working with grade C-D borderline kids so that in the next year’s league tables we would do a little better and would not be picked out by the local media as the worst-performing school. In better-performing—dare I say it?—more middle-class schools, teachers may be able to indulge themselves a little more in developing the PSHE curriculum because they do not have quite the same pressures on them. However, I am afraid that in a lot of schools, despite the professionalism of teachers, the subject often takes a back seat. When the Arun Youth Council and My Money Young Advisers came to give evidence, I asked one young person, “What do you think of PSHE?” His response was, “Well, it’s a bit of a doss.” Sadly, that is the situation in a lot of schools. Some fantastic work is being done across the country in PSHE, and we were provided with evidence of that and told about it by other young people. Although PSHE is important and must be part of the solution, we concluded that financial education had to be examined so that schools place the necessary emphasis on it.
We made it clear that there should be a financial education element within maths that can be clearly defined and packaged to young people. It is not simply a case of putting in a few questions that look like they are about financial education, as the shadow Minister said. It is about packaging a lot of the education and skills that are already there and saying clearly to young people, “This is financial education, and this is why we are doing it.” We can also help to improve the importance placed on PSHE, which is already taught in schools, because it will be used to support the drive for standards in mathematics. I think that that provides a real opportunity to raise the profile and importance of PSHE across the country.
I will give a couple of examples from our report to demonstrate this. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon said, we did not want to come up with a wishy-washy report that said it would be easy to have financial education, knock on the Minister’s door and have him say, “Thank you very much. It looks lovely, but I am afraid that it’s not going to happen.” Therefore, we have tried to work in the direction of Government policy and to provide practical solutions.
Members who have looked at the report will have seen that on page 38 we demonstrate clearly where in the maths curriculum the financial education elements can fit nicely—we are grateful for the help we had from mathematicians. Those have been split into three headings: money and transactions; risk and reward; and financial landscape. The money and transactions elements includes being able to do compound interest calculations with a calculator or spreadsheet, to set up a spreadsheet to do calculations involving percentages and to use foreign exchange rate information to make calculations. For financial landscape, the competencies include the ability to do reverse percentage calculations and to work out an inflation rate for a given time period, which is very important and something we hear a lot about. That involves real maths skills, not wishy-washy stuff at all.
That can be supported over in the PSHE curriculum by talking to young people about the products that they might have to make choices about. For example, we can talk to them about managing money, budgeting, the subjective issues of risk and reward and what is right for them in particular situations. That is not something we felt could fit easily into one or other area, which is why the solution we have come up with is deliverable within the current curriculum without putting extra pressures on schools.
One of the recommendations that has been referred to is that of having a co-ordinator on this in schools, and that should be someone from the senior leadership team within the school. That is important, because one of the big drivers when I first started teaching in the early 2000s was the drive towards more cross-curricular working, and it happened for a bit and then we lost focus on it. Having someone at a sufficiently senior level within the school to drive that cross-curricular agenda and link the two subjects is important, and the educational professionals who came to speak to us were very supportive of that approach.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
My hon. Friend raises an important point about the leadership coming from within schools, but does he agree that there might also be a role for the private sector and financial institutions to lend their support to make pragmatic advice available?
Andrew Percy
My hon. Friend must have been reading my notes over my shoulder, because that is exactly the point I was about to move on to. I will be brief, because I know that other Members wish to speak. We took a lot of evidence from financial institutions and banks, and one of the challenges we set out for them in the report relates to training. It would be pointless if I went in to deliver financial education to any of my pupils, because I am not financially competent, so there is an issue of training. But we have identified that role as one that financial institutions could work on more closely. They do a lot already, and anybody who knows Barclays will have seen its money skills programme. I visited Barclays in my constituency recently, and through the fantastic Sobriety Project it was doing some excellent work with Goole high school students who are at risk of exclusion and with vulnerable young people in the town.
Nationwide has a programme, and so does Capital One. I do not want to risk missing out any institutions, but many are already engaged in financial education, so we have set them the challenge of coming together, getting their resources kitemarked and perhaps being co-ordinated by a charity. Financial institutions have a real role to play in supporting such education in the curriculum, and in helping to develop the training to which my hon. Friend refers.
I am aware that many other Members wish to speak, but I shall just mention a couple of other organisations that support our proposal, as they should be read into the record if nothing else. First, and most importantly, there is one in my constituency. After the report came out, I was inundated with e-mails from various organisations, one of which I received from one of the two credit unions in my constituency, Hull and East Yorkshire Credit Union, to which I think the shadow Minister referred. It informs me that it would very much like to support our campaign on financial education, because it is very much in line with the ethics and objects of its movement.
Nationwide contacted us to say that
“the report looks very comprehensive and is something Nationwide very much welcomes.”
The Money Advice Service issued a statement to
“welcome the APPG on Financial Education & Young People’s report on Financial Education and the Curriculum.”
We were congratulated by the Scout Association, which also has an interest in the area, and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales
“call on MPs to back the introduction of mandatory financial education during Thursday’s debate.”
So there is a lot of support from a range of institutions and organisations.
Finally, I emphasise again that our proposal is not about watering down the curriculum, nor is it a wishy-washy thing with which to moralise about debt. It is about real maths skills; about using real-life experiences such as phone contracts, student tuition fees, mortgages or whatever to support the drive for standards, about which we are all passionate and we know the Minister is absolutely passionate; and it is about ensuring that young people enter this complex financial world with the skills to make better decisions than I, and many other people who have gone before them, have made.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I do not want to introduce a time limit, but I am very concerned about the amount of time being taken. At this rate, we are not going to get everybody in, so we need a little discipline, because the winding-up speeches will have to start at about quarter to 6. We should bear in mind that, if people are going to speak for 19 minutes each, other people will not get in, and I want to ensure that everybody gets in, so self-discipline will be very helpful if we are to look after each other.
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I can promise that I will not take too long over my speech.
It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), and I congratulate the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) on the all-party group and all Members who have contributed to the report.
I was lucky enough to be involved with a financial education project for 10 years when I worked for Citizens Advice in St Helens, and we started from a very low base, with schools that had never before thought of having such a project. We also worked with tenants’ and residents’ groups and with a wide range of organisations, and I was fortunate to employ a passionate member of staff who gained the first-ever teaching qualification in financial education. That was vital in moving our project forward into schools, because we found that teachers were not confident about teaching the subject. They understood that it needed to be taught, but they did not have the confidence to include it in the curriculum.
I therefore totally support the idea of a financial education champion in schools, because in our work we found that the maths department was not always the one that came forward. In one school in which we worked, the drama department was keen on the idea, and an excellent play, which I think is on a website somewhere, was written about the three little pigs living in their houses. We also offered qualifications, including the ASDAN qualification and open college network qualifications, so schools and organisations involved in the Work programme, with which we also worked, could offer qualifications to young people. That was important in making teachers realise that financial education was an actual subject. It was not an add-on; it was an important part of the curriculum.
However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) mentioned, there was an unexpected side-effect; we had not anticipated the rise in the number of parents coming to us with their debt problems. Students would go home and say, “Today I learned all about annual percentage rates. Let’s have a look at our household finances as an example.” The parents would sit there and think, “We’re beginning to hit a problem here. We are noticing that we cannot pay all our bills and that we’re borrowing on one credit card to pay off another.”
There absolutely needs to be a referral mechanism for advice about debt. It has to be sensitive and local. As my hon. Friend also mentioned, it could be the local citizens advice bureau. We were fortunate; somebody from the CAB delivered the financial education classes and they could talk to the parents and refer them to a specialist money adviser.
The only thing that I would like to take issue with is the part of the motion that mentions “irresponsible” debt. I can honestly say that in 24 years of working for a citizens advice bureau, I never saw anyone who had aimed to get into debt. Debt was often caused by irresponsible lending; innumerable people came to us with debt, cut up their credit cards, sent them back and were immediately sent a new credit card. Now, obviously, there is also the rise of the payday lenders, who will roll over debts when people say that they cannot pay them. I really feel that there needs to be regulation on that.
Most people take out loans intending to pay them back, whatever the level of interest. However, anyone’s circumstances can change. One of the most distressing cases that I ever saw involved somebody whose child was born with a disability. They had taken out an awful lot of loans to pay for the conversion of their property and were relying on the disability benefits for the child, who died unexpectedly. They were left with a mountain of debt. That was responsible, not irresponsible, borrowing. We need to look at the causes of debt. I agree with the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole—we should not be moralising. Debt happens. It could happen to any of us. If a person walks down the street and gets hit by a car, they are likely to end up not being able to pay their bills.
I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman), who is no longer in her place, that education is only 25% of the solution. Debt advice has to be available and there has to be regulation on the advertising by payday lenders and debt management companies, which offer to get people out of debt but often push them further into it, to make sure that they do not make a bad problem even worse.
Lyn Brown
May I ask my hon. Friend the question that I asked our hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman)? Does she, like me, see more such cases in her surgery week by week? Are there fewer people offering good-quality and independent advice who we can refer constituents to? Is that not the biggest problem that many of our people face at the moment?
