House of Commons

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

Monday 16 January 2012

The House met at half-past Two o’clock

Prayers

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Mr Don Foster (Bath) (LD)]

1. What steps he is taking to promote arts and creative education in schools.

[The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning (Mr John Hayes)]

The Government believe that children’s education is enriched through their connection with the beauty provided through the arts. To support this mission, we invited Darren Henley, the managing director of Classic FM, to undertake a review of cultural education in schools and he is due to report shortly. As you know, Mr Speaker, in November we published a national plan for music education worth £200 million over three years.

[Mr Foster]

I am sure the whole House is looking forward to the Henley review, but does the Minister acknowledge that the expert panel on the curriculum review is concerned that the role of cultural and creative subjects in a broad and balanced curriculum is in danger of being lost? Given the significant reduction in postgraduate certificate in education art and design places and the lack of any cultural subjects in the English baccalaureate, is it not right to be concerned?

[Mr Hayes]

The right hon. Gentleman will know that the E-bac—the core curriculum that we are developing—is sufficiently small to allow space for all kinds of other activities, including those relating to music, art and culture, as well. Certainly, it is the view of the Secretary of State and the whole Government that enriching a child’s education through their experience of art, music and culture is at the heart of good education.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

My constituency is one of the hotbeds of creative activity with a very high percentage of artists and creative businesses, and the schools have followed that through. However, I know from recent visits to primary schools such as Brook community primary school, which has excellent enrichment through the arts, that they are worried about future funding and are already having to make cuts in those areas. Will the Minister explain what the Government’s financial policy is to back up the warm words he just uttered?

[Mr Hayes]

I mentioned in my first answer the commitment we have made to music. The important thing about that commitment is that we have been very clear over the long term about what schools can expect to receive, and that will help with financial planning. The new music education hubs will help to bring this together. That recommendation very much arose from the original investigation we did. Art is not the study of positive reality; in Ruskin’s words, it is “seeking for ideal truth”. It is that spirit that imbues all this Government do.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

Plymouth’s excellent college of art is looking at trying to develop and create a free school aimed specifically at bolstering the arts economy and improving participation in the arts. Would my hon. Friend be willing to meet me and fellow representatives from the college of art to discuss how it can ensure that aspiration becomes reality?

[Mr Hayes]

Any meeting with my hon. Friend always adds to my grasp of these matters; of course I will happily meet him. It is clear from his question that he shares our view that having a richer mix of school types will allow the development of precisely the expertise he describes.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Britain is a world leader in creative and cultural industries, but at the moment we are seeing in our schools a reduction in music, art and other teaching. Whatever warm words the Minister offers, what is he going to do about it?

[Mr Hayes]

The hon. Lady will know, because she is a diligent student of these matters, that this Government established a council specifically to look at the creative industries. I have met that council to discuss how we can work with it to improve links between the creative industries and schools and colleges. She will also know that we have allocated in my area specific funding with that council to develop new courses, new apprenticeships and new opportunities with creative industries.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

2. What his policy is on the sale of school playing fields; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

Playing fields are an important part of a school’s estate, and sport is a critical element of any school curriculum. The Secretary of State’s consent is needed to sell school playing fields under section 77 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. School playing fields can be sold only if they are genuinely surplus, with all proceeds being used to improve sports or educational facilities. The Education Act 2011 also gives the Secretary of State power to direct that, instead of being disposed of, the land should be transferred to an academy or free school.

[Annette Brooke]

I thank the Minister for that answer. Will he make sure there is careful scrutiny by both Sport England and his Department of the proposed sale of playing fields at Wareham middle school? There are overwhelming objections locally, including from the district council and the town council, identifying the already overall shortage of playing fields. There is widespread community use of the fields, and there is particular opposition to the site’s being sold for an out of town supermarket and its possible replacement with inferior provision.

[Mr Gibb]

The short answer is, yes we will. The long answer is that there has not yet been an application from Dorset county council to dispose of the Wareham school playing field. If such an application is made, the Secretary of State’s approval to dispose of the playing field will be required, and he will take advice from the independent school playing fields advisory panel.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The Minister will know that from 1979 until 1997 the Conservative Government sold off 10,000 school playing fields. After the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, the number went down to just 226 between 1998 and 2010. The national planning policy framework intends to water down restrictions on the disposal of school playing fields, which is like a burglar returning to the scene of the crime. Will the Minister ensure that there is no watering down of the restrictions on the sale of school playing fields in the future?

[Mr Gibb]

I have just explained that section 77 of the Act is still in force and there is no intention to change that legislation. In fact, in 2011 just eight applications for the sale of school playing fields were allowed.

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

3. What recent assessment he has made of the provision of youth services.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

Local authorities have made significant reductions in funding for out-of-school services for young people this year. However, many authorities are prioritising early intervention to help disadvantaged young people, and are working closely with the voluntary sector to maintain open access youth services. In December, the Government published the Positive for Youth strategy, which sets direction and gives examples of how councils can reform youth services, particularly in challenging and difficult financial times.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

I thank the Minister for his answer. According to Experian, after the Government’s autumn statement the third hardest-hit borough was Middlesbrough. Due to the Secretary of State’s cuts, 13 to 19-year-olds in Middlesbrough will receive 15% less spending per head for youth service provision after the top-heavy cuts imposed on the town. Are they a lesser funding priority than a royal yacht?

[Tim Loughton]

As I said, many areas have seen some of their spending for youth services cut, but many areas have actually established new smarter partnerships with the voluntary sector, social enterprise and commercial organisations. The neighbouring constituency to the hon. Gentleman’s is a beneficiary of a myplace, with investment of £4.5 million from the Government. That is a hub for lots of varied activities for young people to take advantage of, helping them with careers, training and many other things.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

In 2005, when it was Labour-controlled, Northamptonshire county council directly provided its own youth services and managed to reach only 3,000 young people. Now under Conservative control, the council has commissioned its youth services to the voluntary sector; it regularly gets 20,000 young people involved and is one of the authorities with the best value youth services in the country. Will my hon. Friend congratulate the county council on its foresight and good practice?

[Tim Loughton]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning such an example of good practice. Frankly, I do not care who the provider is; it is the way they provide the service and whether they are providing the services that young people want at the time they want them. It is about the quality of the service. They may not be able to do it in Labour-controlled Middlesbrough, but apparently they can in Northamptonshire and I congratulate them on it.

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

The new Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has warned that gang crime is now a significant problem in half of all London boroughs, and similar issues affect cities across the country. Good youth work is critical to a successful strategy to tackle gangs and youth violence, yet not only are youth services being reduced, as the Minister has just told us, but the National Council for Voluntary Organisations warned last week that the charitable sector is facing a £1 billion shortfall and many small community youth organisations, including the Stephen Lawrence centre, are at risk of closure. What assessment has the Minister made of the contribution of reduced capacity in council and community youth services to a successful anti-gangs and youth violence strategy?

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady is right to raise the problem of gang culture. The Government take it very seriously. The Home Secretary chairs an inter-ministerial group on gangs, on which I represent the Department for Education, but I have to say that some of the very best anti-gang projects I have seen around the country—including in London in places such as Croydon, with “Lives not Knives”—involve the voluntary sector working in partnership with the local authority. They are going into schools working with the victims of those crimes and their families, spreading best practice and saying, “Not in my name”. The very best response to the troubles we saw in the summer was from young people coming together with voluntary organisations, saying, “Not in my name will this sort of violence happen,” and coming up with constructive and positive examples. That is why Positive for Youth is such an important part of the Government’s policy.

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

4. What estimate he has made of the number of additional primary school places needed in the next decade.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)]

Most local authorities are forecasting an increase in primary pupil numbers over the next five years. Based on data published by the Office for National Statistics, the school-age population is expected to rise during the rest of the decade. My Department will continue to provide capital funding to meet that need.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Will my right hon. Friend outline to my constituents in Elmet and Rothwell the proposals that are in place for the excellent primary schools in the area, should they need to expand to meet the predicted increase in school numbers?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is fortunate to have many outstanding primary and secondary schools serving his constituents, and those will be able to expand under the changes that we have made to the admissions code. We have also increased the amount of money available to meet what is called basic need—the growth in primary school places—and we have done so by making efficiencies from the old Building Schools for the Future programme, which, while nobly conceived, was often poorly executed.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will know that in London the demand for extra primary classes is acute—64% of all the additional places required across the country are in London. How can it therefore be right that in the basic needs allocation London got only a third of the funding available when it has two thirds of the need?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady, as ever, makes an effective case on behalf of her constituents. We looked at the original formula that we inherited for the allocation of money to areas where population growth was forcing schools to expand. We changed it, in consultation with London Councils and the Mayor of London. The new formula that we used was fairer to London, and it was welcomed by Jules Pipe, the mayor of Hackney, on behalf of London Councils, and by the Mayor of London, but no formula is ever perfect, and we continue to look to ensure that Lewisham students can continue to benefit.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

The Secretary of State will know, I hope, that the vast bulk of the new entrants for primary school allocations in Peterborough for September 2012 are foreign children whose first language is not English. In his ongoing review of funding, will he concede the resource implications of that and assist a small number of local authorities, such as Peterborough, that face serious teaching and resource allocation issues for children whose first language is not English?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend has bravely and rightly drawn attention to the fact that inward migration flows have had a particularly strong effect on his constituents. On the current changes to education funding, upon which we are consulting, we propose to include additional funding for those schools that have a significant number of students who have English as an additional language.

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

How many primary school places could the Government fund with the money that the Secretary of State has proposed be spent on a new royal yacht? Does he regret his rushed decision in 2010 to abolish the Labour Government’s primary capital programme and would it not have been better to have reformed that programme to focus on the serious shortage of primary school places?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Gentleman should have been careful to look at the charts and to navigate out of rocky waters, because the letter that I wrote to the Prime Minister on 12 September clearly stated that I agreed, of course, that the project for a royal yacht—the Future Ship Project 21st Century—was one where no public funding should be provided. I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman has once again allowed himself to be misled. I support that project because it would provide opportunities for disadvantaged youth from across the country to learn new skills and to take part in exciting new adventures. It is typical of the unreformed elements—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am extremely grateful to be educated by the Secretary of State, but I do not think that the yacht will provide additional primary school places, which is the subject matter under discussion.

[Stephen Twigg]

Indeed, Mr Speaker. The Government have found £1.2 billion for new places, half of which is being spent on new free schools. Although 90% of the extra places that are needed by 2015 are in primary schools, the majority of the new free schools announced late last year are secondary schools. Instead of his dogmatic and ideological preference for his pet project, would it not make more sense to allocate the whole of that £1.2 billion to meet the serious shortfall in primary school places?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful for your advice, Mr Speaker, but I always try to answer the questions that I am asked by the hon. Gentleman—I know that that is sometimes a novel approach, but I believe it to be right.

It is also right to remind the hon. Gentleman, as he reminded the readers of The Observer on Sunday, that the last Labour Government wasted money on Building Schools for the Future. As a result of eliminating that waste, we have made £500 million available this year, and £600 million next year, for primary school places for which they never provided. They failed to look ahead and navigate a way through hard times, and now that there is a captain at the helm who knows in which direction to take this ship, I am afraid that we need less rumbling from the ratings who want to mutiny below deck.

[Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)]

5. What recent progress his Department has made in implementing the proposals in the special needs Green Paper; and if he will make a statement.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

7. What recent progress his Department has made in implementing the proposals in the special needs Green Paper; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Sarah Teather)]

rose—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order.

[Sarah Teather]

When all that has settled down, we have established a number of local pathfinders to test the best ways of implementing the key reforms, and are providing support to local authorities in developing local provision for children and young people with special educational needs.

We will publish a response to the consultation on the Green Paper shortly. This will set out the progress we have made and the next steps in taking forward our reforms.

[Charlotte Leslie]

Given that two thirds of the August rioters have special educational needs—a rate well above the national average—and that a disproportionate number have been subject to school exclusions, what steps has the Minister taken to ensure that if a child is subject to permanent or repeated exclusion, they are assessed for special educational needs, so that if such needs exist they are catered for and met, and we can ensure that children such as those involved in the rioting can do basic things such as reading?

[Sarah Teather]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. I know that she feels strongly about this issue, which she discussed with me when we were consulting on the Green Paper. The whole purpose of what we are trying to do with the Green Paper is to focus better on early intervention. She will be aware that, in particular, we are ensuring that the forthcoming guidance on behaviour and exclusions makes it clear that a multi-agency assessment should be carried out if a pupil displays behaviour that does not respond to normal classroom management techniques. We have asked Charlie Taylor to do work specifically on alternative provision and attendance, and all those issues are relevant to the matters raised by the hon. Lady.

[Peter Aldous]

While the Warren and Ashley schools in Lowestoft provide first-class education for pupils with special educational needs, research by Ambitious about Autism shows that 85% of adults with autism are not in full-time employment. Will the Minister set out what she is doing to improve the transition from education to work for special needs pupils?

[Sarah Teather]

Again, trying to make sure that we have better transition is something on which the Green Paper and our response will specifically focus. That is why are changing the statementing process. A new education, health and care plan running from nought to 25 ought to enable us to think about outcomes and plan right from the beginning—not just as an afterthought when young people reach 16. We should focus much more on outcomes right from the beginning. In addition, there are a number of projects that the pathfinders are doing for us that look at transition. The Green Paper also highlights our proposals for supported internships, which might make a real difference here.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

Partnerships for Schools says that Kirkleathamhall special school in my constituency has problems with access, temperature, lighting and ventilation; most of the teaching spaces are too small, and the full curriculum cannot be provided to secondary- age pupils. Will the Minister meet me to discuss this unacceptable situation?

[Sarah Teather]

I would be very happy to meet my hon. Friend.

[Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)]

In her answer to the original question, my hon. Friend referred to pathfinders. How will the information that she obtains from them be shared publicly, and how will it inform her work towards legislation in that area?

[Sarah Teather]

We are trying to go through a process of active learning so that the lessons from the pathfinders do not go into a black box and are not looked at again, but are shared with other local authorities. Local authority groups have come together, so it is not necessarily the case that individual local authorities are working in isolation, but are working with parents’ groups and charities on the ground. We are keen to learn the lessons that they are looking at, and we will make sure that that informs our legislation in future.

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

6. What steps his Department plans to take to improve outcomes for children in care.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

The Government are thoroughly overhauling the care and adoption system to improve the lives of looked-after children. We have issued revised care planning guidance, and foster carers and adopters charters. The Prime Minister has announced a package of new policy interventions, including the publication of performance tables. We want to see more stable, high quality placements, whether through adoption, fostering or in a children’s home because final outcomes for too many looked-after children have been unacceptable for too long.

[Mrs Glindon]

Placement stability is imperative for good educational and life outcomes for children in care. With swingeing cuts to social services nationally, what measures is the Minister putting in place to assure the House that we will not see a culture of commissioning the cheapest care, regardless of quality?

[Tim Loughton]

I think the hon. Lady will find that one area of local government spending that has been safeguarded more than others is the safeguarding of vulnerable children, and it is absolutely right that it should be. The most expensive thing is the expense of failure. The bureaucracy that surrounded safeguarding for too many years meant that too many social workers, rather than spending time out there helping vulnerable children, were spending their time in front of computers, filling in processes and forms. We are doing away with all that through the Munro review and through the work that is going on with Martin Narey and others on adoption and on children in care. We need to make sure that children in the care system, through the advantages that we are now giving them with the pupil premium and many other means, have a better chance of catching up and closing that gap, which has been scandalous for far too long.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

Given the huge amount of public money invested in children in care, does the Minister share my concern that too many people leaving care have very poor educational outcomes, which reduce their life chances further? Can we avoid another generation of children in care having the state as the worst parent of all?

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend raises a good point, which is why at every stage of the journey of that child who comes into care, we are giving them a leg up and additional support. They will automatically all qualify for the pupil premium to give them a chance of catching up with children who are lucky enough to come from their birth family’s home. We are giving them advantages on the replacement for education maintenance allowance. We are giving special bursaries for those few—too few—who go to university. We need to close that gap, and we are giving them priority access to some of our best schools as well. If we can get them better education by giving them that leg up, they stand a better chance of being able to compete with the rest of their cohort in this country, and that has taken far too long.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

Stability is crucial for securing better outcomes and adoption has been a key focus for the Government to date, but what steps is the Minister taking to promote, transparently measure and publicly acknowledge success in increasing not just adoptive placements, but much needed permanency for all looked-after children through special guardianship, long-term fostering and kinship care?

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady is right to flag up the importance of permanence. As far as I and the Government are concerned, there is no hierarchy of care here. It is what is the most appropriate form of care for that individual child. For most, it is foster care. We need more good quality foster care placements. For others, it is a residential children’s home. We need more good quality placements. But for others—a small number—adoption is the best form of permanence, as are special guardianship orders. I believe there are more children in care at present for whom adoption has not been considered and for whom it would be the most appropriate course of action, which is why we are spending so much time on making sure that we have an adoption system that is fit for purpose in the best interests of those children.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

8. What steps his Department is taking to raise awareness in schools of domestic and international human trafficking.

[The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning (Mr John Hayes)]

Tackling human trafficking is a key priority for the Government. Last October the Department for Education and the Home Office issued updated practical guidance on safeguarding children who may have been trafficked. This will help practitioners, including school staff, identify children who may have been trafficked and find support and advice. Schools may also cover human trafficking within personal, social, health and economic education if they judge that topic to be relevant to their circumstances.

[Mr Bone]

I congratulate the Government on what they have done so far, but there are a number of non-governmental organisations and charities that would like to go into schools to make pupils aware of human trafficking, the evil of modern-day slavery, and particularly internal trafficking within the United Kingdom. Would the Minister welcome such moves?

[Mr Hayes]

My hon. Friend has a noble record on this subject, as co-chairman of the all-party group alongside the hon. Members for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) and for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), and the former Member, Mr Anthony Steen. My hon. Friend’s suggestion is most welcome. He is right. I wrote in 1998 that there is no doubt that human trafficking is today’s slave trade and that we will not rest until it is dealt with. I will write to charities as my hon. Friend suggests and invite them to do precisely what he proposes.