Yvonne Fovargue
I completely agree. I am extremely concerned for the future, when the transition fund ends. To be honest, I do not know where the advice agencies are transitioning to—some are transitioning to oblivion. There is also the ending of legal aid for debt. The Minister mentioned the importance of early advice. Much of the funding for early advice is going, because legal aid funding is now for advice only at the point of eviction, which is absolutely not cost-effective.
Yes, I totally support the idea of compulsory financial education in school, but it has to be part of a package. Part of the package should be to ensure that people do not get into debt with payday lenders, do not go to the fee-charging debt management agencies but do have access to early advice to help them when they realise that they are getting into debt. They need to be able to realise when the debt is becoming a problem.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I have been in another debate in another place, so forgive me for intervening, but when I was Chair of the Select Committee on Education and Skills, we did a lot of work on the issue. We found that many financial institutions put money into CABs. Would my hon. Friend encourage the private sector to carry on with that? There are many demands on its time, but Nationwide particularly was putting money straight into the CAB.
Yvonne Fovargue
I would certainly encourage that, but I would like to see a more strategic approach to debt. I would hope that the Money Advice Service provides that. However, it would have to have the money to be able to provide such a service. There is no use having a strategy but no money to give to the organisation. It is no use putting money into debt advice if the generalist advice to support it is not there. The agency depends on all levels of funding and a lot of it is going.
I support the motion and hope that we can look at a package of measures to tackle the rising problem of debt and personal insolvency.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
I add my congratulations to subscribers to MoneySavingExpert.com on petitioning us for this debate. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) not just on securing the debate but on his work in steering the all-party group on financial education for young people, on which I am pleased to serve as vice-chair. The group's report is a credit to my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), who has led the inquiry.
I have been leading a strand of the group looking at financial education in further education, so my remarks will draw on the relevant insights of that inquiry, which will issue its full report in the new year. I have been joined in that inquiry by the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) and I extend my thanks and appreciation for his involvement and expertise and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier), who also participated in our inquiry.
Like all hon. Members, I am particularly fortunate when my own constituents contribute to my work, and it would be appropriate to make particular mention of two who have been in touch with me about the issue: Caroline Stephens and Trisha Snowling. Caroline is a maths and personal finance teacher who has campaigned tirelessly to promote the cause, not just through her work but by writing to councillors and MPs to alert them to current developments from a practitioner's point of view. Trisha has a breadth of experience in financial careers and has been an articulate correspondent on the issue in recent months. She summarised to me neatly the consequences of a lack of financial literacy for people's ability to spot a bad deal in later life:
“They don’t bother to read the small print on a finance agreement—why would they? It’ll be in a language they didn’t study at school.”
Our inquiry set out to look at the response to the issue in further education to identify what distinguishes the experience in that sector from that in schools. Since there had been little assessment or co-ordination of colleges' approach to personal financial education, the group began by conducting a nationwide survey of current practice in colleges. An overwhelming majority of survey respondents—nearly 97%—thought that financial education should also be provided in further education institutions and 84% of responding colleges believed that students’ inability to manage their finances was a cause of failure to complete their courses, which should worry all of us who want young people to have the best possible chance to equip themselves for working life.
We supplemented the survey with oral evidence sessions to test those initial findings against the experience and expertise of college principals, student service managers and students themselves. An oral evidence session a fortnight ago bore out many of the survey’s emerging conclusions about students’ financial awareness. We welcomed an impressive group of students from two colleges in London to hear their perspective on both the financial education they had received so far and their attitudes to money more generally. The students we met were of course those who have really engaged with this learning opportunity. However, I was most struck by the fact that, although they understood about saving, they themselves identified that they did not know much about borrowing or debt. They also emphasised the importance of their family background and home environment, not necessarily to the specifics that they had learned, but to their underlying attitudes to money and their confidence in dealing with it.
A dominant theme of the inquiry’s evidence so far is that there is good financial education provision in a number of colleges around the country, but that it does not reach anything like the majority of students, even in the colleges that are leading the way. The reduction of entitlement funding, which some colleges were using to deliver their personal financial education through tutorial time, has had an effect on the sector’s ability to deliver such education. However, the evidence that we have received suggests that provision was sporadic even before that funding change. It seems that some colleges may have considered that modest provision within tutorial time as sufficient.
We heard some compelling accounts of quite sophisticated offers of financial education from City college Norwich and New college Swindon. However, even such colleges that are heavily geared towards financial literacy and business education are enticing only some of their students to take up their financial education offer.
What we have seen so far is that financial education is most effectively delivered when it falls naturally within a student’s chosen core curriculum. In further education, there is a wide array of opportunities to provide that. Where that is not the case, there are many challenges in achieving the required coverage of financial education in a student’s programme.
Mr Sheerman
I am impressed by what the hon. Gentleman is saying about his research. Has there been any indication of what are the most successful online tools? Just as the Government are keen on using online facilities for careers education, does he think that that would be a good way to learn about debt and credit?
Duncan Hames
We were made aware of online resources that students could use to supplement lectures that were available as part of their further education college’s provision. I think that it was at New college Swindon where students could register for an additional qualification to supplement the choices that they were already making and their normal lectures, which was largely learned independently and had testing arrangements which allowed them to study at their own pace. I offer that as one example in answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question.
The inquiry’s forthcoming written report will go into greater detail about the nature of the challenges that we saw in further education and the means that we suggest to address them.
I will end with a few remarks about what the inquiry has told us about financial education in schools. The evidence shows that further education as a sector is defined by choice and provision for a diverse range of student needs, from basic literacy and numeracy to running a business or preparing to attend university. That means that the starting position of college students reveals the results of their previous education, which might not have equipped them with the capability to deal with the challenges that students increasingly face, including their financial responsibilities.
I therefore argue that financial education in schools needs to lay a universal foundation or baseline in financial literacy for every student. Students who go on to further education will be able to build on that by using qualification-based study, which further education colleges are in a good position to deliver in a wide range of curriculum choices. That would allow those who have benefited from financial education in the school curriculum to progress later in their education. It would also limit the extent to which further education colleges have to, in the words of one witness, “play catch-up” and help students to retread what they missed in their school years.
I know that time is short, so I will conclude by encouraging Members to look out for the APPG’s second report in the new year and by urging them to support the motion.
Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Chippenham (Duncan Hames), who is doing a lot of work on the further education part of the all-party group’s inquiry. I have had the pleasure of being in a couple of his inquiry sessions. I extend my appreciation also to my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), who has done a fantastic job of chairing the evidence sessions that have resulted in the group’s report, and to my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), who has done a really outstanding job in putting the group together. As we have heard, it has had record membership right from the start. It would be wrong of me to start my speech without also expressing my appreciation of Martin Lewis, whom I met when he first came before the Treasury Committee. He was not only an extraordinarily fine witness but quite an inspirational one.
I come to the subject from the point of view of being a member of the Treasury Committee. The House has heard a lot from teachers and from Members with constituency experience, but I consider the matter with regard to how we run the economy of our country and deal with the crisis that faces us.
When we as a society send children to school, we do our very best to equip them to face life and give them the best opportunity possible to have a successful life and career. We teach them basic subjects such as maths, reading and writing, computer skills, sex and relationships education and how to be good citizens. That is all extremely good and important, but we signally fail to equip people to be financially literate. The evidence of that is all around us. We are one of the most personally indebted nations on the planet, with a staggering £1.5 trillion of personal debt. That is about £25,000 for every man, woman and child. To put that into the context of more meaningful numbers, this country has about 10% or 11% of the population of the EU, yet we have 50% of the personal debt. That is quite a frightening statistic.
As constituency MPs, we see on an all too frequent basis people coming to us with financial problems and, as we have heard, Citizens Advice is seeing a ballooning of debt problems. We are in the midst of a financial crisis, and the banks are accused on a daily basis of causing it. They are quite rightly accused of making irresponsible loans to customers in the housing market, yet we all too frequently gloss over the elephant in the room. For a bank to make an irresponsible loan, it needs an irresponsible consumer to take on that debt. Our response to that situation is to increase the regulation of the financial system, and in so doing increase the cost of financial services to consumers.
It is absolutely right that we examine the regulatory system carefully and do our very best to ensure that we neither have a repeat of the financial crisis nor walk into the next, as yet unidentified, financial crisis. However, part of the solution to the current problems has to be greater financial literacy. We would not have irresponsible borrowers taking out irresponsible loans if they knew what they were doing.
Another topic that we have heard about this afternoon is payday loans. We know that as many as 3 million people will take advantage of that service in the next year, and in some cases they will pay annual percentage rates in the thousands. Yet someone could easily pay a higher rate of interest on a small, unauthorised overdraft, by the time the cost of the levy from the bank, the interest and the penalty charge has been taken into account. However, our response is to consider harder regulation of payday loans. Surely the answer is greater financial literacy, so that an individual is less likely to need any sort of loan.
Kevin Brennan
Would not another possible answer be regulating unauthorised bank overdrafts with more rigour?
Mark Garnier
I want to get away from the need to regulate everything. We need to ensure that people are in a stronger position to manage their own money and accounts properly, so that they do not get into that problem in the first place. If they did get in trouble, they would be in a far better position to evaluate the best solution.
Kevin Brennan
I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point of view on deregulation, but does he not see the paradox in supporting the all-party group’s report, whose first key recommendation is that personal financial education should be a compulsory part of every school’s curriculum, while also supporting the deregulation of the schools system, which would ensure that schools did not have to teach anything of that kind compulsorily?
Mark Garnier
That is a neatly and well made point, but the hon. Gentleman will remember my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) making the point that, by having financial education in the curriculum, we would not just provide for directly funded schools but provide a lead for other schools to follow. That is an incredibly important point.
The Money Advice Service is part of the solution. It announced earlier this week the start of a new strategic oversight function for financial education. I shall quote from its press release, because it is always very good to hear such excellent civil service-speak. It says that the review is
“to inform and improve the provision of financial education for young people in the UK. Firstly, mapping the range of education initiatives funded by the financial services industry, to create a single view of the landscape; secondly, commissioning new research into education and behaviour change - to both identify global best-practice in the field of financial education; and examine whether successful types of intervention in other fields, for example health or drug education, can be applied to the area of money.”
That sounds fantastic, but there is a simple solution, which we keep repeating: we should put financial education on the curriculum in schools. We should get the Money Advice Service to concentrate on those adults who have not had the chance to get a financial education so far, and who are in desperate need of it to help them to deal with the problems that they face as a result of being financially illiterate.
As part of the all-party group inquiry team, I heard a great deal of interesting comment. I think I went to almost every single meeting, although I might have missed a couple. As we have heard, help is out there. Financial institutions go into schools to assist with financial education, but many teachers feel intimidated by the subject, presumably because they in turn did not receive a financial education. We have also heard that provision is sporadic: sometimes financial education is very good, but sometimes there is none at all. One member of the Arun youth council said that his school spent more time teaching him how to put on condoms than they spent teaching him about money. It was a thin day for bananas that day at his school.
The question is: how do we get financial education into the curriculum and where do we put it? Of course, there is a maths element—frankly, financial education is the type of thing that could enhance maths teaching. Teaching a child about compound rates of interest is not an exciting subject, but teaching a child that buying a pair of football boots for £125 on a credit card with an APR of 26% and paying that over six months will cost him a lot more than if he paid cash gives that child both a good example of how maths works and a lesson in financial facts.
If I were Martin Lewis, I would be able to work out in my head what that compound rate of interest would mean, but I was an investment banker and I am afraid I am completely unqualified to do so, as I would be if I were a footballer. However, to limit financial education to maths would be a huge mistake. Although maths can handle the quantitative side of things, it can do nothing about the qualitative side. We need people to make solid, judgment-based decisions. Maths will give people the skill to answer the question of whether they can afford something, but the question of whether they should buy something is just as relevant.
If I live in the centre of a city, the question of whether I should buy a car is a relatively simple one—there is plenty of public transport so I might not use it, parking might be a problem and so on. However, for an unemployed person living in the country with just a few hundred pounds to their name, the question of whether they should spend their last savings on a car so that they can find a job and make themselves more employable or keep the money to live on is much more difficult to answer. Many people are simply not equipped to make such a subjective evaluation.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Three constituents have written to me to congratulate my hon. Friend and colleagues on the work they have done on this matter. They said how important their work is and hope that it results in some improvement.
Mark Garnier
I am incredibly grateful for that intervention and thank my right hon. Friend very much indeed.
To continue my point, if we equip the next generation to answer the supplementary question to the one I just described—should I set up a business with my last few hundred quid?—we will begin not only to address the financial independence of our citizens, but to find the key to unlocking economic growth in future.
The fact that we are questioning whether financial education should be on the curriculum is a mistake. I fail to understand why it has not been on the curriculum for years. As we have discussed, the APPG has just published its report. The Minister has shown great interest in it and has read through it. We will keep pressing to ensure not only that he reads it again and again, but that he initiates its recommendations.
I shall conclude by mentioning the work of organisations such as PFEG, which we talked about earlier. Its work is incredibly important—it does a valuable job promoting financial education and co-ordinating the efforts of the financial services industry to get expertise into schools—but we must recognise its efforts by delivering the ultimate goal: a curriculum-based financial education which addresses not just maths and the quantitative elements of money management, but the qualitative and judgment-based elements of financial literacy.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
I apologise to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and to the Minister if it turns out to be necessary for me to leave the Chamber before the end of the debate.
It is almost a year to the day since I spoke in this Chamber about the need for better financial education in schools. I talked about the patchy or non-existent current provision in so many schools and about the sad results of the lack of financial capability, which I witnessed over many years in my community law firm. It was apparent not only in the levels of debt but in the breakdown of relationships and health. There is a huge cost to society of providing debt advice—essential though it is. Currently, citizens advice bureaux receive around £27 million, much of which is for debt advice.
The main thrust of my argument then was that better financial education is necessary because prevention is better than cure. Shortly after I spoke, the all-party parliamentary group on financial education for young people was founded. I am sure that I speak for all my colleagues who have served on the parliamentary inquiry into the need for better financial education for young people in schools when I say that it has been a real privilege to serve on that inquiry. It has been one of the most fulfilling roles that I have undertaken in my short time in this House. I pay tribute to the chairman of the group, my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), and to the chairman of the inquiry, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), for their vigour in leading this work and for the fact that this week, a substantial report on financial education and the curriculum has been published. I have to say also that they have stolen all of my good lines.
During the course of the inquiry, we took evidence from dozens of witnesses. I pay particular tribute to two witnesses from my constituency. David Black, who has recently retired, was head teacher of Alsager high school. He has spent years co-ordinating volunteer educators who advise young people in schools in Cheshire and train teachers to deliver financial education under the banner of “debt cred”. Will Spendilow of New Life church, Congleton, was one of those volunteer educators. Last year in Cheshire, 7,000 pupils benefited from this “debt cred” advice. Those pupils are fortunate, but what of the many across the country who receive no such advice? Even more worrying is the fact that many teachers do not feel up to the task of teaching financial education.
Our inquiry found that the whole area of financial capability urgently needs addressing. Some 70% of 18 to 25-year-olds are in debt. People in their 20s are the least capable age group in making ends meet, choosing financial products and balancing a budget. This lack of financial capability has cost Britain nearly £250 million in bank charges and penalties alone, and 71% of people say that a lack of basic financial understanding is to blame for debt.
While young people are faced with a financial world of baffling complexity, they are vigorously targeted at an early age by retailers and lenders and assaulted by a consumer culture that raises for them unrealistic lifestyle expectations. Our report found that two thirds of people in the UK feel too confused to make the right choices about their money and more than a third say that they do not have the right skills to manage cash.
In the 12 months to the third quarter of 2011, approximately one in 361 people became insolvent, which is significantly higher than the annual average of one in 1,655 people over the past 25 years. It was clear to us that without fundamental changes to the way in which individuals manage their money, the problem would continue to grow. Financial education is a long-term investment and a solution to what is now a widespread national problem. Teaching people about budgeting in their personal lives is also an essential basic component to equip the work force with the necessary skills to succeed in business and drive forward economic growth.
Where will young people improve their financial literacy, the costs of which are clearly set out in our report, if not in school? It is not from their parents; our inquiry found that a third of teenagers’ parents had never talked to their children about budgeting. They will not learn it from the banks; the era of the trusted family bank manager who knew people and took a personal interest in their financial welfare has long gone, although many banks do provide support for financial education in schools, which is valuable. It would be wrong to rely on voluntary organisations to give advice, although many do provide excellent advice; Christians against Poverty, which was originally founded to help those in debt, has now moved into the proactive area of providing courses on personal financial management, and I commend it for that. However, such organisations should not be relied on to provide financial education, particularly in schools. That void makes it essential for financial education to be taught in schools to all young people before they enter the world of work and are faced with some of the financial challenges to which I have referred.
Let me now comment on the recommendations. The first is that personal financial education should be a compulsory part of every school’s curriculum, and that it should be assessed. David Black, whom I mentioned earlier, has said:
“Unless you test, it will not happen.”
I recall an amusing exchange at one of the inquiry’s evidence sessions. I said, “As a mother of two teenagers, I know that nothing focuses a pupil’s mind like an exam.” One witness responded, “And nothing focuses a teacher’s mind like an exam.” We also found that in 20 countries across the globe financial education is already compulsory, and has been for many years. It would be interesting to see whether they share our nation’s debt problems.
Kevin Brennan
The report says, and the hon. Lady has just said as well, that personal financial education should be a compulsory part of every school’s curriculum. Does the hon. Lady mean that the Government should make it a compulsory part of every school’s curriculum, or was that merely an exhortation that she thinks should be out there in the ether?
Fiona Bruce
I believe that it is such an important issue that space should be made for it in both the PSHE and the maths curriculums. Another of the recommendations makes that very suggestion: that financial education should be cross-curricular, overlapping with maths and PSHE. Pupils made it clear to us that they enjoyed financial education. One said:
“I thought it was really interesting because, personally, I learnt a lot and a lot of my peers said they learnt lots too.”
We all know that we learn more when we enjoy a subject, and it seems that including financial education in the maths curriculum could well aid maths learning overall, which would be an important added-value benefit.