[Mr Speaker]

I am sure we would all in any case have remembered the precise phrasing of what the Minister of State wrote in 1998, and I cannot imagine why he would suppose otherwise.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

Despite efforts to improve awareness, many trafficked children still wrongly believe that their trafficker is their friend. Given that the Minister has rejected the idea of guardianship for trafficked children, can he tell me who is able to instruct a child’s lawyer in cases where the child is too young, too confused, too traumatised or too afraid to do so themselves?

[Mr Hayes]

The hon. Lady will know that local authorities retain their responsibilities in this regard and, indeed, allocate a responsible person to deal with such children. I am aware of continuing doubts and problems concerning children being re-trafficked. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone)—he was too polite to mention this—wrote to the Secretary of State on this subject only a couple of days ago. We will look closely at bringing what the Department does into line with Home Office and local authority practice. We should not rest until this matter is addressed, and we will not rest until children are freed, victims are protected and those who trade in pain and persecution are made to suffer.

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

9. How many special schools have converted to academies in (a) North Wiltshire constituency, (b) the south-west and (c) England since May 2010.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)]

Special schools became eligible to apply for academy status in November 2010 and to become academies from 1 September 2011. There are 16 special schools now open as academies in England, four of which are in the south-west, and of these one of the first to become an academy on 1 September 2011 is in North Wiltshire.

[Mr Gray]

The Secretary of State is absolutely right to praise the Springfields academy in Calne, one of the very first special schools to achieve academy status, but does he agree that, although in Wiltshire we have a very helpful and supportive local authority, elsewhere it might be much more difficult for special schools to achieve academy status? What can he do to remove the slightly tortuous and bureaucratic process that the Springfields academy had to go through in order to make it easier for other schools in the same position?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the case of the Springfields academy, which is an outstanding school that does wonderful work for children with behavioural, emotional or social difficulties and those on the autistic spectrum. I am also grateful that the local authority has been so constructive. As he points out, some local authorities are not so constructive. We are working, gently but firmly, with all local authorities from London and elsewhere to ensure that their schools see the benefits of academy status.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

There are other mainstream schools in Wiltshire that would very much like to become academies. St John’s school in Marlborough, of which I am a governor, has been trying to become an academy for over a year. The Department has been very helpful in the process, but as we approach the last furlong it feels more and more like wading through treacle. Is there anything I, the other governors and the staff can do to get to a decision so that we can move forward with the programme?

[Michael Gove]

No school is better governed in Marlborough, or indeed in Wiltshire, than St John’s. As a result of my hon. Friend’s impassioned advocacy, I will ensure that the necessary posteriors are kicked.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

10. What recent assessment he has made of the effect of reductions in central Government funding on the provision of out-of-school child care.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Sarah Teather)]

Local authorities have a statutory duty to ensure that there is sufficient child care locally to meet the needs of working parents, particularly families with disabled children. We want local authorities to keep parents informed about how they are meeting this duty. We are consulting on whether an annual report would enable parents to hold their local authority to account for the availability of suitable child care.

[Nic Dakin]

One in 10 child care providers report that they might have to close in the coming year. How will the Government ensure that working parents are not abandoned or left facing significantly higher costs?

[Sarah Teather]

There are duties on local authorities to ensure that sufficient child care is available. I remind the hon. Gentleman that substantially more money— £760 million—is going into child care, particularly in early years for disadvantaged two-year-olds. That is new money that goes to disadvantaged areas in particular, where we know that there has historically been some difficultly in relation to early years settings.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

Hard-working parents are being hit by a triple whammy with regard to child care costs: they are getting less support to pay for it because of the cuts to tax credits; costs are creeping up; and places are disappearing because of cuts to local government and the removal of ring-fenced funding. What assessment have Ministers made of the impact of their choices on parental employment, especially among women, as well as on child poverty?

[Sarah Teather]

As I just said, substantial new money is going into early years. It is one of the few areas across Government where in fact—[Interruption.] It is two-year olds, but that extra money will of course benefit any of those settings that are working with two-year olds, and most of them will be working with two-year olds as well as older children. It is new money, particularly for disadvantaged areas that might not otherwise have taken two-year olds. I wish that the Labour party, instead of just carping, might sometimes congratulate the Government on putting extra money into disadvantaged areas.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Last Friday I had a meeting with a number of school-based family support workers in my constituency, who are seriously worried about the future of the vital service that they provide. What will the Government do to ensure that such services are not done away with by public spending cuts in constituencies such as mine, where there is a significant amount of disadvantage?

[Sarah Teather]

It makes sense for local authorities to invest in those areas. That is precisely why we called the new grant the early intervention grant, and precisely why we are now working with children’s centres, for example, to ensure that they are paid by results, focusing on outcomes and on providing the services that the hon. Gentleman mentions, which we know make a real difference.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

11. What steps he plans to improve the quality of teaching in schools.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

Nothing has more impact on a child’s achievement than the quality of teaching that they receive. We are raising the bar for new entrants to the teaching profession, supporting existing teachers to improve and, where teachers cannot meet the required standards, making it easier for head teachers to tackle under- performance.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. Will he confirm what he is doing to allow heads to remove bad teachers and to check on the performance of new recruits, given that teaching in four in 10 schools assessed by Ofsted is rated only as “satisfactory” at best?

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. All the evidence points to the importance of teacher quality in a pupil’s education. The Sutton Trust, for example, showed that, during one year with a very effective maths or English teacher, pupils gained 40% more in their education, compared with having a poor-quality teacher. That is why my hon. Friend is right that from September there will be new arrangements to help schools manage teacher performance and new streamlined procedures for heads to tackle teachers about whose performance they continue to have concerns.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct that the Sutton Trust has done some very good work on the issue, and it has a new challenging report out this very day, but we all know that the first three years of a teacher’s experience are vital in keeping good teachers in, and passionate about, teaching, so could there be more focus on those first three years, when we lose so many good teachers?

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Gentleman is right, and his experience as Chair of the Education and Skills Committee has come to the fore. All the evidence shows that teachers are driven out of the teaching profession by poor behaviour, which is why we are focusing so much on raising the standards of behaviour in our schools; and that the best mentoring and continuing professional development for teachers is peer-to-peer, which is why we are creating 100 new teaching schools, focusing on not only training and new entrants to the profession, but on developing CPD and peer-to-peer training.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

13. How many disadvantaged two-year-olds will be eligible for free nursery care in (a) York Outer constituency, (b) north Yorkshire and (c) England in 2012.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Sarah Teather)]

We plan to introduce a legal entitlement to free early education for about 130,000 disadvantaged two-year-olds in September 2013, and we will extend this to 260,000 children—about 40% of two-year-olds—from September 2014. From 2013, about 700 two-year-olds in north Yorkshire and 300 in the city of York are likely to be eligible. Funding is available to local authorities in 2012 to enable them to build towards that.

[Julian Sturdy]

I thank the Minister for her response, but what are the Government doing to ensure that local authorities put in place sufficient funding and, importantly, capacity for the expansion in the eligibility of two-year-olds for free places by 2013?

[Sarah Teather]

I recognise the hon. Gentleman’s point that building capacity is key in this area, and we announced the figures for the number of two-year-olds who will be eligible in each local authority partly to help local authorities to begin to plan for that. We have put extra money into the early intervention grant to ensure that local authorities are able to build capacity, and we are working with 18 local authorities to conduct trials on how they might increase capacity, looking at examples of best practice so that we can share it with other areas.

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

The whole House welcomes the Government initiative on that front, but what moves is the Minister making to ensure that the poorest children get the very best nursery education, and not just child minding?

[Sarah Teather]

I agree with the premise of the hon. Gentleman’s question. Many child minders are of a high quality, so I would hesitate to sweep all child minders together. Unfortunately, there are issues of quality across the piece that we need to work on. We are consulting on a new basket of measures to ensure that, working with local authorities, we can raise quality. We are aware that there is a particular issue with disadvantaged areas, which often do not have as much choice or as good provision. It is a priority for us to ensure that the two-year-olds who really need this money benefit from it.

[Brandon Lewis (Great Yarmouth) (Con)]

15. What progress his Department has made on work to reduce the administrative burden on teachers.

[The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning (Mr John Hayes)]

The Government are committed to reducing the administrative burden on schools. We have removed the lengthy self-evaluation form, introduced a streamlined inspection framework, removed unnecessary duties and regulations in the Education Act 2011, and cut the volume of guidance issued to schools by a half. We are reviewing all requirements on schools so that they can focus on raising standards, rather than on unnecessary administrative tasks.

[Brandon Lewis]

Many young people study in FE colleges. Places such as Great Yarmouth college have made great strides forward with clear and decisive leadership. Will my hon. Friend therefore also outline what progress the Government are making in reducing the administrative burden for colleges?

[Mr Hayes]

I am always reluctant to list my achievements in this House, as you know, Mr Speaker, at least more than is necessary to keep the House informed of the scale and scope of the progress we are making. Suffice it to say that from June 2010, when I let colleges move funding between adult learner budgets, through the reduction in duties imposed on schools by the previous Government, up to the Education Act 2011, which gives still greater freedoms, we have sought to treat further education as grown up, after it was infantilised by the previous Government.

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful for the Minister’s self-denying ordinance, given the imperative that answers be brief.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

The Government are to be congratulated on reducing administrative burdens on teachers. Does my hon. Friend, and actual friend, agree that the way to improve standards in the state sector is for it to replicate what goes on in the independent sector? We should allow head teachers to hire and fire teachers, select their own curriculum, and select and deselect pupils.

[Mr Hayes]

What we seek is a system driven by demand, pupils who are helped to make informed judgments by the information that they are given, businesses driving the skills system, and head teachers and college principals being free to respond to local needs. That is our mantra and it is entirely in line with my hon. Friend’s intentions and ambitions.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

16. What assessment he has made of the effect of the closure of the General Teaching Council on the ability of teachers subject to disciplinary proceedings or sanctions to seek redress.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

The closure of the General Teaching Council for England will have no effect on the ability of teachers to seek redress. The new Teaching Agency will uphold GTCE sanctions and consider whether they continue to be appropriate in individual cases. The right of appeal to the High Court remains the same. Teachers who believe that they have been unfairly dismissed continue to have a right to take their case to an industrial tribunal.

[Steve McCabe]

I understand that 300 cases that have been referred to the General Teaching Council, including that of my constituent, Sally Craig, will not be heard before the Minister succeeds in winding it up and will not be referred to the new Teaching Agency. What will he do to ensure that those people are not denied natural justice?

[Mr Gibb]

The purpose of the GTCE and the Teaching Agency is not to provide a right of appeal for action taken locally. That is a local decision. The GTCE’s functions were additional to the sanctions available locally. We are removing incompetence from the matters that are referred to the Teaching Agency. It will look only at cases of serious misconduct. Cases that do not reach that bar will not be transferred to the Teaching Agency and will not be investigated by it. The GTCE and the Teaching Agency have never been a second road of appeal for action taken locally.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

Following the Government’s moves to get rid of bad teachers, will the Minister assure me that the scheme will not be used to eradicate eccentric teachers, who are often very good teachers, and impose a grey uniformity?

[Mr Gibb]

I give my hon. Friend that assurance. We need more eccentricity, not less, in education. There will be a careful filter before cases are heard by the independent panels that report to the Secretary of State.

[Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)]

17. What recent estimate he has made of the number of children living in homes where domestic violence occurs.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

The Government do not collect data on the number of children living in homes where domestic violence occurs, but existing statutory guidance, “Working Together to Safeguard Children”, sets out that children who experience domestic violence will need well targeted support from a range of agencies, as prolonged or regular exposure to domestic violence is likely to have a serious impact on children’s safety and welfare.

[Graeme Morrice]

I thank the Minister, but what are the Government doing to address the issue of domestic violence, and how can we reduce the number of children who are exposed to domestic abuse both as witnesses and as victims?

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Gentleman raises a very important point. I found out about the matter at first hand when I spent a week being a social worker in Stockport. I knew that domestic violence was a problem, but the extent to which it is at the core of many safeguarding issues is alarming for all of us. The use of specialist domestic violence social workers is one way of addressing the problem, and of course the Government produced an ending violence against women and girls action plan last March. The Home Secretary chairs an inter-ministerial group, on which I sit, and we are currently consulting on the definition of domestic violence, which has caused some confusion. The hon. Gentleman will have the opportunity to feed into that consultation before it closes at the end of March.

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

Linked to domestic violence is honour-based violence. Does the Minister have an estimate of the number of children affected by that horrendous practice?

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend raises a very important and worrying subject. We need to do more work on it and use local safeguarding children boards to help us join up all the responsible agencies. It is another example of where we need genuine cross-departmental and cross-governmental co-operation and joint planning, and the Department for Education and the Home Office in particular are at the heart of ensuring that we address this really horrific problem.

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

I am pleased that the Minister has mentioned the Government’s strategy on ending violence against women and girls. What steps is he taking to ensure that children, and especially boys, are educated about the absolute unacceptability of domestic violence as part of the personal, social, health and economic education curriculum?

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady makes a very important practical point. One of my roles on the inter-ministerial group is to see what input the Department for Education can have in ensuring that children are aware from an appropriate young age of the problems of domestic violence and are taught respectful relationships as part of sex and relationships education and PSHE. There are things that we can do at home, in schools and with the agencies that are there to help prevent domestic violence, intervene and apprehend people who are responsible for that horrendous crime.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

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

[The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)]

Today, one of the powers contained in the Education Act 2011 comes into effect: teachers will no longer be required to give 24 hours’ notice before imposing a detention on a child who breaks school rules. That is a useful new weapon in their armoury in the constant battle to ensure that all children are well behaved and that all students can learn.

[James Morris]

What advice would the Secretary of State give to parents in my constituency, where the teaching unions are consistently telling them that if their school converts to an academy or co-operative trust, it will lead to less local accountability and parental control?

[Michael Gove]

I would advise parents in my hon. Friend’s constituency to listen to their very shrewd and effective elected Member, who has consistently pointed out that academy status means not only more resources for students but greater flexibility for teachers and heads and higher standards all round. It is an increasingly welcome aspect of the political consensus that is emerging around academies that so many Labour Members are flocking to their banner.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Can the Secretary of State give the House an absolute assurance that neither he nor his special advisers have deliberately destroyed or deleted e-mails relating to Government business that he has sent or received through private e-mail accounts?

[Michael Gove]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that question. As he will be aware, we changed the information and communications technology curriculum just last week, and many of us were brought up when the old ICT curriculum was in place and may not always have been as handy with the cursor as we should have been. However, every single aspect of communications policy in the Department for Education has been in accordance with the highest standards of propriety, as laid down by the Cabinet Office.

[Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)]

T2. My right hon. Friend may remember our discussions about how to help independent day schools increase the number of places available to our brightest, yet poorest, children. In the light of today’s impressive report by the Sutton Trust, will he re-examine my proposals to open up those schools to access based on merit, rather than on the ability to pay?

[Michael Gove]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend, who has been a consistent advocate for helping disadvantaged children to access excellent schooling. I am encouraged by the work that the Sutton Trust has done, but it is important that we ensure not only that individual children of merit have access to the best schools, but that all children from disadvantaged circumstances have better education. That is why I want to see private schools playing a larger part in the academies programme.

[Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)]

T4. The Co-operative Education Trust Scotland and other co-operative education bodies are doing fantastic work across the UK to support schools and to embed co-operative enterprise education into their curriculum. How are the Government ensuring that schools promote the co-operative model as a viable option for young people who are thinking about starting their own business?

[Michael Gove]

First, let me pay tribute to the work of the co-operative movement. Since it started in Rochdale, many of us have been inspired by its achievements. I believe that the academies programme and particularly the free schools programme provide an opportunity for the ideals of the original co-operative movement to be embedded in our schools. The idea that all work together for the good of their community and for the fulfilment of higher ideals is one that Government Members wholeheartedly applaud.

[Mr Speaker]

I call Mr Adam Holloway. Not here.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

The Secretary of State will be aware of the extensive process that parents and schools go through when undertaking testing for special educational needs for children. What advice does he have for parents in my constituency when schools refuse to test their children for special educational needs?

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Sarah Teather)]

Parents’ views about their child should be central. One thing that we are looking at in the Green Paper is how we can make clearer what should normally be provided in schools and what local authorities should normally provide. It should therefore at least be simpler for parents and teachers to understand whether a child’s needs are greater than those normally provided in the school, and much clearer whether they need a statutory assessment.

[Mrs Linda Riordan (Halifax) (Lab/Co-op)]

T6. The Prime Minister said before the election that there would be no return to selection at 11, so why are the Government making it easier for grammar schools to expand by taking away the rights of local parents to object?

[Michael Gove]

We are allowing all good schools to expand. I am an unalloyed fan of all good schools, whether they are comprehensive or selective. No new selective schools will be created under the coalition Government, but all successful schools have the right to expand, and any parent who believes that any school is in breach of the admissions code has an expanded right to complain to the schools adjudicator. Good schools doing a better job for more students: that is what the coalition delivers; I am amazed that the hon. Lady objects.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

T5. Last Friday, I had the great pleasure to visit Paddox primary school in my constituency, which is an outstanding school where significant improvements have been made in recent years. Parents have told me that much of the positive atmosphere at the school is attributable to the drive and ambition of the head teacher, Brenda Oakes. Does the Minister agree that strong leadership provided by head teachers such as Miss Oakes is essential in delivering a first-class education to all our children?

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

I certainly agree with that and add my tribute to that school. The early years of a child’s education, when they are learning to read and to become fluent in arithmetic, are key to their success in secondary education and beyond. I would like to pay our tribute to the work that that head teacher is doing. Government Members agree that the autonomy and independence of head teachers, and their ability to run their schools as they see fit, are key to raising standards. That is what all the evidence suggests internationally. That is the drive behind the academies programme.