Again and again, teachers told the inquiry of their sense of inadequacy when it came to teaching financial education. It was almost a refrain. They talked of significant barriers to teaching it well, particularly their own lack of confidence in their knowledge of the subject, as well as a lack of awareness of suitable resources. One of the most important recommendations in the report is to establish a quality kite mark from a trusted body, which would assure teachers that if the subject took up valuable curriculum time, that time—if Members will pardon the pun—would be well spent.
The last recommendation that I would like to mention—by no means the least important—is that there should be a financial education champion in every school. Another head teacher giving evidence to the inquiry said:
“if you asked me for the number one thing, and that is to have a senior member of staff responsible for it as the champion, who has enough resources or enough clout to draw people to work at it. Then you will find it will come together.”
It is vital to ensure that members of the next generation are better equipped than those of the present generation to make informed financial decisions, for the sake of their well-being and that of our whole society. That applies to a host of areas: mental and physical health, relationships and family life, career prospects and entrepreneurialism. I believe that, over time, investment in financial education will reap exponential benefits for our society, and I urge the Minister to give constructive support to the recommendations in the report that was published this week. Let us work towards prevention rather than cure.
Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)
I am delighted to follow my near neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce).
Like many others who have spoken, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) and his colleagues not only on securing the debate, but on their continual hard work, the pressure that they have put on the Government, and the publicity that they have secured—including the use of Martin Lewis to press home the importance of the issue. The launch of the all-party group on financial education for young people attracted more than 200 Members of Parliament, and it is now the largest of the all-party groups. I congratulate it on its report on financial education, which was released this week and which deals comprehensively with the subject.
I do not wish to be labelled a grumpy old man—I am sure, though, that my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) will soon label me one—but I must refer back to when I was a lad.
Andrew Bingham
Yes, it was.
I remember my late father taking me to Williams and Glyn’s bank to open my first bank account and my walking out proudly with my Williams and Glyn’s plastic piggy bank, which I suspect I still have somewhere and is probably worth a lot on eBay. They say that servicemen can always remember their Army number; I can still remember my bank account number from that day.
When I came of age, there were few temptations for somebody my age to acquire extra funds or credit. In those days, it was the bank or it was nothing. Credit cards were unavailable without a parent or guardian to guarantee it and wages were paid in cash. Consequently, we lived in a pay-as-you-go world—to coin a modern-day phrase. We were not educated in financial matters in school in the 1970s, because there was not the multitude of financial opportunities—and, indeed, pitfalls—available to young people today.
When I refer to young people, I do not refer exclusively to school leavers but to those who left school a few years ago, have built up savings and are now plunging into the world of credit or embarking on the next stage of their life—getting their first mortgage or signing a tenancy agreement—and who require financial knowledge to navigate these potentially treacherous waters.
When people turn on the television today, read the newspaper, surf the internet or look at magazines, they are bombarded with adverts offering them cheap money, easy money and, in some cases, apparently free money. In fact, some claim that it is possible to borrow enough money to get completely out of debt. When we pick up the Sunday newspapers, out drop a multitude of pieces of paper, one of which is usually advertising cheap money.
Borrowing money is inevitable, and we all have to borrow at some point in our lives, whether for a mortgage or whatever, but it is important to do it prudently—a word from the past—and sensibly. To do that, people need to understand what these companies are offering, to read beyond the quick, snappy headline and to make an informed decision. To do all that, they need to understand finance, the methods by which it can be obtained, the cost of that finance, the conditions attached and, more importantly, the short and long-term consequences of failure to adhere to those conditions.
Not only must young people contend with this wealth of advertising and pressure, but they live in a very different world from that of their predecessors in my generation and that of many in the House. As has been alluded to, they have phone contracts, credit cards, payday loans, tuition fees, store cards—the list goes on and on. These are all things that are part of modern-day life but which were either unheard of or unavailable in days gone by. Added to that, there are many alluring ways of paying for luxury goods—televisions, holidays and so on—that appear to be completely free of any credit charge yet are full of pitfalls buried in the small print.
How many people realise, when they buy a television on a buy now, pay later deal, that if they miss the payment date, they are automatically locked into a three-year finance agreement potentially on an annual percentage rate that can be more than 20% and perhaps as much as 30%? Indeed, how many actually understand what APR really is?
And how many people understand the pitfalls when they get older and decide to buy a car? A car might be advertised with low monthly payments—“You can have this car for £159 a month”, the advert might read. However, it might not explain until the small print that at the end of the term the person will not own the car, because a significant final amount will still be outstanding—balloon payments, they are sometimes called—and that, if unpaid, they will have to give the car back and have nothing to show for it.
We live in a world where peer pressure exerts a huge influence, especially on young people, to have the latest mobile phone, trainers or designer clothing. It matters very much to young people and it drives their shopping habits. When that is coupled with the myriad easy ways to pay, we have a cocktail of debt and ensuing misery.
Financial education will not stop that—after all, people will always want to buy goods; the economy depends on it—but I believe that financial education will do several things. First, it will enable people to tell whether a deal is as good as it seems. There is an old adage: “If it looks too good to be true, then it usually is.” Financial education will enable young people to ascertain whether a deal is good or not, and see what the total potential cost is of the iconic item that they feel desperate to own. Being armed with that knowledge might not prevent them from buying that item, but they will I hope make a rational, informed decision and ask themselves whether they need it and whether they can really afford it. In the long term, that will spare people much misery, as well as the further consequences that excessive debt can have for people personally and for their families. As was said earlier—by an hon. Gentleman who is no longer in his place—that knowledge will also enable people to make decisions about savings. This is not all about debt: it is about savings, investments and pensions. On the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, we are looking at auto-enrolment and how to judge one pension against another. That is another story, but having informed financial knowledge and advice could help people to make better decisions about such matters.
Several years ago I produced an e-book, which was designed to plug into a computer. It was called “Living On Your Own” and was aimed at students leaving home to go to university and living away from their families for the first time. It dealt with all the issues that many of us take for granted: council tax, rent, utility bills, registering with a local GP and so on. It even had some easy-cook, healthy recipes. The book also contained an interactive budget planner, in which students could enter all their incomings and outgoings, and which gave a figure for how much money they had left at the end of the week or month. If they were overdrawn, the figure went red. We gave the e-book away to students—I think we gave away 200—and those who got back to me said that the most useful thing in it was the budget planner, because it showed them in simple, stark terms whether they were living within their means or beyond them.
There is a further implication of our young people not having the level of financial literacy they need when they leave education. Those young people are the next generation of our wealth generators, entrepreneurs and business builders. They are the people we will look to in five, 10 or even 20 years to build businesses, create jobs and grow the economy. We cannot expect them to be able to do that successfully if we do not give them the tools they need while they are being educated. Anyone who goes to the bank for an overdraft or business loan has to have a business plan and know how best to make the money work so that their business can survive. If we do not get this right, we will not have those people and we will pay the price later.
When I was at school, we did subjects such as metalwork and woodwork. I can turn on a lathe and wooden lathe—
Andrew Bingham
It is not a question of showing off: my hon. Friend never saw the results. In fact, my mother still has the table lamp that I made at school in woodwork to this very day—
Andrew Bingham
I didn’t do the electrics; I left that to my dad.
Schools have moved on. They now teach subjects such as IT, media, technology—
Andrew Bingham
I wouldn’t go that far.
Education moves to fit the world it provides for. I fully support today’s motion, as education needs to move again to suit the financial jungle that is the world in which we operate today.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
I join colleagues in congratulating my hon. Friends the Members for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) and for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), and all hon. Friends and colleagues who have contributed to this excellent report. I am pleased to hear the Minister’s clear statement that the report will feed into the curriculum review. Like many Members, I have come across some terrible cases of constituents who have found themselves in dire financial trouble as a result of not having the tools to understand financial matters. It is tragic that such situations arise as often as they do, and with the growing complexity of the financial marketplace, combined with the growing ease with which people can access it, the case for the Government addressing financial education is stronger than ever.
It is welcome that the coalition Government are in the process of undertaking a curriculum review. I support the clarity of vision with which Ministers have carried through this and the many other vital reforms of our education system. I understand the Secretary of State’s desire to simplify and slim down the core curriculum to focus on the essential subjects that will enable us to compete in the 21st century, and to ensure that it is uncluttered, with a strong emphasis on numeracy and literacy. However, like many other colleagues, I believe that personal financial education is one of the elements that are vital to our ability to compete in this century and protect the life chances of our constituents.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) neatly set out, financial education also has enormous relevance to the national scene today. Today’s debate and the excellent report of the all-party group on financial education for young people provide valuable tools for dealing with that problem, both nationally and locally, in all our constituencies. We need financial education that gives people a clear understanding of budgeting, as my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) pointed out, and of the costs and uses of debt.
We should not see financial education as an entirely negative problem; it should also provide an opportunity. More financially educated students today will be better placed to be the next generation of business people and entrepreneurs tomorrow. Businesses are crying out for greater financial skills, and by providing better financial education we can meet that need and provide those skills. A higher degree of financial literacy among the public will also mean people are better able to see and understand the problem of balancing budgets at the town hall and in Whitehall, and the costs of long-term debt. Vitally, it means that fewer people will get into financial difficulties in the first place, which bring such huge financial and social costs to themselves and their families.