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

T8. As we approach Holocaust memorial day on 27 January, how is the Secretary of State ensuring that lessons from the Holocaust and other genocides, including in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur, are taught in free schools, academies and other schools not bound by the national curriculum?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s point. Let me pay tribute to my predecessor, the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls). His decision to increase funding for the Holocaust Education Trust was one of many good things that he did, and I was honoured to be able to honour a pledge I made before the election to secure its funding. The trips that it offers to schools of all kinds help to ensure that we remember, and that that indescribable evil is never repeated. Let me take this opportunity to affirm the importance of all MPs meeting Holocaust denial and relativisation head on. Any attempt to undermine the singular historic evil of that crime is utterly wrong, and we should unite in condemning it.

[Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)]

T7. Having opened just last September, the West London free school has had more than 5,000 visits from interested parents, its places are now heavily over-subscribed and it has just applied to set up a new, free primary school. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that all goes to demonstrate just how enthusiastic parents are about these new free schools?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a brilliant case. The West London free school was attacked and criticised by many on the left of the political spectrum. Fiona Millar said that the idea would never take place. Now it is the single most popular and over-subscribed school in the London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, providing a superb education of a comprehensive kind for all children. I recommend it to you, Mr Speaker, for the future.

[Mr Speaker]

I am extremely grateful to the Secretary of State for his helpful advice. I was not asking for his advice, but I am grateful for it anyway.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Local authorities have a statutory duty to provide or commission sufficient youth services, but many of them are not now fulfilling that duty. What will Ministers do to make them fulfil their statutory duty?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

The hon. Lady is a long and tireless advocate of the promotion of youth services and she has rightly pointed to the section of the Education Act 1996 that places that duty on local authorities. We are looking to rewrite that duty and streamline it to ensure that local authorities cannot shirk their responsibility to ensure that positive activities are available for young people in their area, and that it is clearly understood.

As part of “Positive for Youth”, I have said that we will look closely at what activities for young people are going on in local authority areas and I invite young people to ensure that they are auditing the youth offer in their areas and reporting back to the centre. That is part of “Positive for Youth” and I hope that she will encourage young people in her area to do that.

[Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

T9. British banks employs hundreds of thousands of people and many of them are hard-working young people. Does the skills Minister agree that it would be a fantastic achievement to see an apprentice in every branch of every high street bank, and what can he do to help achieve this?

[The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning (Mr John Hayes)]

There are few greater champions of apprenticeships or learning in this House than my hon. Friend, although I notice my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) sitting next to him, and he is just as worthy a champion. Just this week I will meet banks to discuss exactly what my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) proposes. It is right that apprenticeships are seen as a route into the professions, and we will make them just that.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

Stockport council estimates that it is notified of only 60% of looked-after children placed in the borough by other authorities. This is not a problem specific to Stockport and, as the Minister will appreciate, it is very difficult for authorities to plan the provision of resources that will achieve better outcomes for children in care without adequate information. What more can he do to make local authorities meet their obligations?

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady is right to raise this subject and it is a problem in many parts of the country, especially when children from London boroughs are placed in areas such as my own part of the country. I issued new guidance that came into effect last April, which made it absolutely clear that local authorities have a responsibility to keep children for whom they are responsible for caring as close to home as possible. If children are placed further afield, there must be a good reason, and local authorities must ensure that they maintain the responsibility to monitor how the child is doing. In too many cases, they do not notify the host authority, and I plan to ensure that every authority is reminded of its responsibilities.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

Market Field school is in the neighbouring constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin). It caters for children with special needs from both our constituencies and from the Clacton constituency. Will the Minister agree to meet the three of us to consider why Essex county council’s promise—made by the previous leader to the head teacher, Mr Gary Smith—has not been carried out?

[Michael Gove]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for asking that question. I hope to speak to the lead member for children’s services in Essex county council later this afternoon and I shall raise the issue with him. If I do not get satisfaction, I will pursue it. Let me take this opportunity to congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his well-deserved knighthood.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Now that the Secretary of State for Education has accepted Bolsover Labour party’s campaign for a new school at Tibshelf—a most unlikely Minister, I agree—will he tell us who will bear the cost, how much central Government will pay and how much the council taxpayer will have to pay?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Gentleman has been a fantastic campaigner on behalf of Tibshelf school and, as he has often pointed out in this House, the school has had to be kept aloft by pit props and is not fit for purpose. We want to ensure that the priority school building programme, to which I think he refers, will provide the resources from the Department for Education’s budget, but we will work with the local authority to ensure that we refurbish the school appropriately. I should stress, however, that final decisions on each school in the programme will not be made until at least next month.

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

I had a very good morning on Friday when I went to two infant schools. Both say that a larger number of children are coming in with speech and communication problems. What measures will we take in response to Jean Gross’s communications strategy, and how will we make it a priority to support those children at a very early age to resolve such problems?

[Sarah Teather]

As the hon. Lady says, there is a very particular issue with communication problems and ensuring that we identify them early. That is part of the reason I am working closely with colleagues at the Department of Health to implement significant numbers of new health visitors and to ensure that we commission services better. The education health and care plan, which will integrate services, will, I hope, make a real difference to children in that position.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will be aware of my ongoing correspondence with him about Woodlands school in my constituency, which is held up not by pit props but by equally unsightly and unacceptable scaffolding. It seems that the school will be denied any access to the priority school building programme by an anomalous set of circumstances. It does not need extra places, yet the state of the buildings means that it obviously needs priority status and access to funds, but it has been denied that as more than 30% of the buildings are listed. What can the school do? We are due an answer. May we have it soon?

[Michael Gove]

When we had to close the Building Schools for the Future programme, it was inevitable that a significant number of schools in urgent need of repair would be just the wrong side of where the line was drawn. I know that in Coventry a number of schools are in desperate need of refurbishment. The priority school building programme is designed to ensure that as many schools as possible qualify and we will not be able to make an announcement until next month because we want to be absolutely sure that marginal cases such as this school, as it appears from the information the hon. Gentleman has shared with us, are fairly treated.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

The Minister is well aware of my support for steps taken to prepare young people for apprenticeships and the world of work, but is he aware that an arbitrary decision about payments due for academic work undertaken in apprentices’ own time towards their qualification might threaten the ability and willingness of small employers, such as Amazon World in my constituency, to take them on?

[Mr Hayes]

I am aware of the specific issue my hon. Friend raises. I understand that the problems arose under the stewardship of a Minister in the previous Government, but none the less there are ongoing repercussions and I am happy to consider the specific matters raised by my hon. Friend. He will know that there are now national minimum standards as there is a national wage for apprentices and it is absolutely right that the deal an apprentice gets should be fair and proper.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

A university technical college for Dudley would not only transform the education available in the town but help address the skills shortage and rebalance the economy while encouraging young people to pursue careers in high-tech manufacturing. I am sure that the Secretary of State will be as pleased as I am that a bid has now been submitted for the Aston university technical college in Dudley. Will he take this bid from me today and ensure that it is approved as early as possible so that we can get the changes made that we need in Dudley?

[Michael Gove]

I shall take the bid and look on it sympathetically. I know that the Prime Minister, as a Villa fan, would want me to do everything possible to satisfy the hon. Gentleman.

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

Is the Minister as concerned as I am that some teachers in schools today qualified only after re-sitting their basic numeracy and literacy tests on multiple occasions—in some cases, more than 30 times—and what steps will he take to ensure that this is not repeated?

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. We want to raise the bar for entrants into the teaching profession, which is why we are limiting the number of retakes for those tests, which will be taken before trainees start their course, not at the end.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

Following the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), would the Secretary of State like to congratulate the Holocaust Educational Trust, which works tirelessly visiting schools and educating students in the horrors of the genocide of the second world war?

[Michael Gove]

“Lessons from Auschwitz” is a model project, and I am so delighted that in the new year’s honours list the chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, Karen Pollock, received a long-overdue award. She is one of the unsung heroes of British education, and her work has been absolutely fantastic. I recommend to all Members the opportunity to attend the forthcoming Merlyn-Rees memorial lecture, which the trust is organising and which will remind us all of the timeless enormity of that evil and of the need to remain vigilant to this day.

Opposition Day

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Un-allotted day]

Individual Voter Registration

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Relevant document: The Tenth Report from the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, Individual Electoral Registration and Electoral Administration, HC 1463.]

15:35

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House recognises that according to the Electoral Commission there are currently up to 8.5 million electors missing from the UK electoral register and that the shift to individual registration is the biggest change to electoral matters since the introduction of the universal franchise; notes that there was cross-party support for the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009, which proposed a phased five-year timetable for its introduction with safeguards to protect against a drop in registration levels, but that the Government proposes speeding up the timetable, removing some of these safeguards and eroding the civic duty on registering to vote by not applying the legal obligation to respond to an electoral registration officer’s request for information as exists for the household registration; further notes that, according to the Electoral Commission, if these proposed changes are not implemented properly there could be a reduction in registration of up to 65 per cent. in some areas, potentially leaving over 10 million unregistered voters, and that this would have a negative impact on the list from which jurors are drawn; believes that the 2015 boundary review process risks being discredited as a result of the unregistered millions; and calls on the Government to reconsider its current proposals that will lead to large-scale under-registration.

The move to individual electoral registration is the greatest shift in our electoral system since the introduction of the universal franchise. As a result, there is the highest imperative on us to get this right. There is wide support for the move to individual registration and an acceptance that the current system of household registration is neither fit for the modern world nor suitably robust against the perils of electoral fraud. The move is supported by the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators, the Electoral Reform Society and the main political parties in the House. Our concerns are not about the ultimate objective of individual electoral registration but about some of the proposed means of achieving it.

I would like to make a point that I have made a number of times before about the importance of trying to get cross-party support for constitutional change. I am afraid that I do not agree with the wording in the coalition agreement on individual electoral registration—I will come to that later—but I welcome the process that the Government have adopted and how they are acting on this matter. We have had a draft Bill and a White Paper with pre-legislative scrutiny, and the Deputy Prime Minister has said twice on the Floor of the House that the Government are willing to listen to concerns—so too, when giving evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, did the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who has responsibility for political and constitutional reform and whom I welcome to his place. They appear to be keen to reach consensus before the Bill is finally published.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend accept that when individual voter registration was introduced in Northern Ireland there was a dramatic fall in the level of registration? What will be put in place to ensure that that does not happen this time?

[Sadiq Khan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He is right to remind the House that in 2002, when individual electoral registration was introduced in Northern Ireland, there was a huge fall of 11% in the number of people on the register. I hope that this Government, like the previous Government, have learned the lessons of those changes. I shall come to that point shortly, if he will allow me.

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

This is a genuine inquiry: will the right hon. Gentleman inform the House whether a significant proportion of that 11% subsequently rejoined the register, or whether very few did, which would suggest that the 11% were not entirely genuine in the first place?

[Sadiq Khan]

As ever, the hon. Gentleman raises a good question. The evidence from the experts is that of the 11% who were taken off the register about 5% should not have been on there. There has been increased integrity in the Northern Irish system but there has also been continued instability. Those who were originally taken off but should not have been have not come back on as quickly as we would have hoped. One reason for that was that there was not the carry forward—but I shall come to later.

To be fair to the Deputy Prime Minister, he has already confirmed one concession—that the Government are minded not to pursue the so-called opt-out, which would have allowed people effectively to exclude themselves permanently from the electoral register. We welcome that and are looking for more movement from the Government. In that spirit, we have called this debate—so that the Government can hear, at a relatively early stage in the process, some of the concerns that experienced colleagues on both sides of the House have about the Bill.

I remind the House that it was the previous Labour Government who legislated to introduce individual voter registration, with cross-party support. The Political Parties and Elections Act 2009 made provision for the phased introduction of a system of voluntary individual registration up to 2015 and compulsory registration thereafter. The full and final move to an individual voter registration system would not take place until after 2015, the intention being to pace the transition, allowing the Electoral Commission to monitor registration levels adequately and guarding against any adverse decline in the size of the roll. There was genuine cause for a cautious, phased introduction. My hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) has already referred to the Northern Irish experience, but when Northern Ireland shifted to individual voter registration in 2002, there was an 11% drop in the size of the electoral roll. In the aftermath of that dip, lessons were learned from Northern Ireland’s experiences which were built into our phased approach, complete with safeguards.

The 2009 Act received cross-party support. The individual voter registration provisions—in particular, the timetable and the phased introduction—came in for particular praise. The hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), who now sits on the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, but who was then the Conservative shadow Minister, said:

“I am very pleased to have the opportunity to put it on the record once and for all that we agree with the Government that the accuracy, comprehensiveness and integrity of the register and…the system is paramount. That is one of the reasons why we will not oppose the timetable the Minister has suggested this evening…the Electoral Commission, electoral registration officers and others who will be involved in the implementation of the Government’s current plans are concerned that this should not be rushed, but taken step by step to ensure that the integrity of the system is protected”.

She also made a commitment that

“any future Conservative Government would never take risks with the democratic process. They would take absolutely no risks with the integrity or comprehensiveness of the register or with its accuracy.”—[Official Report, 13 July 2009; Vol. 496, c. 108-109.]

The then Lib Dem spokesperson, the former Member for Cambridge, David Howarth, said:

“I do not think that anybody was suggesting that the timetable be artificially shortened, or that any risk be taken with the comprehensiveness of the register.”—[Official Report, 13 July 2009; Vol. 496, c. 112.]

I am afraid that some of this Government’s proposals renege on the cross-party support for the 2009 legislation, raising suspicions—fairly or unfairly—about the motives behind the shift in policy. Somehow, during that frenzied period of coalition building in 2010, the coalition agreement conjured up a specific commitment on individual voter registration, saying:

“We will reduce electoral fraud by speeding up the implementation of individual voter registration.”

That expediting of the process was new, having been in neither of the coalition parties’ manifestos.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend have any figures showing the number of prosecutions for electoral fraud? Have there been thousands, or tens of thousands, which would warrant such a speeding up of the process?

[Sadiq Khan]

My hon. Friend is right to raise the issue of electoral fraud, which we must all do our best to fight. I think there were five or six prosecutions in the recent period, which is not at the same level as Northern Ireland, for example, before the changes made there.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

In view of the moderate and measured tone of the right hon. Gentleman’s comments thus far, does he regret telling The Guardian on 13 October 2010 that

“10 million people could lose the right to vote”,

an assertion that has been specifically rejected by the Electoral Commission’s chair, Jenny Watson?

[Sadiq Khan]

I am grateful for the tenor of that intervention. I stand by that figure, not because it is mine, but because it is the figure given by independent experts. I will come to that estimate and who gives it shortly, if the hon. Gentleman will indulge me.

[Mr David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)]

I welcome the fact that the shadow Secretary of State is endeavouring to be so constructive; I think that we all want to work together to improve the system in the national interest. Does he agree that the present system is not fit for purpose in the 21st century, and that we should therefore make progress and not let the matter drift for too long?

[Sadiq Khan]

I would not disagree with a word of what the hon. Gentleman has just said; the system is not fit for purpose in the 21st century. My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) has already mentioned electoral fraud, which is a live issue. We are also keen to ensure that the register is complete as well as accurate, and I will come to those matters shortly.

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

Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the problems with electoral registers is that while some local authorities are very good at getting people on to the register, others get only about 80% of their local population? Does he also agree that the situation could get even worse as a result of cuts in local government spending?

[Sadiq Khan]

My hon. Friend is right to raise that point. To be fair to the Parliamentary Secretary, he recognised that fact when he gave evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, and acknowledged the concerns about constrained resources. Given that local authority resources are not ring-fenced, an obvious area in which to make cuts would be in the work of the electoral registration officer’s team, often at a time when that work is needed the most. There are examples of excellent practice around the country, but there are also examples of comparable constituencies with very low electoral registration levels.

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

The right hon. Gentleman has talked about electoral fraud, but does he acknowledge the view expressed by the Metropolitan police service that there have been more than 13,000 incidents of financial fraud in which fake entries on the electoral register have been linked to the use of false documents for financial purposes?

[Sadiq Khan]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The credit reference agencies and the police also remind us that it is important to have an accurate and complete register, because the register is often used for credit checks, as well as by the police and local authorities in the fight against fraud. We want the electoral register to be complete and accurate; if it is not, that can lead to all sorts of problems.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that an accurate and complete register is important not only for an effective and fully functioning democracy, but for ensuring that other parts of our Government are working well, including the selection of juries?

[Sadiq Khan]

This is my first chance to welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) to her place in the House. She has had the most recent experience of fighting an election, and will be aware of the dangers of not having an accurate electoral register. She mentioned one of the important civil functions of the electoral register. She will be aware that the disadvantage for people of deciding not to be on the register is that they will not be able to serve on a jury, which can lead to the make-up of juries becoming skewed. Instead of being tried by one’s peers, a person can end up being tried only by those who are on the electoral register, rather than by a jury reflecting all those who are eligible to be on it.

The original justification for the proposals was not to save money, but that has now been put forward as a reason for speeding up the shift to individual electoral registration. This and the partisan nature of some of the Government’s other constitutional proposals, including the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 and the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, make some people suspicious of the motivation behind the Government’s proposals. Adding to the suspicion is the speeded-up timetable in the draft Bill, which is the meat of the motion before us. The draft Bill also proposes the removal of safeguards previously agreed by all the parties.

We are concerned about proposed changes to the civic duty involved in registering to vote. Under the household registration system, failure to comply with the request by an electoral registration officer to complete a registration form could result in a £1,000 fine. Despite few prosecutions, the threat of a fine has itself had a positive impact on registration levels, as has been confirmed by electoral registration officers around the country. The warning, written in a bold large font on the front of the letter from the electoral registration officer, served as a genuine motivation to respond. Our fear, which is shared by others, is that removing the threat of a fine will have a negative impact on registration levels.