One of the many constituents who urged me to take part in this debate wrote to me to say that financial education was
“a hugely important concept. Unfortunately I got myself into some financial difficulties in my early 20s and for the last 5 years I have had to work 2 jobs in order to repay the debt. I have very little spare time and am unable to afford holidays or luxuries that others take for granted. I still have debt to pay off but I now ensure that I keep myself educated financially to make sure that I am getting the best financial products for my needs. I have learnt the hard way, but if this education was provided in schools, I feel fewer people would end up in the situation I found myself.”
That provides a perfect illustration of why this debate is so important, but why is it so important right now?
We face a crisis of debt and, as Martin Lewis has pointed out, we live in a time when the stigma of debt has somehow been diminished. We also live in a world where we are all increasingly bombarded by offers of credit, as my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak neatly pointed out. I do not know whether I am the only Member who regularly receives calls on my House of Commons office telephone carrying recorded messages offering me cheap debt deals or spurious payment protection insurance compensation. [Interruption.] I see from the reaction of some hon. Members that I am not the only one. I hope that this is not a comment on my own financial circumstances.
Not only by telephone marketing, but through the internet and increasingly through mobile phone apps, credit is more available and more heavily marketed than ever before. In some respects, this need not be a bad thing—credit can help people to manage their finances, and legal credit at reasonable rates is infinitely preferable to the alternative of loan sharks and doorstep lenders. However, the constant bombardment becomes a real problem when people lack the tools to understand concepts such as APR—annual percentage rate—or to develop a proper understanding of the real costs of the debt they are being offered. It is a shocking fact that only one in three adults in the UK knows what APR stands for, let along what it means financially.
It is particularly concerning that many of these credit services are heavily targeted at students who are managing their finances for the first time—perhaps without the benefit of the useful book of guidance produced by my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak—and the level of financial knowledge among many university students does not seem to be as high as we would hope. The surveys showing that only 36% of adults knew the definition of APR showed that this fell to less than 31% for people under 30, and I have heard from student representatives a number of worrying stories of students actually boasting about the level of APR they were paying on a loan, believing that a higher APR meant a better loan. As the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) pointed out, there is strong demand for students to be better informed on these issues.
We have debated the issue of high-cost credit separately, and I continue to believe that there is a need for some sort of system of flexible caps and that there is potential for a levy on high-cost lenders to help to finance the cost of debt advice and financial education. I am hopeful that the Government’s research into this area will produce both those results. However, in a world where such credit is as prevalent as it has become and when students are having to take on more long-term, low-cost debt as part of the process of getting higher education, it is clear there is a demand for them to be better prepared to understand and manage it.
All these reasons point to the urgency of including personal financial education in the curriculum, but they do not dictate how it should be included. There is not necessarily any contradiction between the Government’s desire for a simple curriculum that focuses on the basics and the inclusion of this basic tool for life in the curriculum. In my view, and in the view of the all-party group report, there is no need for a new subject to be added or for time to be set apart in the timetable. Rather, the provision of better financial education can be included in the teaching of maths and PSHE.
Indeed, as Carol Vorderman has pointed out, making maths more relevant and giving it a firmer basis in the real world might help to deal with some of the stigma that many students attach to it. I well remember as a teenage pupil being profoundly uninterested in algebra and trigonometry, but waking up and paying attention when maths touched on the finances of a business or the cost of a shopping trip. I suspect many pupils feel the same. We paid even more attention when people from outside school came in to talk about what they did, so I welcome the report’s recommendations about bringing in more outside experience.
We should not pretend that that would be a wholly new approach. Many of the best teachers, schools and colleges already employ such an approach to make their lessons relevant and engage their pupils. Tudor Grange academy in Worcester has forged strong links with local businesses, such as Worcester Bosch, and the Worcester college of technology has seen several hundred students take money management programmes as additional elements of their studies, showing that students want more financial education even when it is treated as an extra.
Many organisations, from banks and accountancy firms to the citizens advice bureaux, small businesses and entrepreneurs, already engage with schools to talk about the importance of financial knowledge, planning and budgeting. The Institute of Chartered Accountants runs a competition on financial knowledge for schools in Worcestershire. The best examples from among our schools, which include many schools in Worcestershire, would probably need to see no change if financial education were to be introduced as a statutory part of the curriculum, but the inclusion would make a real difference to the overall picture, allow better co-ordination and support those who are leading the way.
The inclusion of financial education in the curriculum would send a signal to all head teachers and all schools that it should be a core part of the teaching of maths and PSHE. It is one of the basic skills with which pupils need to emerge and from which they will benefit hugely. As the all-party group’s report clearly shows, the greatest reason for teachers saying that they do not currently provide financial education is the pressure on curriculum time. Giving it a place in the curriculum would therefore remove the greatest single bar to its successful delivery. I do not believe that would be onerous in any way and when I have discussed it with local heads, as I did at a recent meeting with a group of Worcester primary heads, I have received unanimous support for its inclusion.
I know that many hon. Members want to speak and that we are all anxious to get away today, so I will conclude by saying that financial education should be brought into the statutory curriculum as soon as possible. As a proud English member of the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs, I am pleased to see that Wales, like Scotland, has already taken that step. I believe this is an excellent example of how the UK Government can show their support for the respect agenda, respecting the devolved Assemblies and the students, teachers and heads who all tell us the benefits of financial education.
Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)
It is nice to speak at this point in the debate, when everybody has said everything.
May I begin my adding my plaudits to those already heaped on my hon. Friends the Members for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) and for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson)? I was a mere foot soldier in their regiment as they steamrollered this through and I must say what an efficient manner—[Interruption.] I was sometimes cannon fodder, yes.
If I were a little younger, I could have had when I was at university the e-book that my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) had and it might have saved me from being part of that generation that got one credit card to pay off another before I realised that I was not gaining very much by it.
I cannot remember ever being taught financial education at any time in my history at school. People from the Post Office came in once in the 1950s and I think I still have a Post Office account with 10 shillings in. If anyone finds the book, I would be grateful for that. I spent 27 years as a teacher in secondary education and I never saw financial education taught; indeed, one of the surveys in the report shows that 45% of teachers have never seen it taught in school. The only time I touched on it—it is a pity the shadow Minister is not here—was when I taught American history in the 1920s and 1930s, with the Wall street crash, the depression, and banking and shares. I was going to say to the shadow Minister that it takes a good history teacher to teach decent economics.
In my constituency, I came across a scheme run by two guys from Fleetwood, Paul Freeman and Martin Hull. They are community support officers and they noticed that in the areas where there were problems, kids did not understand the idea of saving. This goes back to what my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) said: they wanted instant money. A scheme was developed in conjunction with a primary school and pupils were rewarded with school pounds, but the school had to take part in various business exercises to earn the prizes that the kids had to save up for. The scheme has been developed through other schools and it is now working with a primary school outside my constituency, with the involvement of a secondary school in my constituency, Rossall school—I mention it for a reason—whose lower sixth has already set up its own businesses and it is running them as a practical demonstration. Rossall school is a public school and the primary school that it is helping is a state school. The example is double edged: the private sector is helping the state sector and we have the involvement of one of those schools about which the shadow Minister kept talking. They do not use the national curriculum but, because they are good schools, they are already way down the line in financial education.
One thing that we in the all-party group have been trying to do is help state schools to catch up. Having said that, none of us underestimates the problem and I am grateful for the Minister’s generosity in taking our proposals on board. Perhaps this debate is timely, given that a review of the national curriculum is coming forward, but none of us who has been a teacher underestimates what we are asking teachers to do. The hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) and others have said that we need confident teachers with really good back-up to do this.
Fiona Bruce
Does my hon. Friend agree that we ought to consider including this subject as an element of teacher training in colleges?
Eric Ollerenshaw
I think we need to deal with this in all kinds of ways.
On the remarks we have heard about maths teachers and the lack of maths, if we want this kind of revolution to begin, teachers need to be utterly behind it—not just theoretically but practically, and with that confidence. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole has said, we had a debate in the all-party group about personal, social and health education and maths. I still warm to the applied maths idea, partly because I would have been like my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker). I scraped through maths because I had to, but then forgot most of it, as was obvious in my subsequent financial career. So I veer more towards the latter approach. My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole commented on how PSHE is regarded in some schools.
There is also the issue of back-up and time. The Personal Finance Education Group has given us a lot of support. Given the financial support that it has had from some banks, perhaps it would be apposite for the Minister to challenge the banking and financial institutions of this country, which have suffered somewhat in the public’s estimation, to provide the back-up that is needed to deliver financial education in a substantial way. I take on board what my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton said about training and suggest that financial support could involve the provision of money to release teachers to train or to provide materials for schools. We are asking for a huge turnaround in schools if such education is to be provided properly and is not just to be drip-fed, with some good schools doing it but more schools just paying lip service and trying to get by. Is this subject as fundamental as hon. Members from all parties have said it is? I am not underestimating its importance.