[Chris Ruane]

My right hon. Friend has referred to local authorities that have successfully used the threat of the £1,000 fine to increase registration rates. May I point to the example of Rhyl West, where 2,500 people were registered? The council had a crackdown, which involved placing a warning on the registration form stating that people would be fined £1,000 if they did not fill it in. It explained that failure to fill in the form would result in the chief executive sending a letter to the non-registered person and turning the matter over to his legal department. The level of voter registration went up from 2,500 to 3,500 in one year as a result.

[Sadiq Khan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I have seen evidence for what he mentions, and the local authority has confirmed that it increased registration rates from 2,500 to 3,500 because of the use of that threat and a rigorous approach. As my hon. Friend suggests, the removal of the fine will diminish the ability of electoral registration officers to do their job effectively, risking damaging consequences for our democracy and society. Although the penalty for not fulfilling the current legal duty is not often imposed, it is not without effect, as has been said. It contributes to a general sense that registering to vote is a civic duty—a responsibility—and not merely an individual right or a lifestyle choice.

The Parliamentary Secretary and the Deputy Prime Minister have both declared from the Dispatch Box that the threat of the £1,000 fine is not being removed, since under their new proposals the offence of failing to respond remains for a household canvass. However, the House needs to understand the proposed changes in detail. There will indeed continue to be a form for the head of the household to complete, which is called a “household enquiry form” or HEF, and a £1,000 fine will remain for failing to comply with the request of the electoral registration officer to complete that form. Whereas completing the household registration form as it stands currently leads to those listed being registered to vote by the local authority on the processing of the form, under the new system the HEF is simply a way of capturing data on who might be eligible to vote in a property. That data will then be used by the local authority to follow up each of the named individuals with a personal approach containing a voter registration form. However, there is no legal duty to comply with a local authority request to complete an individual registration form and there is no threat of a £1,000 fine for not responding. We believe that that is a dangerous anomaly in the proposed legislation, which we fear could have a damaging effect on registration levels.

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

Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that although some people purposely do not want to be on the register, large numbers might be excluded from it because they have not been helped? I am thinking particularly of those with learning disabilities. Often, those who might be helping people with learning difficulties have a strange view about whether they should be allowed to vote. It is crucial that everyone in our society be enfranchised and that no one is ruled out because they are not given the support that they should receive to ensure that they are properly registered.

[Sadiq Khan]

My hon. Friend makes her point far better than I would have made it. She will be aware of the representations made by Scope and others. There could be confusion at an early stage when somebody completing the household form assumes, as in the past, that they are automatically on the register, without realising that the individual form they receive also needs to be completed. If we take into account the fact that many people have learning difficulties, that for others English is not their first language and that that these changes are being contemplated at a time when the register arguably needs to be at its most accurate, the position becomes very worrying—even more so if we reflect on the diminution of resources to which my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) referred.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Before the hon. Gentleman intervenes, let me make the point that 19 hon. Members are seeking to speak in the debate. If I am to have any chance of accommodating that level of interest, self-restraint—in respect of Front-Bench speeches and the length of interventions—will be essential.

[Mr Jackson]

I am mindful of your admonition, Mr Speaker.

I am puzzled by the right hon. Gentleman’s views on household registration, given that the Electoral Commission has said that

“The ‘household’ registration system means there is no personal ownership by citizens of a fundamental aspect of their participation in our democracy—their right to vote”.

Is he saying that he is in favour of household registration, whose removal is at the centre of these reforms, or not?

[Sadiq Khan]

I think the hon. Gentleman misunderstands his own position. The Political Parties and Elections Act 2009 was quite clear, as some Conservative Members have said. We believe in individual voter registration. What we do not agree with is having an incomplete or inaccurate register, and some of the currently proposed changes could lead to just that.

The absence of the threat of a fine also undermines the data-matching pilots launched recently, which we also welcome. We support attempts to discover the names of those who are not on the register by using other datasets held by the public sector, but the same obstacle occurs—those individuals will at most receive a personalised approach by the local authorities to register to vote but there will be no legal ramifications if they fail to comply with the local authority request. The Minister has previously said at the Dispatch Box words to the effect that he did not want there to be a threat of criminal conviction for failure to respond to a registration form from an electoral registration officer. Let me address that point. We are open to discussion of whether a system of fixed penalty notices for those who fail to complete their registration form might be more appropriate. The Electoral Commission is also in favour of a system of civil penalties as well as a range of incentives to encourage registration. The Minister will be aware that in Northern Ireland, which already has individual electoral registration, the offence for failing to respond to a request from an electoral registration officer has been maintained. Either way, there needs to be some kind of motivation, backed up with the threat of a sanction, if we are to keep registration levels high.

The implications of the coalition Government’s proposals concern us. Although they might lead to a more accurate electoral register in the sense that people who should not be on it will not be on it, they are also likely to lead to a considerably less comprehensive electoral roll. Recent research by the Electoral Commission shows that up to 8.5 million eligible voters currently are not registered to vote—5 million more than previously thought—and it has warned of a risk of a slump in registration levels from more than 90% to 65%. That equates to more than 10 million eligible voters who should be on the register not being on it.

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

The issue here is the correlation between the likelihood of a person’s registering on the electoral register and their being in the private rented sector, is it not? The rapid growth of private rented accommodation places people at the highest risk of not having the information necessary to be on the register. Would my right hon. Friend support discussion with the Government about how resources could be directed particularly towards the local authorities with the largest private rented sectors to help to target that problem?

[Sadiq Khan]

My hon. Friend is right to make that point and her view is shared not only by those who represent areas such as those she has mentioned but by the Association of Electoral Administrators, which believes there could be a 10% to 15% drop in suburban areas and a drop of up to 35% in the areas she has mentioned. The Minister said some very encouraging words when he gave evidence to the Select Committee and I look forward to hearing what he says in his response about resources and how he can target the finite resources he has on the areas that need them the most. Experts are as concerned as my hon. Friend that young people, students and people with learning disabilities and other forms of disability, as well as those living in areas of high social deprivation, are less likely to be registered. Some of those groups are already the most marginalised in society.

Many of us will have experienced examples of stretched electoral registration officers and limited resources, and there is a real concern about the impact of cuts to local authorities and budget pressures on the Electoral Commission at a time when they are needed the most. Those concerns are compounded by the fact that the 2015 boundary change enshrined in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 will take place on the new register composed of individual registrations. Although the draft legislation contains a safeguard—an effort to ensure the 2015 general election is not undermined by a significant decline in registered electors—which we welcome, there is no such safeguard for the boundary review, which will take place later in the same year. Given that the general election and the boundary review are due to take place in 2015, it seems odd to choose 2014-15 as the period for introducing individual electoral registration. It would make more sense to begin the process later or at least to extend the period of its implementation. Alternatively, registration under the current system could be carried forward for the boundary review, as is proposed for the 2015 general election. None of those options should cost any more than the Government’s current plans.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

It is the Government’s and indeed Parliament’s intention to equalise the size of parliamentary constituencies. Does the right hon. Gentleman share my concern that if the changes to those electorates as a result of individual voter registration were, even entirely properly, to be in any way unequal across different locations, that could result in the creation of unequal constituencies and in the Government’s failing to meet that objective?

[Sadiq Khan]

The hon. Gentleman is right to raise that point. In seats where there is a large number of students there could be a bigger slump than in areas where there is a large number of owner-occupiers. There could be a second major boundary change in five years, if there is a big slump in those on the register. Bearing in mind that the register is used to determine boundaries, the changes could lead to some of the concerns that the hon. Gentleman alluded to. If the formation of new boundaries goes ahead, with 10 million missing voters—not my figures but those of independent experts—it risks another substantial upheaval of parliamentary constituency boundaries to deal with that large loss of voters.

We should not forget that the electoral roll is not used simply for election purposes and for drawing boundaries; the register also performs an important civil function.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

The shadow Minister was making a point about the impact of the changes on the next boundary review. Has he been able to estimate the consequences of under-registration on this side of the water? The measures will not apply to Northern Ireland, which has already taken its hit and is recovering, but they could lead to an increased number of seats being allocated to Northern Ireland under the constituency formula, in turn inflating the size of the Assembly, which is based on parliamentary constituencies.

[Sadiq Khan]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Members laughed during his intervention, but he is right to remind us indirectly of the formula by which seats are divided up. I am sure that when the Minister responds he will address the hon. Gentleman’s point, because an unintended consequence of reducing the number of voters is that the formula may lead to the changes he mentioned.

It will be more difficult for people who are absent from the roll to get credit checks, undermining their ability to apply for loans or mortgages, and it will be more difficult for those trying to prevent money laundering to check identities. The lists from which juries are drawn would be compromised. One of the fundamentals of our justice system—that defendants should be subject to trial by their peers—would be threatened. If individuals are given the right to opt out of registering to vote, by implication they could opt out of jury service, which currently is rightly deemed a civic duty.

[Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)]

On the point about people being denied a loan or a mortgage if they are not on the electoral register as a result of the changes, is not the simple answer that they can register? The changes would not prevent anybody from getting a mortgage, but they will prevent people from getting a mortgage illegally.

[Sadiq Khan]

That is one of the benefits of an accurate and complete register, but the changes could lead to debtors, or the police or councils, not being able to chase people because they are not on the register. Council tax benefit and housing benefit fraud is often caught when people are seen on the register. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that there is individual choice and that consequences flow from that, but he fails to recognise the civil functions and the benefits to society of a complete and accurate register.

The electoral register is used by local authorities, and sometimes Departments, to help them in their duties related to security, law enforcement and crime prevention—for example, checking entitlement to council tax discount or housing benefit. The register is also used to ensure that political parties and candidates can contact electors to try to persuade them to vote or—dare I say it—to get involved in party politics. The Government’s current proposals could lead to a number of unintended consequences that no one wants to materialise.

The concerns are not just coming from the Opposition; the Electoral Reform Society is unhappy that registration is simply a matter of take it or leave it for individuals. The cross-party Political and Constitutional Reform Committee has produced an excellent report, for which I thank the Committee, that calls for it to be an offence to fail to complete a voter registration form, although perhaps only for a period of time during the transition. Like the Electoral Commission, the Committee has rightly called for a full household canvass in 2014, and echoes our concerns about the 2015 boundary changes. We welcome some of the Committee’s other main recommendations.

We recognise that there is a problem with the current electoral register, both of accuracy and completeness, and I genuinely look forward to working with the Government to safeguard the integrity of our electoral system and to improve registration levels in the move to individual voter registration. I hope the motion will be debated in a spirit of consensus and that it will be supported on both sides of the House.

16:05

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)]

It is good to be having this debate at, I think, the third time of asking. Before I explain the rationale for our proposals and deal with the motion, I want to thank the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) for the tone in which he has engaged with the debate. I have certainly engaged with it in such a way, and I do not think that he will mind if I point out that his party did not adopt that approach from the beginning. Last autumn, the right hon. Gentleman’s party leader said that we were making registration individual rather than household, and that the Labour party was going to go out and fight against that change, stating:

“One of the most basic decent human rights…is the right to vote.”

I absolutely agree, but I do not know why he wanted to campaign against our proposals.

The shadow Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), said at the Labour conference that our proposals were

“a shameful assault on people’s democratic rights”,

and that Labour would expose and campaign against them. I thought that that was nonsense at the time. Clearly, the right hon. Member for Tooting thought so, although he could not say so, and he has adopted a much more sensible tone.

Finally in that vein, in an article on the Labour Uncut website, the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David), said that the Conservative-led Government had taken the Labour Government’s proposals—these are his words, not mine—and

“infused them with its own distinctive venom.”

I have been accused of many things, but never that.

People got carried away with those remarks, which were rather absurd, and I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman has returned to a more sensible tone whereby we can debate these sensible proposals. There is a lot of agreement on the move to individual registration, which will improve our system, and we can consider our specific proposals and the response that we make to the Select Committee report. I am happy to conduct the debate in that spirit.

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

In view of the fact that the Electoral Commission is saying that there may already be as many as 8 million people who are entitled to be on the register but are not on it, is it not, shall we say, counter-intuitive for any of us to discuss proposals that are likely to reduce the number of people on the register? Surely the objective of the Electoral Commission and the rest of us should be to maximise the number of people who are entitled to take part in our democracy legitimately. Individual registration is not likely to achieve that, particularly as it is in response, apparently, to just six prosecutions for electoral fraud.

[Mr Harper]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman’s conclusion, which is that we should try to maximise the number of eligible voters—obviously, people who are on the register are entitled to vote—but I do not agree that individual registration is likely to reduce that number. To return to the matter of Northern Ireland—I shall expand on this later—given what we now know about the register in Great Britain, which is that about 85% of voters are registered, that register is in no better shape than that in Northern Ireland, where individual registration has already been introduced, as have a number of measures on continuous registration, such as data matching, which we propose to have at the same time. There is good evidence that if individual voter registration is introduced properly, with some of those other measures, a register may be achieved that is both more accurate and more complete than the one we have today.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

In general, I am happy with my hon. Friend’s proposals, but the one thing in the Opposition motion that strikes me is the abolition of the sanction if people do not register. We do not believe in compulsory voting, but up to now we have always believed in compulsory registration. Will he reassure us on that specific point?

[Mr Harper]

Let me come to that point in a moment, because I want to spend a little time on it, if I may. If my hon. Friend does not think that I have addressed it, I shall be happy to take another intervention from him.

Let me run through one or two parts of the motion that are defective, and which lead me to urge my hon. Friends to oppose it. I hope that I shall do so with the same tone with which the right hon. Member for Tooting introduced it. It is true that we supported the proposals for individual registration in the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009, but it is worth reminding the House that the previous Government had to be dragged kicking and screaming to include them. They were not in the Bill when it was introduced in the House of Commons, which is why we voted for a reasoned amendment. In fact, they were not in the Bill at all when it left the House of Commons, although by that stage the Labour Government had made a commitment to include them, and they were introduced in the other place.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr Maude), who was leading for us on the issue at the time, said:

“I am glad that at the eleventh hour the Government have, at last, agreed to move ahead with individual voter registration, albeit in what still seems to be a lamentably leisurely time scale. They committed to the principle of individual voter registration many years ago, but a bit like St. Augustine, they seem to be saying, ‘Make me chaste, but not yet.’”—[Official Report, 2 March 2009; Vol. 488, c. 695.]

My right hon. Friend made it clear that we approved of the decision to proceed with individual registration, which we thought could be accomplished earlier. We said that it would be our intention to do so, but that is not what the right hon. Gentleman said. On page 47 of our 2010 manifesto we made a commitment to

“swiftly implement individual voter registration”.

It is not fair—or, at least, it leaves out something quite important—to say that there was complete cross-party consensus on that measure.

[Chris Ruane]

I was one of those who did not want the previous Government to introduce the measure, but consensus was gained and it was introduced. That consensus has now been destroyed for the sake of a single year. The Government have shattered that consensus across the country—not just in Parliament but outside, too. Why do so just for one year? Is it anything to do with the 2015 election and the boundary freeze date of 1 December 2015?

[Mr Harper]

No, it is not. If the hon. Gentleman will listen, we have introduced proposals having learned from the experience of Northern Ireland, for example in the carry-forward, to make sure that we minimise the risk of any drop in the registered electorate before the 2015 election. Between that election and the drawing up of registers for the next boundary review, there will be another full household canvass. There are therefore good safeguards in the system to make sure that the general election and the 2015 boundary review are held on the most accurate and complete registers possible. I shall say a little more about that later.

I do not think that it is correct to say that the Government have eroded the civic duty of registering to vote. It is not an offence—this comes back to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) made—not to be registered to vote. It is an offence to refuse to provide information to an electoral registration officer on the household canvass form when required to do so. We do not propose to change that, but I must note that there is some doubt about how effective that is, given that about 15% of electors are not registered to vote. I shall say a little more about that later.

I accept that the way in which we phrased our original proposals, with regard to the opt-out and some of the language that we used—I said this when I gave evidence to the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform—could have led people to think that we wanted to weaken the extent to which we felt citizens had an obligation to register to vote. The Deputy Prime Minister and I have both said that we are minded to change that provision when we introduce our Bill. To be fair, the right hon. Member for Tooting acknowledged that.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has half-answered my question. Why are we not making the system as effective as possible, and making people register to vote properly?

[Mr Harper]

We are retaining the offence of not responding to the household form. The logic is that if someone does not respond, they affect not just themselves but perhaps other people’s right to vote. That is why we have kept that proposal. We then faced the question, in the returning of the invitation to register, of whether we really wanted to create a criminal offence and criminalise people for not registering to vote. First, I start from the position of thinking that that would not be effective. The evidence at best, if I am being generous, is very mixed about whether that is effective. Secondly, we do not want to clog up the court system with a huge number of these cases. In Northern Ireland, where someone correctly said the offence of not returning the individual form exists, the provision has in effect become meaningless because when it was used in court and someone was prosecuted, the court gave them a slap on the wrist with a fine of 1p. The provision has effectively become unusable.

[Chris Ruane]

The evidence that I gave earlier from Rhyl in my constituency was that in the poorest ward in the whole of Wales—there are 1,900 sub-wards in Wales and this is the poorest—registration went up 2,500 to 3,500 in one year because of the threat of the fine. If the Minister does not want to make failure to register a criminal offence, how about a fixed penalty notice of £70 or £80? If people are determined to stay off the register, that is up to them, but they would face a £70 fine. If that happens time and again, perhaps he would consider making it a criminal offence after two or three times. How about that?

[Mr Harper]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman raised that. He made exactly that point at Deputy Prime Minister’s questions on 15 November and my right hon. Friend said that we would look into it. Indeed, I did. Although the numbers did broadly increase as the hon. Gentleman says, they did not do so over a year. The increase in the electorate in Rhyl West from 2,474 to 3,531 took place over a period of nine years—[Interruption.] I am sorry, I have the number of electors registered in front of me. I will not bore the House by reading them out, but the increase took place over a period of eight years, so I am afraid I do not think he has got his facts quite right.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

I implore the Minister to look again at this. Clearly, if failing to send back the annual survey is to incur a penalty, it seems illogical not to insist that failing to send back the individual form should also incur a penalty. As my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) said, some sort of fine that is clearly expressed to people, rather than hidden away in the small print, is a tremendous incentive to return the form. The absence of a penalty seems like a missed opportunity.