Time is running out and all my best lines have been taken my hon. Friends who have expressed the points far better than I could have. I think the hon. Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman) ended on a quote and I should like to end on a quote from an article in The Independent today by Andreas Whittam Smith, who said that
“the real explanation of the fall of RBS was the incompetence of the British ruling and managerial classes…without having the foggiest idea of how business worked.”
I am not suggesting that if we carry out these recommendations, we will end boom and bust tomorrow, but it might be a start.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
As my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) has just said, it is difficult to think of anything original to say at this stage of the proceedings, so I shall be mercifully brief. I must start with the obligatory fawning to my hon. Friends the Members for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) and for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) for the genuinely outstanding work they have done on the all-party group. The way that group has grown is not just impressive but phenomenal. In double-quick time it has brought to the British Parliament an issue that matters so much and about which so many people are genuinely bothered. The report and the depth of the analysis and work the group has done are already helping to stimulate debate here and more widely—and will do so further.
Today’s debate is not about approving every line in the report. I would have loved to remind the shadow Minister, if he were here, that the motion does not say that there should be compulsory financial education in free schools and academies or that it should be part of the national curriculum in primary schools. The key phrase in the motion is:
“That this House…believes that the country has a duty to equip its young people properly through education to make informed financial decisions”.
I could not agree more.
I shall not go into examples of the problems that we have all seen when people have come into our surgeries or when we have met people. My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) has mentioned that some people, astonishingly, think that a high APR must be better than a low APR because it is a bigger number. These things would be funny if they were not so tragic. When we hear about them, our natural reaction is to say, “If we get them young and educate them, we will sort out all these problems.” There is, of course, as it says in the motion, a great advantage to equipping people with the capability to make smart financial decisions. There can also be a more immediate benefit, to which the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) alluded. If teachers get kids to bring in material—junk mail—that they have received at home, and they discuss it, messages can then get back to home, so there will be a beneficial impact even in the shorter term.
Even better than telling, of course, is doing, through schemes such as junior savers clubs. I was a member of the Abbey National junior savers. It used to have gold, silver and bronze; I only ever made bronze, but there you are. We have savings clubs in schools, and I pay tribute to credit unions in particular, although others do this as well, which run schemes in schools, often with parent volunteers and schoolchildren helping to manage them. That is another great way to pick up experience.
I have an issue with PSHE, however. It sometimes feels as though the answer to any social problem in this country is another module in PSHE. That is true whether the problem is that people are too fat or that people are too thin, or whether it is teenage pregnancy. Whatever it might be, we do it in PSHE. There are limitations to PSHE. When one mentions it to teachers, their response is not one that can be written down because it is just a groan. As a general rule, teachers do not like doing PSHE lessons. Although the report of the all-party group says “only 45%” of teachers in the survey had taught personal financial education, I have to say that that struck me as an extraordinarily large number. Almost half the teaching population has taken on the teaching of that subject. I think it unlikely that they are all experts in that area.
In PSHE in general, and this applies also to financial education, there is naturally a reliance on off-the-shelf—or more likely, these days, off-the-net—lesson plans and on input from third parties. Although I accept that the banks and building societies who take part do so with responsibility and do not use it as a way to ram home their brands, there is an element of indirect marketing. It certainly gets the message out there that there is a massive range of financial products, including ones that can get people into debt.
Andrew Percy
My hon. Friend’s points are exactly those that we identified during the inquiry and support the argument for putting financial education into PSHE to support maths and raise the profile of PSHE. He is quite right: a lot of the stuff that is used is photocopied hand-outs. That is not teaching a subject properly. If we link PSHE with maths, we can raise its profile and the standards of the teaching and lesson plans.
Damian Hinds
I recognise the point, and the report stimulates such debates, but I do not agree.
People mean different things when they talk about financial education. There is a whole continuum. If we talk about pure financial education, as opposed to a mathematical way of approaching it, there are two key dangers. The first I call the redundancy danger, and the second is the ubiquity danger. None of us did financial education at school, and although some people have great financial problems, not everybody does, and it is perfectly possible for somebody to get through life without the benefit of that education. Had we done financial education, we would have learned about cheques, clearing houses and endowment mortgages, and, spreading it out to the wider economy, the public sector borrowing requirement and sterling M3. None of that would be of particular relevance today. We would not have learned about debit cards and payday loans because, to all intents and purposes, they did not exist at that time. There is a real danger that although we think we are equipping people with skills, by focusing too much on financial services, as opposed to the underpinning principles, that education may become redundant.
Andrew Percy
It is true that the world does not stand still, but does my hon. Friend agree that if we give young people the ability to understand what is available now, we give them the skills to be able to understand products as they develop and move on into the future?
Damian Hinds
I cannot do geometry in a written speech without slides. I would be more tempted to go for the underlying principles, which could enable people to understand the things that used to be there and the things that will be there tomorrow.
The second danger is ubiquity. Already, on the television and the internet, when kids are at home or out, everywhere there are messages about debt. There is a danger that introducing discussion of specific financial services too early in schools might contribute to that feeling by normalising and legitimising the idea that everyone uses such products.
As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole, the key things are the tools, and I think that we agree on that but perhaps differ on how best to use them. To my mind, the key tools and principles that help inform financial decisions are mathematics, but not mathematics on its own. There is also a big element of personal responsibility, common sense and some of the maxims to which my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) referred. Make no mistake: young people do not learn common sense, wisdom and personal responsibility simply by turning up to PSHE. It is a much wider issue. I would welcome more emphasis on practical mathematics at GCSE, especially at foundation level, although it applies to both levels.
I am pleased to say that I have an original point to make. We also now have an opportunity post-16, because raising the participation age to 18 means that more young people who have perhaps not passed GCSE maths could, if we are to follow the guidance in the Wolf report, be encouraged to keep up maths and English. We need new, innovative, creative and engaging ways of taking on maths, and this would certainly be one of those. I thought that the sample questions that my hon. Friends who constructed the report included in it illustrated very well the practical ways we could use the maths curriculum.
The introduction of these concepts into mathematics is no panacea. The hon. Member for Makerfield and I agree on many things related to debt and personal finance, but I completely disagreed with her today when she implied that there was no element of personal irresponsibility in being over-indebted. There are of course times when it is purely a matter of a change in circumstances and completely unpredictable, but there is also a major issue of responsibility. She was right to say that there are broader concerns about regulation and too-easy access to credit that we must also address. The reason we need to address those concerns, even if we did financial education perfectly, is that in that market, alarmingly, the basic laws of economics, such as the way competition works and the assumption that consumers will be rational, frequently do not apply.
I congratulate the members of the all-party group again on the report that stimulated the debate. My view is that I would say no to adding more to PSHE and specifying exactly how these things should be done at a younger and younger age, but I would say yes on the need to refocus GCSE maths and to find new and creative ways to teach practical maths at 16-plus. I would also say yes to not being afraid to say that people must take responsibility, which is also a good thing to teach in school.
Justin Tomlinson
I will give a brief conclusion to what has been an extremely positive debate. I thank all Members who contributed from both sides of the House for taking the time to set out their support for our ongoing campaign. I hope that the 100,000 people who took the time to sign Martin Lewis’s e-petition will feel that Parliament has served them well today. We have shown one of the better sides of Parliament, as we have taken a tangible issue that the public are interested in and tried to set out a way of dealing with it. I thank all the members of the all-party parliamentary group and the supporters, particularly the individuals and organisations—over 1,000 of them—who contributed to our comprehensive report. We deliberately took our time and were patient so that we could deliver something that was thorough and that set out constructively and comprehensively our case as part of the national curriculum review. I am grateful that the Minister and shadow Minister acknowledged that our delivery of the campaign is an example that others should follow. Interestingly, this is not just a pie-in-the-sky request. We look at our international neighbours and find that many states in America, and Australia, New Zealand and Canada, are leading the way in financial education.
As part of the national curriculum review, I hope that today we have taken a very good opportunity to set out our positive case, so that we might deliver on our duty to equip the next generation of consumers with the ability to make informed decisions.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House notes that young people today grow up in an increasingly complex financial world requiring them to make difficult decisions for the future, often without the necessary level of financial literacy; believes that financial education will help address the national problem of irresponsible borrowing and personal insolvency and that teaching people about budgeting and personal finance will help equip the workforce with the necessary skills to succeed in business and drive forward economic growth; further believes that the country has a duty to equip its young people properly through education to make informed financial decisions; and calls on the Government to consider the provision of financial education as part of the current curriculum review.
Protection of War Memorials
Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)
I have the pleasure and honour of presenting to the House the petition of Ian Coleman and ex-service personnel in Blackpool on the subject of war memorials. It incorporates more than 3,000 signatures, which Mr Coleman and his colleagues in Blackpool have collected.
The petition states:
The Petition of Ian Coleman and ex-service personnel in Blackpool,
Declares that the nation’s war memorials and their surroundings should be treated as special places and respected in a manner which befits those whose lives they commemorate.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to ensure the protection of war memorials via a more rigid enforcement of existing laws or by bringing forward new legislation to ensure that war memorials are adequately protected.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P000992]
Health Services (Disabled Children)
(13 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
I am extremely pleased to have the opportunity today to raise directly with the Minister, who I recall from previous debates has a significant interest in the area, a number of concerns about services for children with disabilities.
Earlier this afternoon, I hosted a function for the Council for Disabled Children, at which its young ambassadors presented a film that they had made. Their message was, “Young, disabled and in control”. They wanted to be seen as individuals, to be listened to and to have their views and needs taken on board. The function made me reflect on what I had written in my speech, because we should remember that I am talking about lots of precious individuals. It sounds generic, but, when one has the great honour and privilege of meeting amazing young people who are achieving so much, one realises that there is so much more that we as individuals can do for them. Indeed, one of them referred to the use of personal budgets, and as we bring health and social care together that will all become part of the same discussion.
Throughout my long political career locally and nationally, I have been very much aware that families with disabled children face constant battles to secure support, help and access to services. Not so long ago, I was supporting a family to make sure that they were supplied with sufficient and adequate incontinence pads for their growing child, and I asked myself, “Hasn’t anything changed over the years?” There have always been issues when services such as education and health have been brought together, with cross-service battles over who picks up the bill, rather than people putting the needs of the child first.
Given the coalition’s proposed policy changes, there are some potentially amazing opportunities—specifically within the Health and Social Care Bill, and in the delivery of the single assessment process, the education, health and care plan and the local offer, which are proposed in the “Support and aspiration” Green Paper. But we need to grasp those opportunities and address the issues that are seen as threats, and in that respect I hope that the Minister will be able to provide some reassurances today.
Disabled children and those with complex health needs are disproportionate users of health services, but they face long-standing barriers to accessing both universal and specialist health services. The evidence from professionals, the voluntary sector and families with disabled children is clear: if local areas are not required to have a clear focus on child health, disabled children are not given the requisite priority by local decision makers. As a mother of a child with complex health needs put it:
“What’s so sad is that years have been lost because there doesn’t seem to be any clinical leadership for services for disabled children or even children in this area. And there haven’t been any targets that they need to reach so they are not interested. They’re only interested in targets and services for adults.”
Sir Ian Kennedy’s recent report “Getting it right for children and young people” stated:
“Those caring for children ‘are not the biggest players in the clinical system’ and are not well placed within professional hierarchies. They often lose out to other, more powerful, professional and patients’ groups in the contest for resources and the attention of senior management.”
The Health and Social Care Bill represents an ideal opportunity to address these issues. However, it does not include measures to ensure that the Secretary of State, the NHS Commissioning Board, clinical networks and senates, health and wellbeing boards, clinical commissioning groups, HealthWatch or monitoring bodies will prioritise child health. There is a concern that that will perpetuate a system that is designed for adult health and social care but does not work for children’s services.
Campaigners feel that the Health and Social Care Bill has not indicated how health services for disabled children will be configured within the new system and wish to make sure that there is no confusion on the ground as primary care trusts close and health and wellbeing boards and clinical commissioning groups are set up.
I am aware that some issues should be resolved as part of the Department for Education’s “Support and aspiration” Green Paper pathfinder programme. But there are concerns that that is a long-term agenda that will not produce results for at least 18 months. In the meantime, there is already widespread confusion about how health service reform will affect disabled children. There has also been no demonstrable evidence that health and wellbeing board early implementers and clinical commissioning group pathfinders have been asked to link their work with the “Support and aspiration” Green Paper pathfinders.
There are particular concerns that the overarching proposals set out in the “Support and aspiration” Green Paper will not be deliverable unless the structures set up by the Health and Social Care Bill provide clarity on commissioning structures and accountability for child health. For example, the Green Paper proposes an education, health and care plan for disabled children and an overarching “local offer”, but the Health and Social Care Bill does not require health and wellbeing boards to include that in their local strategies.
I know that there are many concerns about the fact that although there is currently a statutory duty to provide education services identified in a statement, there is not the same statutory duty for the provision of health services. It is always difficult when professionals from two different cultures and backgrounds are asked to work together, but a number of issues could be resolved earlier. The Bill also does not provide a platform for education providers to take part in local decision making at health and wellbeing board level, which will make integrated commissioning more difficult. I would be really grateful for the Minister’s views on that.
The current scrutiny on the health service created by the Health and Social Care Bill represents a unique opportunity to address long-standing problems with the services used by disabled children. Families with disabled children describe these barriers in the latest report from Every Disabled Child Matters and The Children’s Trust, Tadworth entitled “Disabled Children and Health Reform”. They include delays in getting equipment—wheelchairs, for example.
This afternoon I met Becky, who is at university. She drives her own car and has a specially adapted wheelchair that comes apart. She puts all the wheelchair’s parts into her Mini. It is amazing how she has been able to use her skills and aptitude and access a university education, but the NHS could not provide that specialist wheelchair for her. That makes us think that we need to do more for so many children.
I have already mentioned the restrictions on vital support; it is just dreadful when a family contacts you to say that they cannot get large enough, or enough, nappies for children with continence issues. There are disputes over who funds the service, poorly co-ordinated appointments, poor communication across the system and a cliff edge in support at transition to adult services.
Some parents are quoted in the “Disabled Children and Health Reform” report. On the complexity of the health service, one said:
“I’ve had really good experience of Health and individual Paediatricians…The problems arise from the complexity of the system and the different services your child needs”.
There is always so much praise for the individuals who are doing the work, but it is about pulling it all together and the structures. On the delays to getting vital equipment, another parent said:
“My daughter has a helmet and boots supplied by the Child Development Centre. She’s outgrown the helmet now and it took them two months just to make an appointment to measure her head. In the meantime, she’s confined to her wheelchair. They said they had the money to do it, but didn’t have the means to order it.”
We know about the disputes over who funds the service. A parent said:
“Sometimes the local authority says, ‘Well, that’s a Health issue and so the PCT should pay.’ Then the PCT turns round and says, ‘No, actually that’s an Education issue.’ It feels like we’re having to fight and it wastes valuable time because we have to wait for the local authority and the PCT to meet somewhere in the middle about something which could be helping and making a difference now.”
Another parent commented:
“What’s so sad is the years that have been lost because there doesn’t seem to be any clinical leadership for services for disabled children or even children”.
There is a lack of targets and a focus on adults.
Then there are the problems with transition between child and adult health services, on which one parent said:
“My daughter’s been seen by 2 consultants at least twice a year for the last 17 years so it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that she’s going to need continued monitoring and support from Health as she moves into adult services. But the divide between health services for children and adults is significant. Many of the professionals we have come to rely on shake their heads about it…but there’s nothing they can actually do beyond offering to attend a meeting with us where they can hand over to someone who works for adult services.”
In the past few years, we have spoken a great deal in the House about the transitional period. We are aware of the issue but we must keep working at it.
The Health and Social Care Bill does not provide any clarity on how the reformed system will affect the child health system. Child health services operate on a separate system to that of adults, with separate structures and relevant partners—for example, education providers. Consequently, child health requires specific attention within the reform process, which the current legislation does not appear to provide.
The Every Disabled Child Matters campaign is very concerned that, unless specific attention is given to the health processes and professionals who work within child health, the modernisation of the NHS will perpetuate a system that fails children, particularly disabled children and those with complex and/or palliative care needs. The campaign believes that there is a clear choice: act now and use the opportunity of reform to create a system that works for disabled children, or proceed with reform concentrating solely on adult services and leave families with disabled children still struggling to fill the gaps.
The EDCM campaign asks for national leadership. It would like the Secretary of State to be required to set priorities for child health as part of his mandate to the NHS Commissioning Board. As a matter of urgency, it would like the Department of Health to set out a clear vision for the way in which the reformed system will meet the needs of disabled children and children with complex health needs. On commissioning, it would like an overarching clinical network for disabled children's health to be created in order to address long-standing issues, including barriers to commissioning specialist health care services. It would like health and wellbeing board early implementers to be asked to test and report on integrated working for the delivery of services for disabled children which includes all relevant partners. It would also like careful consideration to be given to the impact of current reforms on the commissioning of specialist health services for children and young people with high-cost, low-incidence conditions. The campaign would like information and support to be provided to disabled children and young people and their families to ensure that they understand the way in which the changing health system will affect them.
The report poses 10 key questions, which I would like to pose to the Minister. What role will the NHS Commissioning Board play in improving the national delivery of health services for disabled children? Where will the responsibility lie for designing care pathways and shaping local services for disabled children within the modernised system? How will clinical networks and senates support clinical commissioning groups to deliver high quality universal and specialist health care for disabled children? What practical steps are being taken to ensure that the experiences and interests of disabled people and families with disabled children are represented as an integral part of patient involvement at every level of the reformed NHS? How will the success of the modernised NHS in meeting the needs of disabled children be monitored in local areas and how should that information be published? How will health and wellbeing boards work with local HealthWatch and clinical commissioning groups to achieve integrated care for families with disabled children who use health, social care and education services? How should awareness of the particular needs of disabled children be built into the work force development programme being developed by health education England? How will the modernisation of the NHS work with pathfinders of the “Support and aspiration” Green Paper, particularly in the development of a single education, health and care plan and a local offer? What plans are being made to improve the collection of information about disabled children? Finally, how will families seek redress if the package of care for their disabled child is not delivered or integrated with other care, or if the quality of the health care they receive is poor? There are so many questions. We should try to provide answers and to improve the legislation that is going through Parliament, or at least the guidance that will go alongside it.