[Mr Harper]

Let me skip ahead to a quotation a little later in my remarks, which is relevant. There is a purpose in doing as the hon. Lady suggests only if it is effective. The evidence from the Information Society Alliance, for example, in its survey shows that compulsory registration —in other words, saying that people have to register or there will be a penalty—does not

“yield registration rates notably above those achieved in countries without compulsory registration.”

So it is not particularly effective. If I were persuaded that it was, I might look at it again. I certainly do not want to criminalise millions of people.

The current system, where failure to respond on the household registration form carries a penalty, is not noticeably effective because, as we now know, 15% of electors are missing. The single biggest reason why people are not registered to vote is that they move house frequently. One of the things that we need to do, which I will come on to, is to look at ways in which we can track people more quickly when they move house and get them registered to vote.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

From the perspective of individuals in households, I am concerned about what appears to be duplication under the new system. There is a household form and an individual voter registration form. This seems to go against the red tape challenge and from an individual’s point of view seems over-bureaucratic. I am worried that that will confuse people.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman raises a good point, and I will come on to it when I speak about the modified canvass in 2014. Registration officers made the same point about why it was not a good idea to do a full household canvass in the traditional way in 2014 and then immediately write to everybody with an invitation to register. Their view was that as well as being costly, that would end up confusing people, which is why we set out a modified canvass, on which people also have strong views. I shall deal with that in more detail later.

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

I am grateful for the tone of the debate so far. I have a constituency in Southwark where we probably have about a 25% turnover of electorate every year. I am therefore very clear in my view that it ought not to be a criminal offence if people do not send back the form, but that there ought to be an incentive to do so and failure to do so should be subject to an administrative penalty. That changes the culture and means that everybody understands that the obligation is to register—not to vote, but to register and give themselves the right to vote when the time comes. I am clear that we need that culture shift.

[Mr Harper]

I have listened carefully to what the right hon. Gentleman has said about the turnover of electors in his constituency. I am very clear that we want a consistent outcome from the process and for as many people as possible to be registered, but in order for that to be effective we might need to allow electoral registration officers to adapt their approach, depending on the nature of the constituency. In areas such as his constituency, or Tower Hamlets, which I have visited, where the turnover is 40%, a completely different methodology is adopted, for example by visiting every household in the first instance, rather than sending out forms. Such an approach would not be adopted in constituencies where there was much less turnover. We must allow electoral registration officers that flexibility in order to get a consistent outcome.

I have two more points to make on the motion before saying a little more about our proposals. The right hon. Member for Tooting referred to 10 million people being removed from the electoral register. He originally used that figure in a piece in the comment section of The Guardian on 13 October 2010. The Electoral Commission responded and made it clear that it did not state that 10 million people could lose the right to vote as a result of our proposals. I simply do not think that his claim is a realistic assessment based on any kind of evidence at all. I also gently point out that there is a mistake in the motion when it states that registration rates could fall by 65%. I think that it meant to say that registration rates could fall to 65%, because that is the number that some people have bandied about, but that is not what it says.

The motion relates to the 2015 boundary review, by which I mean the boundary review that will start in 2015 and use the 2015 register. As I have said, after the next general election there will be a full household canvass in 2015, at which those who have moved house since the previous registration will be invited to register. I think there is a good process in place to ensure that that register is as full and accurate as possible.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

On the Minister’s point about the views of the Electoral Commission, did not the chair of the commission say on 15 September:

“It is logical to suggest that those that do not vote in elections will not see the point of registering to vote and it is possible that the register may therefore go from a 90 per cent completeness that we currently have to 60-65 per cent”?

[Mr Harper]

She did, but she was talking about our proposal to allow voters to opt out by having a simple tick box on the form. We listened carefully to what the chair of the commission said, as did others, and the Deputy Prime Minister and I have confirmed that we are minded to change those parts of our provisions. The thing that she was concerned about that might have a direct effect, because people might tick the box, could also send out the message that we were less interested in people registering to vote. We have already accepted that that could have those consequences, which is why we have said that we will change it, and I think that that acknowledgment has been welcomed by the commission and its chair.

My final point on the motion is about the way it finishes by simply stating as a fact that moving to a system of individual registration

“will lead to large-scale under-registration.”

I simply do not think that there is any evidence to support that proposition. The motion is not quite in the spirit and tone with which the right hon. Gentleman introduced it. When the debate finishes, I urge my hon. Friends to oppose the motion, but to do so in the same constructive spirit with which he introduced it.

Let me say a little more about our proposals. I am happy to take interventions, but I will try to be mindful of your point, Mr Speaker, about the number of Members who wish to speak. I am pleased that the overall shift to individual registration is supported by all parties in the House—it was in all three main parties’ manifestos. The Electoral Commission supports it, as do the Association of Electoral Administrators, a wide range of international observers and the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, whose Chair was present for the earlier part of the debate. There is much cross-party agreement on the principle and I recognise that we are effectively arguing over the detail.

The old, or current, system, involving the old-fashioned notion of a head of household who registers everyone else, is a little out of date and, as Members on both sides of the House have acknowledged, gives one person the ability to affect other people’s registration. We do not adopt that approach in other areas where people interact with the state, and the Electoral Commission has stated very clearly that the

“‘Household’ registration system means there is no personal ownership by citizens of a fundamental aspect of their participation in our democracy—their right to vote. This is too important to be left for anybody other than the individual”.

The Government agree, and I could not have put it better myself.

There is also a risk of fraud. The issue is not just about the fraud that actually takes place, but the risk of it, and even international observers, when they come and look at our system, note that we are very lucky to have a relatively low level of fraud. That is not because of our system, it is despite our system, and we would not be doing our jobs properly if we left in place a system that was open to fraud, even if we have been fortunate enough not to have had a huge amount of it to date that we know about.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

I do not necessarily accept the proposition that fraud is a major issue in Britain, but the reason for making the suggested changes within this time scale—that they were so important that they had to be speeded up—does not get away from the fraud that can be perpetrated, for example, by someone simply turning up at a polling station and saying that they are somebody else. In a flat-share situation, somebody may not have registered, but, if somebody else has and they have moved away, the former can turn up and say, “I’m Joe Bloggs, and here I am.” As long as they are the right gender, they are able to vote, so if fraud is such a major issue should we not look at what happens when people turn up at the polling station?

[Mr Harper]

That point has been made, and I looked at it when I visited Northern Ireland, which, for historical reasons and for the reasons it introduced the system ahead of us, requires people to have a form of photo ID when they vote. When that was introduced, it meant that many people were not able to vote, but it is now working smoothly. It has been suggested to us that we should adopt that system. The Government have decided not to do so, but we will listen to the evidence, as it certainly happens in one part of the United Kingdom. As far as I understand—I stand to be corrected—it currently works pretty smoothly, and for those electors who do not have their own form of photo ID, such as a passport or driving licence, there is a specific and very simple electoral ID card, with no database behind it, which they can use to prove their identity—and their age, for all sorts of other interesting purposes that to young people are probably more attractive than being able to vote.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that the occasions of personation fraud are extremely rare, but that more fraud is thought to exist in postal voting and that, perhaps, more restrictions should be placed on that?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and there was a certain amount of fraud in the early 2000s. That is why the previous Government, to be fair and to their credit, tightened up postal voting and introduced the system of requiring identifiers, whereby an individual has to have their date of birth and provide a signature. We can at least be sure that the person who requested the postal vote is the person casting it, but of course it does not give us any confidence in that person being the real, genuine person who lives in that house, as someone may have created a fictitious identity. We can be sure that the person who requested the postal vote is the person casting it, but they could do so on the basis of a completely fictitious identity. Postal voting has been tightened up, and that is good. It is something that we supported and which the previous Government did.

Another reason for speeding up the system is that running parallel systems—the current system and the new system—was likely to be rather confusing and was, I have to say, going to cost a significant amount. We are investing a significant sum in getting this right—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) just lets me finish, we are going to spend £108 million on moving to the system of registration, so we are fully funding the move, and by not trying to run it in parallel with the current system we have saved £74 million, which, given the state of the economy and the public finances that we inherited, a point that I will not labour, is not an insubstantial factor to bear in mind. But it is not at the expense of ensuring that we have a secure and accurate register.

[Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

The Minister has mentioned postal voting and how important it is becoming in our electoral system. Why are the Government not prepared to consider a carry-forward of current postal voters on to the new register?

[Mr Harper]

The reason for the carry-forward was to ensure that people who had been registered to vote but had not registered once under the new system did not suddenly discover that they were not able to vote at the general election. The carry-forward was a check. In an ideal world, one would introduce a new system and not bother having the carry-forward. It was a safety net.

As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), although postal voters provide identifiers, those do not provide any confidence or evidence that the voter is a real person. They provide confidence that the person casting the postal vote is the person who applied for the postal vote, but they do not get around the problem of people being able to create fictional identities and carry out postal vote fraud. We therefore did not think that it was sensible to extend the carry-forward to postal votes. There will still be carry-forward on the register, so people will still be able to vote, but we will not carry forward people’s absent vote. We do not think that that is likely to cause an enormous problem. The hon. Member for Caerphilly should wait for us to respond to the report of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the not-too-distant future, because I think he will be reassured by our answers.

As I made clear to the House in my statement last September, we are focused as much on completeness as accuracy. We instigated and funded the independent research by the Electoral Commission to see what state the current registration system was in. That should make us pause to reflect. When we have discussed this matter previously, there has been a complacent view that everything is fine, that there are not many problems, and that we are at risk of tampering with the system and causing a problem. The fact is that the current system is not as good as people thought it was.

I made the point that in Northern Ireland, where individual registration was introduced and where it now has a number of continuous registration mechanisms, such as putting back the carry-forward and using data matching, the system is now as complete as and more accurate than that in the rest of the United Kingdom. That demonstrates that if we do this well, learning the lessons from Northern Ireland, looking at things such as data matching and carrying out the proposal sensibly by having pre-legislative scrutiny and listening to what people have to say, we will not damage the registration system, as the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd said, but have a more accurate and complete register over time than the one we have today.

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

For people such as me who are unaware of events in Northern Ireland, will the Minister inform the House how long equalisation took to take place?

[Mr Harper]

What the research has shown about the drop in the register in Northern Ireland is interesting. Some of the drop was expected because, after all, part of the point of introducing the system early in Northern Ireland was that it was understood that a number of people on the register there did not exist and we wanted to get rid of them. However, it is not clear that the drop in Northern Ireland was any larger than that in the rest of the United Kingdom. Therefore, there may well have been a drop in those who were eligible to vote because they did not go through the slightly increased bureaucracy. However, most of that seems to have been fixed by reintroducing the carry-forward, so that people who did not register the first time around are not penalised. We have learned from that. Having had Northern Ireland go first and having learned the lessons from what it has done, we can be reasonably confident that we will not run into the same problems.

I am also pleased that, as the right hon. Member for Tooting said, we have gone about this in a conciliatory way. We published a White Paper last year. We then published draft legislation, consulted on it and asked the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee to do full pre-legislative scrutiny on it. The Committee has taken evidence from a wide range of stakeholders, including me. It has raised a number of concerns, some of which the right hon. Gentleman mentioned. The Government will respond shortly to the Committee’s report. I urge all hon. Members, particularly those who are interested in this subject, to look at our response because it will address a number of the issues that were raised. Hon. Members can be confident that we will not run into those difficulties. For example, we have already mentioned the carry-forward, and we will not require people to re-register all their details every year if they do not move house. They will simply have to confirm that they have not moved. In Northern Ireland, people have to go through the whole process every year.

I have referred a few times to data matching. We have examined other public databases in a number of local authorities to see how successful we can be in finding people who are not registered to vote. We are in the process of finalising our assessment of that programme, and the Electoral Commission will also be doing so having worked closely with us. I am confident that it will demonstrate that we can use those extra data, as happens in Northern Ireland, to improve the register.

Younger people have been mentioned, and we want to ensure that we allow people to register online in a secure way, which will particularly help younger people. To pick up on a point made by the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), it will potentially also help people who are disabled and find it easier to use electronic methods. I absolutely agree with her that people with learning disabilities are entitled to register to vote and to cast their vote. From my experience of working with Scope and attending its reception immediately after the election, and of talking to people with learning disabilities, particularly younger people, I know that they are just as able as anybody else to understand the issues involved and make decisions, and nobody should tell them that they should not. I wanted to put that on the record in strong support of what the hon. Lady said.

[Bob Stewart]

As the head of a household almost filled with very young people, it seems to me that the key to getting an understanding of who should be voting is the head of household registration form. When that form is filled out, it gives the key to who is living in the household, and then we can ensure that they are voting. I hope that that will be very much part of the system in future.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Just before the Minister responds, may I very gently remind him—I am sure he is bearing this in mind—that a very large number of Members want to speak in this debate? I am already going to reduce their time limit to eight minutes, so I hope that he may be reaching the point of being about to conclude.

[Mr Harper]

I think, Madam Deputy Speaker, that is your rather clever way of telling me not to take so many interventions and not to be quite so generous to colleagues, so I will listen to you very carefully and move on. However, I confirm to my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) that we will continue to use the household registration form.

I wish to give an example of how I believe we can improve things. On my visit to Northern Ireland, I visited Grosvenor grammar school in the Belfast East constituency and met the excellent head teacher, Mr McLoughlin, together with the head of the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland. I had a look at one of the outreach exercises there, in which people go into schools and work with 16 and 17-year-olds to get them on the register in time, so that when they turn 18 they can vote. I saw 164 16 and 17-year-olds get registered to vote. Interestingly, Northern Ireland now has a higher rate of attainers—16 and 17-year-old soon-to-be voters—being registered on its system than we do in Great Britain. The lesson of that is that if we allow electoral registration officers to be more innovative and sign up voters directly, rather than relying on the head of the household, we can do better than we do today. I hope that will reassure the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd, notwithstanding the fact that he is not in favour of the procedure. I have already mentioned that we have said that we will change the opt-out provision.

The final point that I wish to put on the record is about the transitional arrangements for 2014-15. I have said that we will undertake a modified canvass in 2014, and I explained in response to an intervention some of the rationale behind that. I have explained why we do not want to run a full canvass and then write to everybody shortly afterwards. The clear advice that we received from administrators was that that would be confusing and not very effective, as well as coming with a very large bill.

I believe that given what I have said, and given what will be in our response to the Select Committee’s report, which Members will see in the not-too-distant future, they will be reassured about how we are addressing the issue. Today, they can do what I asked them to do at the beginning of my remarks and vote against the motion in a constructive spirit and with confidence that we are listening carefully to the concerns that have been raised.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Before we continue the debate, I point out to all hon. Members that the time limit now in operation for Back-Bench speakers will be eight minutes. I ask hon. Members to bear that in mind in respect of the frequency with which they take interventions, because with an eight-minute limit, we will still not get all speakers in, and I am keen to do so if at all possible.

16:40

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

The Electoral Commission has said that the current proposals would be the biggest changes in registration since 1832. That reference to the 19th century is apt. In the 19th century, electoral change enfranchised men—much of it was geared around property ownership, but it was nevertheless progress. In the 20th century—I believe it was in 1920—the vote was extended to women. The 20th century will be remembered for that. The 21st century, however, could be remembered as the time when the Liberals and the Conservatives kept or chased 16 million British voters off the electoral register.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman hasn’t got the message.

[Chris Ruane]

I have got the message, and I understand it: the message is about political gain. The Minister is right that his proposals should be judged on the impact they have on registration rates. We will hold him to that and I am glad he said it. He said his proposals would lead to a more accurate and more comprehensive register. We will be watching every step of the way.

I should also point out how the previous Labour Administration operated on crucial constitutional and electoral issues in their 13 years and beyond in office.

[Andrew Griffiths]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Ruane]

No, I will not.

The previous Administration operated in a consensual, co-operative, non-partisan way. I shall give three examples. We had a sufficient majority to foist first past the post on the devolved Assemblies and Parliament, but we did not do things the way Labour might have wanted. We were consensual and adopted proportional representation. In around 2000, Labour introduced PR for European elections. That meant Wales went from having five seats to one seat. Labour introduced PR for local government in Scotland. That was against Labour’s electoral best wishes, but we introduced it. We were consensual.

On registration, in 2001 Labour introduced a rule that took thousands if not millions off the register. We said, “If you don’t sign the register two years in a row, you go off it, even if we know you are still in that house.” We did that so that we could have an accurate register.

In 2009, we gained consensus on individual registration. I am in favour of individual registration if we have a comprehensive register to start with. Anything less than that will result in a greater and faster fall in the number of people who are registered. This Parliament has a reputation—it is known around the world as the mother of Parliaments—but if this coalition Government introduce legislation that ends up with 16 million people off the register, we will be laughed at around the world.

In 2009, when Labour introduced individual registration, we learned the lessons from Northern Ireland. We realised that there were 3.5 million off the register. The time scale that we came up with—a five or six-year period up to 2015—was sufficient to increase the number of registered voters. There was consensus and agreement on that. In the meantime, we improved data matches, commissioned more research and had stricter electoral registration officer invigilation. In 2010, we put an extra 400,000 people on the register.

We can compare and contrast that with what the Conservative-Liberal coalition has done. It has brought that date forward from 2015 to 2014, pushed back the date of the next election to 2015, introduced an opt-out, and changed the wording from “civic duty” to “lifestyle choice”. This is not happenstance: the Conservatives have a bigger and bolder vision. They failed with the poll tax in the 1990s to drive millions of poorer people off the register, but they are taking a second bite at the cherry. The Liberal Democrats should watch out. They might think they are doing well out of this, but the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) had one of the lowest registration rates in Wales, with 54% registration rates in Bronglais ward. It is an issue that affects Liberal Democrats as well as Labour, so they should be warned.

The Electoral Commission dropped two bombshells. One was that the number of unregistered people in the UK was not 3.5 million but 6 million, which will rise to 8.5 million. That was no bombshell to me, because I had met Experian 18 months previously and was told it was6 million. I gave that information to the Electoral Commission and people there almost laughed at it. They have commissioned research and they say that my 6 million is not the same 6 million as theirs. That means it could be even more, but the fact remains there were 6 million in December 2010, rising to 8.5 million by April 2011. The profile of those unregistered people is black and ethnic, young people living in houses in multiple occupation, the low paid and the unemployed. There are 6 million missing now, and potentially an additional 10 million if these proposals go ahead.

The proposed legislation will have unintended—or perhaps intended—consequences. I ask the Minister, who is jabbering away, what consultation he has had with the police on these issues, because much of the reduction in registration that will result from his legislation will be in areas with high levels of crime. I know that the Association of Chief Police Officers and the police are not happy with the proposals. What consultations has the Minister had with the judiciary? These proposals will have a direct impact on jury service, as juries are selected from the electoral register. People will not be judged by a jury of their peers, but by a jury of some of their peers—often richer peers. The credit reference agencies use the electoral register, and the changes might push people towards loan sharks. Charities and fund-raising organisations are also concerned.

[Nic Dakin]

How does my hon. Friend see the changes impacting on future boundaries?

[Chris Ruane]

The freeze date for the next Boundary Commission review is December 2015. There will be a carry-over to the general election in May 2015, but there will be no carry-over to the 1 December deadline so we could see a reduction from 90% registration rates to 60%—an extra 10 million of the poorest people not on the register. If we think the boundary review is bad this time, it will be 10 times as bad in December 2015. I warn the Liberal Democrats again: they have bitten off more than they can chew and should think carefully.

I ask the Minister to listen not to me—he probably thinks I am biased—but to the Electoral Commission, and to the Electoral Reform Society which has described these measures as “catastrophic”. I ask him to listen to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee and the academics. All those bodies and people have massive reservations about these proposals.

The Minister mentioned developing countries. If we saw a developing country trying to shift a third of its poorest voters off the electoral register, we would send in observers in a heartbeat. We will become the laughing stock of the world if the Minister and his coalition partners introduce the legislation as proposed.

16:50

[Mr David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)]

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this important debate and I also welcome the aim of Members on both sides of the House to improve the system of electoral registration. It is important that everybody who is eligible to vote is on the electoral register, but I believe that the motion is misguided and, in parts, wrong. We all want the most accurate and up-to-date register of electors possible, with a system that is fit for the 21st century and offers better protection against fraud. We need, however, to be moderate and constructive in our tone and approach. I do not want to follow the direction taken by the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane), although I admire the tenacity shown in his speech.

I welcome the speech given by the shadow Secretary of State. It was moderate, much better than the motion, constructive and a determined attempt to breach the gulf that the motion suggests can be found in the House. I strongly support the comments made by my hon. Friend the Minister, who was constructive, positive and extremely moderate.

I believe that we should support all the principles behind individual elector registration. First, giving individuals control of their electoral registration is an important extension of the right to vote, individual responsibility and participatory democracy. Secondly, requiring electors to provide proof of identity will be an effective way of preventing fraud and anomalies in elections. Thirdly, we must prevent people from being added to the electoral roll who do not have the right to vote. Those are key questions that we are endeavouring to address through this reform.

I have concerns about the current system, which is outdated and potentially open to great abuse. The number of people who are not registered to vote is a worry. Millions of people across the country supposedly do not register to vote, either through choice or because they have not been adequately pursued by the electoral registration officers to return their forms by the deadline, and the Electoral Commission has given us a list of figures that shows how many millions are missing from the register.

Other issues distort the completeness of the register. I know that some people are left on the register when they have not returned a form, which is also a real concern. I have seen many cases of people being added to the register for a property they have moved into without the previous residents being crossed off. I regularly canvass across my constituency and I find at each session that many households in each road and block of flats are not on the register. An increasing number of people contact my office who are not on the electoral roll and that is unacceptable, as we want people to be on the roll so that we maximise their opportunities to participate.

I do not think that enough is done to pursue those who do not register to vote and I believe that that is detrimental to the democratic process. If people do not register, they are wasting their opportunity to vote and be part of the democratic process. If, ultimately, they do not want to turn out on election day and vote, that is their democratic right and choice. Although some councils are good at pursuing unregistered households, or those that have not returned their form, many others are not, and that needs to improve.

The next issue I want to raise is the potential abuse of the system. At present, there is no requirement for people to provide any evidence of their identity to register to vote, which leaves the system open to potential fraud. I am anxious about the number of people who are on the register but should not be, such as those who have been added by the head of the household. I hope that the Minister will reconsider the issue of proof of identity when someone goes to the polling station, which he mentioned in his excellent speech, and the need to ensure that the person who is entitled to vote is the person who has turned up claiming to be eligible.

I believe that under the current system insufficient checks are made to ensure that those who do not have the right to vote are not registered. I know of examples of that from across my borough. Some visitors, temporary residents and those who are here illegally are on the register. It has also been suggested that in urban areas, some landlords are the only person on the register for properties they rent out. That is unfair and wrong.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend surprised to learn that in a random sample of 80 of our constituency cases involving those applying for citizenship, 15% were already on the electoral roll with no entitlement to be on it?

[Mr Evennett]

My hon. Friend makes a strong point. We have experienced that in my constituency as well; it is another area that we need to tighten up. I am grateful to him for his comment.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that people from Commonwealth countries do not need to be UK citizens to vote?

[Mr Evennett]

I am grateful for that comment. It is a fair point, and I note it and agree with it.

Giving individuals control of their own electoral registration is an important extension of the right to vote. We had a detailed history lesson from the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd about when people got the vote, in what century and so forth. I think, though, that it is people’s responsibility to make the effort to ensure that they are on the register and that they participate. The current system is undoubtedly outdated, as my hon. Friend the Minister said, and dependent on somebody completing a form on behalf of everyone in the household. In this day and age, that cannot be acceptable. People should have the individual right to register.

I welcome the constructive comments that we have heard today about how to improve the proposals from my hon. Friend the Minister. I am sure that he will listen to and take many of them on board and implement the change to the betterment of our democracy, which is the whole point of this approach. The Electoral Commission has been calling for the introduction of IER since 2003 in order to reduce fraud and give individuals

“clear ownership of their right to vote”.

Dr Stuart Wilks-Heeg, executive director of Democratic Audit, said: “I welcome the proposals”. He thought that the change was long overdue.

The evidence suggests that electoral legislation will improve the completeness and accuracy of the electoral roll. I passionately believe that it will. We heard about Northern Ireland. Of course, there was a drop-off in the initial stages, but since getting under way it has returned to a reasonable registration level—and probably a better one than we have experienced here.

It is true that there is a huge turnover in rented properties. I hope that my hon. Friend will consider whether housing associations can be more helpful and involved in the promotion of IER. They have a role and could help to ensure that the register is more accurate. I am thinking, in particular, about literature and encouraging people to participate by getting themselves on the register.

I hope that the Government will assure us that there are sufficient resources for electoral registration officers to publicise the change and undertake the tasks. Maladministration should not get in the way of democracy. I also encourage the Minister to look at the necessary legislation and encourage councils, where possible, to improve data sharing between departments. The accuracy of the electoral register would improve if social services and council tax departments could advise their electoral registration departments of any changes so that the latter can pursue them with the relevant households.

My own council, Bexley council, is considering a “tell us once” policy in respect of all administrative changes, and I urge other councils to try to do the same. It would certainly help if people, when they move or have social services changes, can inform the council once, rather than having to contact endless numbers of departments. I believe that that would improve the electoral register.

I welcome the Government’s conciliatory, constructive and moderate approach to this issue and the commitment from my hon. Friend the Minister that care will be taken to introduce the new system without losing voters from the register. I welcome the sensible change that will take place over the year and the fact that, we hope, there will be more people on the register and more people wanting to vote. It is part of our job to encourage people to participate more in the democratic system, so we need not just to get them on the register but to get them out and voting. I hope that changing to individual registration might be one way forward.

[Duncan Hames]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the introduction of individual voter registration provides an opportunity to work in schools to get young people on the electoral register earlier, even if they still have to wait until 18 for the vote, so that they have the opportunity to practise registering twice before it really matters?

[Mr Evennett]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Education is very important. When I visit schools, I try to encourage everyone in the sixth form to participate, get on the register and vote when the time comes.

Today’s motion does not do justice to the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan). We are looking to improve the system and I welcome the Government’s proposals to do just that.

16:59

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I rise not to oppose individual registration but to ask Members from all parts of the House not to throw away household registration without understanding the benefits it brings. No system brings perfection, but in the words of the great Joni Mitchell, “You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.”

I would suggest that in my constituency and other urban areas such as south London under-representation on the register among young people will be made worse by the quick introduction of individual registration. That was brought home to me at the last election. As I walked through Mitcham town centre on election day 2010, large numbers of young people came up to me and said, “Oh, hi Siobhain! I just wanted to say that we’ve been out to vote.” I thought, “Great!”—I did not ask who they had voted for; the point was that they had been out to vote. It made me think about mums as electoral registration officers as often it is the head of the household who puts those young people on the register, and getting those young people to sign a form to get on the register, which requires their name, address, date of birth and national insurance number, will be a difficult feat that will take several years.

I ask the House not to despise our experience of actual elections. Who was it who told us that the Child Support Agency did not work, if not our individual voters and constituents? We all know how difficult it is to get people to register and to vote. We also know the practical difficulties with all the mail that we receive in our households every day, where somebody can come along, pick it up and throw it in the bin. Where there are four, five or six electoral registration forms, how successfully do we really believe each one will actually be completed?

Much mention has been made of the 11% reduction in the electoral register in Northern Ireland, but Northern Ireland as a community is so far removed from my constituency as to be another continent. We have a different turnover of people on the electoral register; we have a different, multi-ethnic make-up. Who is it who does not vote? It is, yes, young people and people with private tenancies or in houses in multiple occupation; but it is also some—but not all—ethnic minorities. If we look at America, which has individual electoral registration, as well as a difficult history of voter representation among some communities, we see that registration among the under-25s is about 58.5%, while six in 10 of those who rent privately are not on the register. Conversely, 80% of those with an income of over $100,000 a year are registered. Therefore, those who are rich are two thirds more likely to be on the electoral register than those who are poor.

We get rid of the annual canvass at our peril. At the moment, with one electoral form per household, only 65% of people in even a wealthy borough such as Merton in my constituency return their forms without the canvass. That figure later goes up, to 97%, because of the canvass and the encouragement, and also because of the threat of fines. That is what gets those forms returned and gets the canvass up, and at the moment we are asking for one form from every household. We are not asking for multiple forms.

Data matching is presented as the holy grail that will sort this issue out. However, as we have discovered from the investigation done by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), the electoral register is the most accurate of all our databases. Electoral registration officers have told us that when they cross-reference with the Department for Work and Pensions register, it tells them what they already know. It does not tell them what they do not know. Indeed, each of the Government’s six pilots to look at individual registration has faced increased costs, of between 50% and 100%, for electoral registration officers. I ask all Members here this evening: how likely are their councils to increase their funding by that amount, at a time when they are reducing spending on social services, education and all the things that our constituents come to see us about?

There is talk of fraud in electoral registration, but I would suggest that our problem is not an inflated electoral register but one whose figures are too low. My anxiety is not related to party considerations. I will fight in my constituency to win as many votes as I can get; like most Members, I love elections. I love the fight, and the arguments about the issues. That is what encourages us to get involved, and it is our role to get as many people as possible on to the register. However, if we do anything to alienate those groups in our society that are already alienated, we will bear the brunt of that action. The riots that we saw last summer will be repeated if more people begin to believe that they have nothing invested in the system.

I believe that registering and voting involve a social contract. People register to become part of the system and, in return, they can claim the benefits that they are entitled to, and they can get a library card, a driving licence or whatever. If we undo that social contract, we will find it very difficult to put that genie back in the bottle and get more electors on to the register. Individual registration is fine, but the Government should not get rid of household registration until they are absolutely sure that the young men and women of 18, 19 and 20 in constituencies such as mine will register to vote without the benefit of their mum registering them.

17:06

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

I welcome this debate, and the consensual approach that has been taken by those on both Front Benches. That approach was not taken by the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane), who is no longer in his place, but I pay tribute to him for speaking with great passion on these matters. He genuinely cares about them, and he has an encyclopaedic knowledge of just about all the 1,900 electoral districts in Wales. He is attempting to set up an all-party group on this subject, which I think will attract widespread support in the House.

I hope that the debate will encourage the Government to take all the necessary measures to ensure that we have a register that is as complete as possible, that leaves us less open to fraud, and that, critically, enfranchises those who have not had ownership of their vote in recent years. I know that that is the Government’s intention, but we are all mindful of the recent report from the Electoral Commission, which showed that at least 6 million people who were eligible were not registered in December 2010. That figure could grow significantly if this matter is not handled with care.

We have heard concerns expressed over the potential for fraud. There is consensus over individual electoral registration, and it is important to reiterate that IER is not about a choice between integrity and completeness; if it is done in the correct way, it can be a means of achieving both. During the consultation on IER last year, my noble Friend Lord Tyler and I—on behalf of the Liberal Democrat Back-Bench committee on these matters—reiterated our party’s support for individual electoral registration, but we also highlighted our concerns over implementation, and we continue to do so. In particular, we believe that the legal requirement to register should remain.

I was pleased to hear last autumn that the Government will be looking again at the opt-out suggestion, and that the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) has reiterated that intention. I hope that the Government will continue in that vein and reflect on the legal requirement to register. I commend to the House the debate in the House of Lords that my noble Friend Lord Rennard conducted last Thursday, in which he observed that one of the main strengths of the existing registration system was that it was based on a legal requirement to register. That is also the view of electoral registration officers.

Prosecutions under the current offence are of course minimal; there were only 144 in the past year. The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) mentioned the civic duty to register, and I would suggest that that is strengthened by phrases being included on the registration form. The hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd also mentioned this, giving an example of people being told that they had to register every year by law, and being informed of the penalties for not doing so. I am not suggesting that we should extend the £1,000 penalty, but having a fixed-term penalty is a suggestion worth reflecting on. Without it, we run the risk of thousands of people not bothering to register. Whether those on the list choose to exercise the franchise is quite another matter and not what we are discussing today. I do not believe that there is a consensus on removing the legal requirement. The Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform—I see in his place its Chairman, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen)—made that point very strongly.

The Government could be described as making—I hesitate to say this—a liberal argument for removing any sense of compulsion, but I feel that this duty is more of a burden to the state and the local authorities that have to chase the data than to any individual. There is little feeling now that compulsory registration is a burden for householders. I do not believe it would be a burden for individuals, but what we risk doing is undermining an important civic duty that, critically, will have knock-on implications in areas where we rely on electoral registration data, such as for jury service, as the newly elected hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) was the first to point out. Jury service was not even considered as part of the Government’s impact assessment.

The key point, I feel, is that the worst possible time to remove the legal requirement is when we are changing the system we use. Individual electoral registration can be adopted without removing a legal requirement to register; indeed, it can be enhanced. In that spirit, I agree with the Select Committee’s recommendation of making it an offence to fail to complete the voter registration form, which could then be reviewed at the end of five years.

The second area of potential contention is the annual canvass—a canvass that will, if anything, be even more important in 2014. We must ensure that the changes to the system of registration are communicated and that, as usual, as many people are added to the register as possible. I would like to hear more from the Minister about what he means by the amended canvass. He has talked about putting in place a new system under which every voter will be contacted, but there is something special about the full household canvass. In particular, how will the Minister get to those hard-to-reach groups? He has indicated a willingness to look further at the issue of the 2014 canvass, but I want to reiterate how important this is for those hard-to-reach groups. It is important for them to have the ability not just to vote, but, as we have heard, to access credit. One of the first items checked by credit references companies is whether someone is on the electoral register.

I have mentioned and commended the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd who has on many occasions highlighted the example of one ward in my constituency. This ward combines the huge challenge—the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards), like me, a former student of Aberystwyth university will understand this—of comprising a large student community, a huge number of houses in multiple occupancy and areas that are designated “deprived”. [Interruption.] I apologise, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) is another who will know this for the same reason. IER will fail those constituents if they are not given the chance—indeed, the incentive—to register.

Without reopening the whole issue of the redrawing of constituency boundaries, with which my colleagues with Welsh constituencies are coming to terms, I have to say that the spectre of the system of voter registration—not a move in the population or a decline in the population determining the size of a constituency—remains a big concern. Our Back-Bench committee also has concerns about ending the transitional stage in 2015. Clearly, given the importance of a complete register to the 2015 boundary review, it would also make sense for the transitional phase to encompass both that review and elections to the devolved Administrations and local authorities in 2016.

I think there is a growing consensus on those concerns, but I commend the Government for their work on data-matching pilots and I am encouraged by what we have heard about the experience of Northern Ireland in respect of schools. We need to use the enrolment process in universities to sign up students. The Government are undertaking a welter of other schemes, involving the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and the Passport Office. I believe that the Government are in listening mode. They have listened to date and have taken heed of many of the concerns we have raised. I hope that that will continue. We will support the Government tonight, but on the basis that the listening approach will continue.

17:14

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

I want to raise two specific concerns, the first of which is that although some of the changes are welcome, they are characteristic of a Government who are too frequently looking through the wrong end of the microscope and thus finding the wrong solutions to the wrong problems. The second concern is about making major changes to electoral registration while substantial changes are to take place as a result of boundary reorganisation. No part of the UK will be hit worse by this than my country, Wales.