In the rest of my time, I would like to touch on two areas. Of course, one could talk about every possible condition and make lots of points, but I will touch on two areas that have been on my agenda over the past five years or so. The House has debated the provision of mental health services for children, with particular reference to autism. There has been improved provision of child and adolescent mental health services over recent years, but I believe that the gap between needs and provision remains. I would be grateful for the Minister’s comments on the future provision of these vital services. So often, as we know, mental health services have been a Cinderella service. If we can intervene early with children, we can save a great deal of money, pain and anguish later on.
Specifically on autism, what steps will the Government take to ensure that child and adolescent mental health services staff are trained in autism and that specialist support is available? On a previous occasion, the House has discussed the problem that even when parents have accessed CAMHS, they have not had satisfactory outcomes because of the lack of training.
I would also like to touch on speech, language and communication needs. To return to my starting point, the lack of joint working between education and health has, over the years, been apparent in speech and language therapy and in the battles over who pays. Will the Minister comment on the importance of integrated commissioning for speech, language and communication services, not just within the health sector, but between health and education commissioners? What role will health and wellbeing boards play in ensuring that there is effective and co-ordinated commissioning of children’s services? Will the Minister confirm whether health and wellbeing boards will be encouraged to consider the use of pooled budgets and joint commissioning arrangements for speech therapy services for children?
As an aside, I would like to mention some adult speech therapy that I have seen. I was privileged to visit Poole hospital following the lobbying by the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists in Parliament. A display had been set up for me and patients had been invited in to cover all the aspects of speech therapy for adults in the health sector. I would like to tell the Minister and place on the record how impressive that was.
Returning to the subject of children’s services, there is so much that could be said, but I have one overriding question for the Minister. Will she and the Secretary of State do everything they can to improve the provision of services for children with disabilities and special needs, and to ensure that the new structures deliver what is needed so greatly?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anne Milton)
I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) on securing a debate on this extremely important issue. I know that, like many Members, she has shown a very strong personal interest in it. I share that interest, and I thank her for acknowledging that. I hope that what I say today will reassure her that we are doing what we can to improve the availability and quality of health care for all children and young people, including those with disabilities.
I cannot answer all the questions that the hon. Lady asked. Interestingly, from listening to her questions we could hear the complexity of the current system. I share her sadness about the years that have been lost to many children, and I am sure we also share sadness about the terrible struggle and battle that a lot of parents of disabled children have faced. The debate provides an opportunity for us to put on record our tribute to those parents, who struggle in unbelievable circumstances and feel unsupported. I cannot quantify the traumatic nature of what they have to face, not only in dealing with a child with disabilities but in getting everything they can for them.
I do not think I will be saying anything very controversial by acknowledging that the NHS, as it currently works, does not get everything right for children and young people. The hon. Lady referred to Sir Ian Kennedy’s report “Getting it right for children and young people”, which made it clear that the quality of health care for children was very variable and that the outcomes for too many children were poor compared with those in other countries.
We have 12 million children and young people in England, which is a fifth of the total population, and the number of them with disabilities is high. For example, some 108,000 have been diagnosed as having an autistic spectrum disorder, and some 70,000 would benefit from mobility support, including wheelchairs. Their well-being, as with all children and young people, must always be at the top of our list. We must pay particular attention to services that help the most vulnerable children or those with the greatest needs. They are our future, and the NHS needs to do better for them.
I am particularly pleased that the hon. Lady mentioned children who are on the autistic spectrum. There is no doubt that those children and young people in particular, like adults with autism, often fall through the net. Child and adolescent mental health services do not necessarily fill the gap.
The Department of Health has simple but ambitious goals. It may be stating the obvious to say that they include the right start to life in the foundation years, improved support for mental health and well-being, more co-operative and joined-up services for children with disabilities, and improved health in adolescence. Those ambitions lie behind the health reforms that the coalition Government are proposing. We are moving towards a service in which the use of evidence-based treatment is adopted consistently and to the best effect; in which promoting good health is of equal importance to caring for the sick; and in which children, young people and their families are always involved in decisions about their care. “No decision about me without me” applies as much to children as to anybody else, and I think we often underestimate the ability of young people and even quite young children to be involved in decisions about their care. We also a want a service in which commissioning is underpinned by informed and expert knowledge. I believe that it is in commissioning services that we have often got things wrong.
As the hon. Lady will know, those ambitions are supported by measures such as the increase in health visitors by 4,200 and the expansion by 50% of the family nurse partnership programme. Health visitors and family nurses play a vital role in identifying, intervening in and sorting out babies’ and children’s problems early. We frequently hear about the need for early diagnosis so that we can have early intervention and support, which prevents problems later on. That includes children with disability and other special care needs.
I would also like children’s health to be built in throughout the new system, so that everything we do is geared towards supporting children. We have made our intention clear to put in place a system that achieves better outcomes for everyone, and one that delivers services for individuals, not organisations. We often end up believing that we need to get the processes right and the arguments on that continue without our seeing the outcome that we are trying to achieve.
Of course, not just the NHS has a role to play in the health of children with disabilities. Schools, children’s centres and wider children’s services all have a part to play. That is why we are putting in place a system of health and wellbeing boards in each local area, the job of which will be to achieve a truly jointly owned assessment of local need, which leads to a joint health and well-being strategy and commissioning decisions that span the NHS and local government. Joint leadership and joint responsibility is for the whole population, including disabled children. Local authorities have a key role to play.
I should take this opportunity to commend the work of Disability Challengers in my area, which is well supported by people locally and offers an invaluable service to parents. It is those sort of initiatives and third sector organisations that we can bring together to make joint leadership and joint responsibility actually work. We always talk about integration—we have been talking about it for years—but now we need to make it happen. We need to stop that fragmentation of services. We need to stop arguing about who will pay for what and ensure that people get what they need.
The hon. Lady and others have concerns about the priorities that general practitioners will give to children and young people when commissioning services, but in fact it is estimated that about 40% of the average GP’s work load is to do with children and young people. Nobody is in a better position to understand children’s needs. On top of that, the clinical commissioning groups will have access to advice from people with a broad range of professional expertise, including those who work particularly closely with children, such as paediatricians, nurses, other clinical professionals, and health and wellbeing boards, the membership of which will include, for example, directors of children’s services in the local authority.
The hon. Lady mentioned speech and language therapy, which is much talked about. Its critical role in meeting many children’s needs is much underestimated. The allied health professionals, which we often miss off our list after we have mentioned nurses and doctors, are critical in ensuring that those children get what they need.
To ensure that that happens, the NHS Commissioning Board will be accountable to Ministers for improving health care provision for children and young people. They will be judged on their delivery of improved outcomes. The NHS outcomes framework and the public health outcomes framework include measurable outcomes to demonstrate improvement in critical areas relating to children and young people. As the data get better and more meaningful—it is important to say that the data must be meaningful—we will refine the outcomes that the NHS needs to deliver, along with our understanding of the outcomes that are important to disabled children, young people and their families. That will be an evolving work in progress, but the focus on outcomes is important.
One important matter—the hon. Lady will be interested in this—is how the integrated care pathway can be used to provide children with disabilities, long-term conditions or complex needs with the best opportunities to make progress and live life more independently. A number of activities are under way at the moment to ensure that that happens. The learning network for health and wellbeing board early implementer programme includes a learning set on effective joint working to improve those outcomes for children and young people. That work is just getting under way—it was launched only about three weeks ago—but there is incredible energy and enthusiasm to develop and share innovative ways in which to change things for the better. One of the priorities for the network is tackling health inequalities and increasing access for those groups that traditionally have had difficulty in securing the provision that they need. I refer here to the group of children that we are talking about.
Similarly, there is a small group of early implementing clinical commissioning groups that are focusing on children and young people’s issues. With my colleagues in the Department for Education, we have set up 20 pathfinder groups, including 31 local authorities and primary care trust clusters, to test the ambition of the Government’s Green Paper to support children with special educational needs. They will test improvements to the current system, including the new single assessment process with a single education, health and care plan, along with the option of a personal budget. Things happen incredibly slowly in Government and it is very frustrating for the people who are in receipt of services. It is important that we use this opportunity to capture the enthusiasm and energy and to use the reforms that we are making to get this right once and for all. The lessons that we learn from those early implementers will be crucial. They will help inform more effective commissioning and service provision. Where these effective integrated care packages and personal budgets are available, the impacts are very dramatic.
I hope that the hon. Lady is reassured by the fact that we are committed to children with disabilities. I have a personal interest in the matter, and we want to ensure that the NHS plays its full part. It sounds a cliché to say that the NHS works in partnership with local authorities and schools to improve the lives of children and young people, but I mean it from the bottom of my heart. We have to ensure that partnership becomes a reality.
I pay tribute to organisations such as Every Disabled Child Matters. My noble Friend Earl Howe has answered a letter to that organisation quite recently. We are talking about special children with very special needs and some very special parents. We must ensure that those needs are met and that the terrible battle that the parents and young people face is halted and they get what they need to live those independent lives. There can be no better words to end this debate on than these: young, disabled and in control.
Question put and agreed to.