There is surely consensus that the preferred outcome is that all adults who are entitled to vote should be registered. Everyone should be on the electoral roll and have the opportunity to cast their vote at elections. The principle of individual electoral registration is positive—that electors should take upon themselves the responsibility to register to vote in their own right rather than under the aegis of a household. All relevant people should be willing and able to register and should have the same opportunity to do so. However, there might be a disconnect between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome in that although relevant people may register, they might not all actually do so. The Minister said that the Government hoped to learn lessons from Northern Ireland, and I look forward to seeing some of the resulting changes in the Bill. However, I believe that when the changes were introduced in Northern Ireland in 2002—the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) might wish to correct me—there was a fall of 11% in registered electors, and it has taken more than 10 years to rebuild the figures.

According to the White Paper, an estimated 3.5 million people of voting age across England and Wales were not on the electoral roll at the most recent estimate. The Electoral Commission reported in December 2010 that 6 million people were not registered across the UK. It is unclear to me how IER, which creates a greater barrier to registration, will achieve a closer parity to ensure that as many people as possible are on the electoral roll.

If the White Paper is to be believed, then fear of electoral fraud is the major reason for a change to individual electoral registration and for this happening before the next Westminster election. The White Paper refers to the findings of an Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe report regarding the recommendation of an identification requirement to safeguard against fraudulent registration. However, the OSCE was informed of that problem by representatives of political parties when they gave evidence, so this is a circular argument. We tell the OSCE there is a problem, it writes a report saying that we have identified a problem and then we use its report to justify action. That is not evidence-based decision making.

From the testimony provided in the White Paper, it seems that fear of fraud rather than actual fraud is the problem. The attitudinal survey quoted in the White Paper is evidence not that the current system is not working but merely that media stories have raised awareness of the possibility of fraud. Those are two very different things. Perhaps for my party more than anything else I am concerned that the proposals, which aim to tackle what appears to be limited electoral fraud, might lead to unintended consequences.

Electoral registration has greater relevance than ever following the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, which the Minister drove through last year. The Act will create constituencies designed to have voter numbers within 5% of a UK constituency mean that is predicated upon the number of electors on the electoral roll rather than in the actual adult population. That is the key point. As we have consistently said in our criticisms, the formation of these new constituencies ignores community, historical and geographical links. We saw that last week in Wales, where some of the proposed constituencies are not very practical.

We are also worried by the size of some of the proposed mega-constituencies in Wales of more than 1,500 square miles, which is an incredible size. Apart from that, to be fair, the Boundary Commission for Wales has done a good job, especially in Carmarthenshire. My point, though, is that non-registration becomes crucial because not only are non-registered people disfranchised and unable to vote but their non-registration increases the actual population of the constituency. Full registration must therefore be the principal aim of any change in registration, and it is very unclear from the Government’s proposals to date how the changes will bring that about.

The same is true of suggestions that a voluntary registration scheme should be introduced. The Electoral Commission estimates that a voluntary registration scheme, as suggested in paragraph 74 of the White Paper, may see a significant drop in the number of relevant adults on the electoral register, from around 90% to as low as 65%. That would clearly not assist in full registration, and given the introduction of the new population link for constituency boundaries, the impact of the change would be significant and would require the electoral map to be wholly redrawn once again to reflect the changes and ignore those we might describe as the non-people, as well as potentially disfranchising more than a third of our adult population. As we already know, electoral participation is skewed towards particular parts of society and to lose the participation of those who are more transitory or migratory, and less interested in politics, would have a strong impact on our society and our politics.

I have been very good by butchering my speech to keep it within eight minutes. I conclude by noting that I hold deep reservations that the measures proposed in the White Paper will not assist in increasing the number of adults on the electoral register, and may have negative unintended consequences on voter registration and constituencies. Electoral registration is an issue that must have cross-party consensus and I hope that that can be achieved before any changes are introduced.

17:21

[Mr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

We have heard a lot this afternoon about lack of registration, but I am particularly keen to talk about the number of fraudulent applications on electoral registers. As a consequence, I welcome the Government’s plans for an overhaul of the electoral registration process.

Ever since the introduction of the Representation of the People Act 2000, which allowed postal voting on demand, we have witnessed abuses across the country. Under election law, anyone from a Commonwealth country can vote in a general election if they are resident in the UK, but names can be added to the electoral roll and people can become eligible for a postal vote without anyone checking their identities or whether they are actually in the country. At the last election, the Metropolitan police examined 28 claims of major abuses across 12 London boroughs against accusations that political activists were packing the electoral roll at the last minute with the names of relatives living overseas, or were simply inventing phantom voters.

During my election campaign in 2010, we saw an increase in the number of postal vote applications from homes in multiple occupation. It was certainly a contrast to the number of voters in single-family homes. I have also received many anecdotal comments from constituents who witnessed the fact that there were duplicate names and mass entries on the register from houses and flats with a small number of bedrooms. I have discussed the issue with my local authority, which has confirmed its active interest in such irregularities.

I stress that I have no criticism of the professionalism of the electoral returning officer and her staff. They find themselves in a position where they have to follow the registration process, which includes sending two forms to households and if no response is received following that up with a canvasser. In some cases, local authorities remove the names, but Barnet allows names to roll over to the following year. The Government’s proposals will remove that uncertainty and we shall know exactly who is in the property and when.

In September last year, I raised with the Leader of the House the problem of individuals who make multiple applications at different addresses by registering at a property they own but at which they do not reside. He said in his response:

“It is an offence to provide false information to electoral returning officers, and if that happens I hope they would pursue it. As my hon. Friend will know, we are introducing individual electoral registration, which will reduce the opportunity for fraud because people will have to provide some evidence of identity before they are added to the register.—[Official Report, 8 September 2011; Vol. 532, c.561-2.]

[Siobhain McDonagh]

Will the hon. Gentleman address the point that his Government’s assessment of the proposal admits that fraudulent over-registration is rare?

[Mr Offord]

The Government can say that, but I can only speak on behalf of my constituents; we have found evidence to the contrary.

I have reported some of my suspicions to the Metropolitan police but their response was a scratching of their collective head. I reported the accusations to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan- Howe and received a response from Detective Chief Superintendent Richard Martin of the specialist crime directorate who advised me:

“As you correctly state it is within the will of the Police to investigate issues relating to Electoral Offences…In exercising this discretion the Commissioner must take into account the public interest in pursuing a criminal investigation.”

The list cited by DCS Martin for lack of action by the police included

“whether an alternative remedy is available, whether an investigation has been undertaken by a regulatory body or governing profession, whether civil as opposed to criminal proceedings would lead to a more appropriate solution, whether the matters have become stale, the extent to which criminal proceedings may amount to an abuse of the legal process, the proportionality of instigating a police investigation having regard to the stigma which attaches to a criminal conviction”.

All those mean that the police will not take any action.

The Government say that, in addition to trust and security, ensuring that the electoral register is as complete as possible is central to the credibility of our electoral system and the basis of our democratic process, and we all agree on that here today, but the current system for registering to vote relies on trust that those who register are indeed eligible.

As Labour Front Benchers have tabled the motion, they need to answer some questions, particularly about a candidate in the Greater London authority elections who resides in Westminster, in Westbourne Grove, and registers himself on the electoral register with his girlfriend at his permanent residence, but has continued to allow himself to be registered at a second property he owns in the London borough of Barnet that is inhabited by his tenant. If that is not legally wrong, it is certainly morally wrong, and it is dishonest to mislead voters into presuming that the candidate lives locally.

Where would Labour Front Benchers say that that person lived? For sure, many Members of the House have access to two properties, and the law states that people who have two homes are allowed to register at both addresses, but it is an offence to vote more than once in a general election, although such people may vote in both areas at local elections. The Representation of the People Act also states that the person may register only at an address where they are freely able to return. That means people such as students living at their parents’ home, or even MPs returning to a family home in their constituency who have a property in London. It does not include landlords who rent out their properties and then decide that it may be electorally advantageous to them to maintain their entry on a second electoral register elsewhere from their permanent residence.

I shall vote against the Opposition motion—not solely on partisan lines, but because the measures outlined by the Government will address concerns of which I have experience. The proposal that every elector will have to register individually and provide identifying information that will be used to verify their entitlement to be included on the electoral register is vital. Only once their application has been verified can a person be added to the register.

In addition, the Government’s proposal to change electoral registration legislation to put in place a framework that reflects more closely how people choose to engage with the Government and create flexibility for the system to keep pace with technological developments is another initiative that I welcome. That will help to make registration easier, more convenient and more efficient, opening the way for other methods of registration, such as telephone and online. Those are all areas that younger people are particularly keen on. The idea of completing a paper form that comes through the door each autumn or when people move house is as antiquated as electoral law itself.

These measures will help to restore trust in the electoral system, which has been eroded in the past decade by legislation that was perhaps well meaning, but which was wide open to abuse. I believe that that is what most of us here want, so I shall support the Government on the issue.

17:28

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

I apologise to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to the House for necessarily being out of the Chamber at about 4 o’clock. I apologise in particular to the Minister, who is always most courteous in such circumstances.

If the House has any sacred duty, and that is arguable, it is that we should ensure that the British people are able to elect those of us who come to this Chamber. That is one of the most important things that any of us in the House can stand up for and fight for. Today, we have a chance to do that, but we need to consider one other thing. The hon. Member for Hendon (Mr Offord) was right to talk about abuse of the electoral registration system, but the biggest abuse of that system is not the five or six cases nationwide that went to court on fraud charges, but the fact that all of us in the Chamber have at least 10,000 people in our constituency who are not on the register to vote. That is the biggest abuse, and it is the most important thing to put right when we look at individual voter registration.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

Is my hon. Friend aware that in the ICM poll for the Electoral Commission, which has been cited as the basis for much of the legislation, barely 2% of people thought that registering to vote was very unsafe, and that 20 times as many people were satisfied with the way in which they registered to vote as the number who were dissatisfied?

[Mr Allen]

My hon. Friend makes her case eloquently, and she is a great champion of ensuring that members of the public in her constituency and elsewhere are on the register. We need to support that sentiment, and only we in the Chamber can do so.

We do that partly through the activities of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, which I am fortunate to chair. It is an active Committee, and some of its members are in the Chamber: my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) and the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths). I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), who spoke on behalf of the Committee when I was absent due to ill health when this matter was last debated.

We have worked together, and we have worked with the Government, to try to make the proposal better. Given the exchanges that have taken place, the House is in severe danger of doing the job that members of the public elected it to do. The Government have submitted a pre-legislative proposal to the Select Committee, which is how things should happen. The Select Committee responded with non-partisan efforts to determine a better Bill and to make better proposals, some of which have already been heard by the Government. Today, we are having a measured debate. There may not be a great drama if we tend to agree on a number of the issues, but that is what the House should do when proposed legislation is introduced, so that we end up with better legislation.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a good speech and an important contribution to the debate. Will he comment on the concerns, particularly in urban areas, about the change to individual registration without safeguards? Those of us who represent such areas will have far more people to represent, often with far greater problems.

[Mr Allen]

My hon. Friend, as always, is well ahead of me, and I shall come on to those points.

Something that unites everyone in the House is the feeling that individual voter registration is right. We have heard concern from Members from all parts of the House that unless the measure is implemented effectively we could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I do not think that anyone wants that to happen. Listening to us in the House and making sure that this is done properly will ensure that the measure—what the Electoral Commission called the “biggest change” in the franchise since the introduction of universal suffrage—is implemented effectively so that everyone can benefit, rather than partially or going off at half-cock and getting it all wrong.

Our anxiety in the Select Committee fell into several parts. The blockbuster came when we heard from the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators about the fact that if we did not do this right, not only might 10,000 people on average in every constituency not appear on the register, as only 90% of people would register, but that that figure could drop by a third, making the situation even worse, perhaps going down to 60%. That was a shock to the Select Committee and to members of all parties represented on it. I know that that is not the Minister’s intention, and that he will keep listening to ensure that as many people as possible are on the register.

Our anxieties—I shall put them to the Minister again—covered a number of areas. First, I pay tribute to him and to his colleagues for listening to what we had to say on the opt-out: the tick box saying “Don’t bother me any more. I don’t want to be registered. Leave me alone.” The fact that the Government listened to those representations very early bodes well for future amendments.

Secondly, on the issue of registration and whether non-registration should be an offence, I ask the Government to think again. We heard what my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) said about the evidence from Rhyl. He made a compelling case that there may well be a better way to deal with the matter. Perhaps it is not by means of a £1,000 fine or by taking up half the space of the form with bold red capitals, but maybe it is. I ask the Government to take the matter away and think again. There are people who need a little encouragement, a little nudge to register, and across the House we should consider the best way to do that.

My third point concerns the full household canvass. I do not know whether the Minister said anything about that, but I hope he is keeping an open mind as the process develops. One of the particular concerns of the Committee were the areas that already have high rates of under-registration. We need to consider whether there is something we can do across the board or in those specific circumstances to ensure that something is done in areas that are brought to our attention as having a large unregistered population. I hope the Minister will look at that.

Another point that came up repeatedly was the funding of electoral registration officers. I will not get into the subject of local government expenditure and reductions, but we cannot put a price on democracy. If additional resources are needed or existing resources ought to be ring-fenced, we would all commend the Government for thinking further about that. I say no more than that. I do not offer a magic solution. I do not propose any more than was suggested in Committee, but I hope that electoral registration and returning officers locally are given the sort of support that will enable thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands of people to participate in our democracy, as is their right.

I guess colleagues have very much in mind yet another redistribution of parliamentary seats and boundary changes. If there is a catastrophic fall in the numbers of people on the registers, all of us, regardless of party, nation or region within the United Kingdom, will again face the merry-go-round of boundary redistribution. All I will say to the Minister is that if this debate is an exemplar of the way we can conduct our business in the House and reach as close to consensus as we can, perhaps the way in which previous Bills have been dealt with is an example of how not to do it. Let us not inadvertently have a rerun of the boundary changes under which we are all labouring now, with the accidental reduction of a register causing yet another boundary change. I hope that lesson can be learned, otherwise Members in the House will be representing numbers rather than places and people.

Finally, I commend the Government and my Front-Bench team for the way we have managed through the parliamentary process—of course there have been the ding-dongs, the public exchange of insults and so on—to make a better proposal than we started with. I hope very much that the Government, who have listened, will continue to listen and that we will have a piece of legislation that we can be proud of and that introduces individual voter registration in a way that we would all want.

17:38

[Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)]

I would like to cover a couple of elements connected with the prospective legislation though perhaps not the main business. The Minister makes eye contact with me, so I am sure he can imagine what one of those elements will be. First, I would like to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) and his Committee for the work that they have done, although I take issue with one aspect of that, to which I shall return as the second of my two points.

My first point relates to multiple property owners. The hon. Member for Hendon (Mr Offord) referred to this issue, but it has a particular resonance in constituencies such as mine where many properties are second or holiday homes. I pay tribute to a local campaigner, Mr Angus Lamond, who stood as an independent candidate for Cornwall council in the first elections to that new authority in 2009. He stood in a coastal ward with a high number of such properties and noticed that their owners were being targeted in a particular way to get them out to vote. According to the Electoral Commission’s guidance, it seems that many of them should not have been on the local electoral register, because we are talking not about people who divide their time relatively equally between two places, but about those who spend a few weekends or a few weeks in the summer in their properties and who are, according to my definition, in no way resident in the community. Some of those people have had second homes for many years and play an active role in the community, for example by fundraising for the local lifeboat, but as a general principle it ought to be the people who live in the community who get to vote, particularly in local authority elections.

I have been told that it is perfectly legal for people to be registered in a number of places and to vote in other local elections on the same day by postal vote. I would like us to consider whether that is right, because by allowing that we are effectively saying that those who are fortunate enough to own more than one property can have more of a say in what goes on in this country than those who are not, and I find that very difficult. If we are to have a system that recognised that some people genuinely live in two parts of the country for different parts of the year, whether because of their business lives, family circumstances or studies, I do not have a problem with making them specify which home they regard as their primary address. If one is talking to our great friends in Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs for capital gains purposes—famously, some former Members might have juggled the property they registered with HMRC as their normal residence—one should have to specify where and in which community ones lives.

If we are to have an electoral system based on constituency mandate—I, of course, favour a more proportional system—that mandate is very important and should be the same for local and national elections. Is there really a problem otherwise? Two of the constituencies in Cornwall were decided at the last general election by small majorities: one changed hands with a majority of 66 and the other was won by fewer than 500 votes. I am in no way criticising the duly elected Members of Parliament for those constituencies, who I am sure won fair and square; I am merely making the point that we are talking about sometimes very narrow margins of victory.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I am not convinced that the current proposals will address the problem that the hon. Gentleman is talking about. I wonder what his view is of the coalition Government’s decision not to go ahead with the system proposed by the previous Government, which would have enabled such cross-checking. Under the current proposals, so long as an elector provides their local electoral registration officer with their identifier, they could still register in more than one place, which I think is what he believes to be a problem.

[Dan Rogerson]

The hon. Lady makes a fair point. I have discussed this with the Minister informally and in meetings, including one that involved the constituent I mentioned earlier. I am seeking to urge the Minister to do all he can to provide local electoral registration officers with the tools they need for cross-checking so that they can be confident that the people who are presented to them are resident in the community. In the best-case scenario, we have people who are on the register and who scrupulously ensure that they vote in two places only in local elections and only in one place in general elections. Of course, some of them might vote in both places in a general election, or even in three or four places. Realistically, what electoral registration officer will have the wherewithal to indentify where an elector’s other properties are and to get hold of the marked register for those places in order to perform that cross-checking? I am genuinely concerned about that and hope that the Minister will take my comments on board and look at what can be done.

There are further connected issues. If we as a Government are moving towards more consultative referendums locally on planning and local plans, I can see a slight diversion of interest in an area between those who have a second home and those who are trying desperately to secure an affordable home when it comes to what the local plan says about, for example, the provision of affordable housing and where it might be located.

The same thing might be said of a referendum under the Localism Act 2011 to vary council tax upwards in order to provide local services, with local authorities quite rightly having to make the case to the electorate on such issues. People who are not so involved in the services in an area may still have a view on having to pay for them. The flipside of that argument is no taxation without representation, but that does not apply to council tax. With business rates, people have a big stake in a local community, but they have not had the opportunity to vote in local elections for a long time, and we should see people who have the luxury of a second property as being more in line with people who operate a business in that area, rather than as a resident paying council tax. I urge the Minister to ensure that that question is addressed as we move forward.

My second point, on which I disagree slightly with the report by the Committee chaired by the hon. Member for Nottingham North, is about the edited register, which does a huge amount of good for business. We have heard already about tackling credit card fraud, and the agencies that pursue it often use the edited register. The Salvation Army and others do fantastic work in reuniting separated families, and it has told me how much it relies on the edited register to do so. Many other practitioners in the field reunite people who have been adopted with their birth parents, and other family members who have lost contact with each other.

Work is undertaken on dormant assets and matters of probate, and the people involved all make use of the edited register, so I hope that when the Minister comes to legislate he will think carefully about how that aspect of the register is treated. I accept that for reasons of safety people should be able to opt out, and we have that safeguard in place already, but when the edited register meets so many demands in society it ought to be a provision that we retain. Charity fundraisers, a category that I did not mention, also make great use of the register, so before we throw it out we should look at what it achieves.

I support my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) on the importance of a canvass in the run-up to a general election, and many have made the point that a 2014 canvass would help a great deal with preparations for the next general election. So, although I shall happily support the Government tonight, I urge the Minister to consider carefully the key issues of the edited register and second-home voters.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I am going to reduce the time limit to six minutes in an attempt to get everybody into this part of the debate, which is due to end at 6.40 pm for the Front Benchers’ winding-up speeches. We may have a little latitude.

17:48

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate, which gives us the chance to consider what sort of democracy we want in this country. There is, as several Members have said, a distinct choice when it comes to how we see voting: it is either a civic duty or, at the other end of the spectrum, a consumer choice. The current system is clearly based on the principle of civic duty, but I note the Minister’s earlier description of the second form as an invitation to register, and the Government’s proposals move us significantly towards the consumer choice end of the spectrum.

Notwithstanding the Government’s back-pedalling on the opt-out, which I welcome, there remains substantial concern across the board about the impact of their proposals on the number of people who will be knocked off the electoral register. We know who those people are: they are those who are more mobile, younger people, those from black and minority ethnic communities, and those who are poorer.

I recognise the case for individual voter registration, but I am not convinced that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, particularly if it is implemented in the way the Government plan. Household registration is effectively a census. It is a statement of all those who live in a house and are eligible to vote. Individual registration, without the efforts to secure the registration of every individual being substantially enhanced, is an unambiguous move towards consumer choice. Far from strengthening registration efforts, the Government’s plans will weaken them.

Let me share a tale of two constituencies—mine and that of my neighbour, the Deputy Prime Minister. Mine is in the heart of the city, it is multicultural, and it has large council estates, houses in multiple occupation and two universities. Already, 17% of households have nobody on the register. The Deputy Prime Minister’s seat consists largely of Sheffield’s leafy suburbs and is the only traditionally Conservative seat in south Yorkshire. It has only 4% of households with nobody on the register. Assuming that we both had an average constituency of 74,000 registered voters, the Deputy Prime Minister would represent 77,000 people and I would represent 89,000. If we sank to a level of 60% registration and the boundaries were redrawn, I would represent 123,000 people —nearly twice as many.

Taken with the boundary changes, the effect of this system is clear: in 2015, people in seats such as mine will be substantially under-represented and people in seats such as the Deputy Prime Minister’s will be over-represented. That will be exacerbated in 2020. The Deputy Prime Minister has, rather extravagantly, compared his ambitions for our democracy with the Great Reform Act of 1832. However, this is the Great Reform Act in reverse. That Act increased representation in our cities. The drift of the Government’s agenda for our democracy will reduce representation in our cities.

I will mention one particular sector of voters, young people, who were also mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh). In many households that I canvassed in the lead-up to the general election, it was clear that there were young people on the register who would not have been on it if it had not been for mum and dad putting them there. Because they were on it, they said, after discussion, that they would vote, although not necessarily for me.

One section of young people that has raised its concerns directly with me is students. I understand why the Deputy Prime Minister might not be keen on students voting in quite the same numbers at the next general election as at the last. At the university of Sheffield, there is block registration of all eligible students in university accommodation. That will end with the proposed legislation. One student officer at the university, Harry Horton, made a strong case that he asked me to raise. He pointed out that students often move houses on an annual basis, and sometimes even more regularly. Students also often live in houses in multiple occupancy. When registering to vote, any member of the household can fill in the form on behalf of the whole group and register everyone together. That makes a difficult process much easier and ultimately increases turnout in elections. It is easier to convince one person to do a job than eight.

The same sort of case can be made for all the groups that are likely to lose out as a result of the Government’s measures. I do not have the time to go through them. I say simply that if the Government do not think again, it will be no wonder if the legislation is seen by many as gerrymandering—putting party advantage before democratic benefit.

17:54

[Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)]

May I add my plaudits to those of hon. Members who have gone before? I do not wish to play Yoko to the John of the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) in this love-in. However, I congratulate the Minister on the way in which he has brought forward this proposal. As a newly elected Member of Parliament, I think this is exactly the way in which legislation should be introduced and discussed. It should be done in a considered way in order to develop legislation that works for people. The reason we are here is to have legislation that improves the lot of our country.

The Minister has been generous with his time. There has been a huge amount of pre-legislative scrutiny in the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee and he has been incredibly generous in discussing the issues that we have raised with him in a number of grillings. Not only that, he has gone away and thought about the issues and come back to the Committee with changes and amendments. That has helped the work of the Committee. I also pay tribute to our Chairman, the hon. Member for Nottingham North. He has managed to unite a group of MPs with wide-ranging views on this issue in the report. I commend it to all colleagues.

It is interesting that the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane), in the kind of speech that we have become accustomed to expect from him, prayed in aid the Electoral Commission in saying that this policy was a throwback to ancient times and a terrible thing. The reality is that in all the deliberations and discussions of the Committee and among all the people who gave evidence to us, not one person said that they did not believe that individual elector registration was the right thing to do. We should bear that in mind.

I also pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), who made a considered and conciliatory argument. I appreciated the tone of his speech. The constituents who are avidly watching this debate in Burton and across the country will appreciate that this is an incredibly important issue. It is to our credit that we are conducting this debate in the way that we are.

In the few minutes that I have, I want to talk first about the principle. It cannot be right that in 2012 we are clinging to a patriarchal or matriarchal system in which the head of the household is responsible for whether people are registered to vote in general elections. The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), who is no longer in her place, talked about the relationship between people and the Government as a contract. She went on to say that the relationship was not between a person and the Government, but between their mum and the Government, because it was their mum who had registered them.

Opposition Members have talked about the increasing number of people who are not registered to vote. I gently point out that it was under 13 years of Labour Administration and under the current system that those numbers increased. I argue that individual voter registration —giving people a connection with, a right to and responsibility for their vote—could, if it is used properly, connect with people at an early age and encourage them to take an interest in whether they should vote.

I urge the Minister to take on board the potential of new technology. I recently registered to change the photograph on my driving licence. The 18 months or so since I had become an MP had taken a toll and I needed to change the picture. The Government gateway was an amazing tool. I went on, registered and gave some basic information, and three days later my new photo driving licence arrived with my photograph and my signature. That kind of technology could be hugely helpful in getting people to register to vote.

One issue is people registering on the electoral register to commit fraud. I point, of course, to the recent report by the Metropolitan Police Service, which analysed 29,000 pieces of information that had been found on forged and counterfeit documents. Forty-five per cent. of the addresses were on the electoral register fraudulently. It is clear that people are using the ease with which one can get on the electoral register to commit fraud.

I urge the Minister to continue to listen. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee is grateful for his changes to the tick-box system, but we have some concerns about the roll-over in 2014. We ask that he consider the recommendations in our report on the use of specific, targeted resources in areas where there is low registration, to ensure that everybody has the right to vote.

18:00

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Under the Government’s proposals as they stand, people who do not register individually by the end of autumn 2015 will find themselves removed from the register, and therefore ineligible to vote. That will have a particular effect in Wales, because the Welsh Assembly Government elections and all-out council elections will both take place in 2016. What happens in the autumn of 2015 is therefore crucial, and taking liberties with experimentation at that time does not seem the best way forward. However, given that the Government propose that programme, I should like to suggest some ways in which matters could be improved.

It is obviously very important that every effort is made to ensure that individual registration is carried out effectively and does not result in a drop in registration from 90% to 65%, which is what the Electoral Commission has suggested may happen. We are proud of our reputation as a well respected democracy, and we should ensure that our voter registration percentage is as high as possible.

I certainly welcome the use of cross-referencing, with the use of information from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, for example, to help identify those who have not registered. However, we need far more than that to make a success of the reform. As the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee has stated:

“The Government should publish a detailed implementation plan alongside the introduction of legislation”

for individual elector registration, so that electoral registration officers and the Electoral Commission can comment on its feasibility. We need to know what measures the Government will take and what resources they will use to maximise voter registration and ensure that some of the most vulnerable groups in the most deprived areas are not disfranchised.

It seems very confusing that the household will send back the household survey form, and then people will also have to return individual forms. A lot of people will think that they have already registered, and there will be plenty of complaints about both the bureaucracy and cost of the process.

How will the Government maximise registration and prevent a dramatic drop in registration rates? We need both sanctions and incentives. Several Members have mentioned sanctions, and there is no doubt that without a proper sanction, whatever form it might take—my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) suggested a fixed penalty system—there will not be sufficient incentive to register to vote.

I am horrified by the proposal to do away with the annual canvass. The Government should be doing precisely the opposite and providing funding for councils to do extra work and a thorough job. Such funding needs to be ring-fenced, particularly in the difficult economic circumstances in which we find ourselves. If the money is not ring-fenced, it will clearly not be used for that purpose. Furthermore, additional funds need to be allocated to councils with a large number of difficult-to-register people, for instance in wards with transient populations or with large numbers of people from groups among whom voter registration is known to be low.

We want to know what plans the Government have to make a success of individual voter registration. The Minister mentioned school visits, but we will need much more than that. Such visits may be a way to encompass 16 to 18-year-olds, but when we talk about young people we can mean those up to the age of 30 or so, many of whom are not registered to vote. We need a raft of awareness-raising measures and a proper, professional advertising campaign. We need to use every single means that there is—the internet, television and so on—and be really determined. It is no good having a half-hearted campaign.

We need people to have a lot of opportunities to register, whether at the supermarket or where they buy their lottery tickets. The Government need to put some thought into where people can register to vote. We need online registration, obviously, but also online advertising. We also need a painstaking door-to-door canvass, because the canvassers will have to return to houses again and again to get all the individual forms. They may meet mum on the doorstep, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) said, but mum will say, “Well, I’ve got to fill in all these forms, and I’ve got to find so-and-so, and I’ve got to find his national insurance number.” She will have to fill in all the forms, and maybe she will have to ring a couple of her children to find out their NI numbers—I am sure she will remember their dates of birth. The extra process may mean canvassers going back more than once to collect forms. We therefore need the input of an annual canvass.

Councils themselves also need incentives and sanctions to a certain degree. It is very odd, therefore, that there will not be any monitoring of overall registration levels by the Electoral Commission. There is no doubt that such reporting provides councils with an incentive to improve and people with an opportunity to ask electoral registration officers why the registration percentages are not very good in their area. It is very disappointing that that will not take place.

I hope that the Minister will work towards better implementation, getting plans out very early and ensuring that there are sufficient resources; £104 million is only 50p per person, which is hardly the cost of posting a couple of items, never mind people going around and knocking on doors. The matter needs some attention paid to it, and I hope that he will take that on board.

18:05

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

This is probably the first Opposition day debate that I have attended in which the Opposition substantially agree with the Government. That is quite strange, but I am not responsible for the Opposition’s debate selection.

The Minister is a talented, urbane and civilised chap, if I may say so, and he is far too polite to point out the confusion on the Labour Benches. Members will remember that not long ago we heard the comments of the deputy leader of the Labour party at the party conference. With her customary exaggeration and hyperbole, she said that the Government’s proposals would

“push people off the electoral register—deny them their vote, deny them their voice. The numbers are going to be huge”.

That was palpably nonsense, because that was never the point of the change.

The hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) got to the nub of the issue by showing the Labour party’s proprietorial approach towards certain groups of voters—“We know what’s best for you. You’re our voters, and we think the proposals will unnecessarily affect your exercise of the franchise.” That is simply not the case. Today, from some speakers we are hearing politics over principle. It ill behoves them to take that approach, given that when their party was in government it absolutely refused to do anything about the under-registration of military personnel or overseas voters, for example, despite months and years of protestations from Conservative Members. Those are both groups of people who are legitimately entitled to vote in elections. Let us not, in our rush to a consensus, ignore the reality of the 13 years of the Labour Government and their record of under-registration. Hon. Members will know that in 2008 one national newspaper managed to register the name Gus Troobev, an anagram of “bogus voter”, on 31 different electoral rolls in one day.

In Peterborough, for reasons that Members may know, we have had a close acquaintance with electoral fraud, and I draw the Minister’s attention to the issue of personation. In one ward in Peterborough, we now have four separate CCTV cameras in four polling districts because of the threat of personation. In particular, I draw his attention to the Representation of the People Act 1983 and subsequent legislation, which prescribe the actions that presiding officers can take in polling stations if they fear a case of personation. That does not touch directly on the current change, but it is nevertheless a very important issue, and we have had serious problems with it.

The Minister will know that Operation Hooper, the investigation that took place into postal vote fraud at the June 2004 local elections, took four years to be resolved and resulted in the imprisonment of six individuals, three Labour and three Conservative. It cost Cambridgeshire constabulary a huge amount of money, and the cost to an ordinary voter of electoral fraud is another issue to consider.

If the proposals are some sort of wicked Tory plot, which they are to the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd, who is rather excitable but passionate, it is a strange plot, because it involves substantial consensus among the academic community, including Dr Toby James of Swansea university, Stuart Wilks-Heeg of Liverpool university, who has been mentioned, and others. The proposals have involved much consultation; flexibility and pragmatism; the data-matching pilots, of which Peterborough city council is one example; transitional arrangements; an exhaustive and detailed Select Committee investigation; and the promise of funding. In addition, the Government have admitted that certain proposals needed to be nuanced, such as the opt-in, opt-out proposals.

Let us remember that in 2008 the Council of Europe stated:

“It does not take an experienced election observer, or election fraudster, to see that the combination of the household registration system without personal identifiers and the postal vote on demand arrangements make the election system in Great Britain very vulnerable to electoral fraud.”

At the time of the 2009 legislation, even Peter Facey, of Unlock Democracy, said:

“We still have 19th-century regulations for a 21st-century situation.”

It is vital that we have eventually reached a consensus, despite references in the debate to the boundary changes. Those references were erroneous because effectively all that matters in respect of the boundary changes is the electorate on the enumeration date of 1 December 2010. Those changes are irrelevant to the substance of this debate.

There is a consensus on voter registration. It should have been brought about many months if not years ago, but I am glad that Labour Front Benchers have had a damascene conversion and understand that the Government’s proposals are about clarity and integrity and, to be fair, the fact that people can choose not to vote, which we must respect. The Government have listened and are going in the right direction, and I look forward to the details of the legislation.

18:11

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

The fight for the franchise and the struggle for citizens to exercise a democratic voice through the ballot box stretch deep into our history. Before and beyond Magna Carta, there has been a battle to establish a just and fair settlement. From the Chartists and the suffragettes to the lowering of the voting age of 18—there are now arguments for votes at 16—there has been an ongoing struggle to ensure that everyone in this country has an equal voice at the ballot box, whatever their class, gender, age, ethnicity or creed. That struggle continues throughout the world, to the far reaches of the planet. The events of last year’s Arab spring remind us—as other events in the world have and will again—how the right to a voice and the right to vote are hard won.

The principle of individual voter registration, therefore, is one that all hon. Members can support; the issue is how the principle is translated into action. The Government suggesting that there should no longer be compulsory registration was a breathtaking departure. I am pleased that the Minister today echoed the Deputy Prime Minister by saying that he is minded to move away from that approach, but if he is so minded, why does he not just say that he is moving away from it and spell out how he will do so?

The removal of any enforcement coupled with a speeded up timetable will result in fewer people registering to vote. According to the Government’s impact assessment, the transition to individual voter registration could result in 7 million or 20% of voters disappearing from the register.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

It is good that the Government plan to use HMRC and DVLA data to boost registration, but does my hon. Friend agree that the private sector could be helpful too? For instance, credit reference agencies, which help people to get mortgages, could help to identify voters for registration who might otherwise be missed?

[Nic Dakin]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, which I shall touch on later in my speech.

The danger is that younger voters, poorer voters, voters from ethnic minorities and mobile city dwellers are the most likely to fall through the net. The register is used not only for credit referencing but for jury service, local government and other public service finance settlements, and future constituency boundaries. It is important in our civic society, not just for voting. It is therefore crucial to this Government’s legitimacy and credibility that a measure as sensitive as individual electoral registration is progressed carefully and in a way that does not disfranchise individuals.

There is cross-party agreement on the principle, but delivery needs to be cross-party and consensual too. Transitional arrangements need to be put in place that will not cause significant upset. For example, voters who currently have postal votes should not be compelled to register for those votes on a tight time scale if they do not immediately move to individual registration. Proper transitional arrangements should be put in place to support people rather than coerce them.

The move to IER should be seen as an opportunity to extend the franchise, not to limit it. Indeed, I think the Minister was taking that line in his opening remarks. Any change to IER should be accompanied by an intensive campaign to ensure that the register is as near complete as possible. Such a campaign will require innovative approaches, such as the automatic addition to the register of people who pay council tax or are council tenants, and those who are in receipt of benefits or who have driving licences. Information from credit referencing agencies could be used, and perhaps students could be registered at the age of 16 by schools and colleges. The Minister helpfully drew attention to best practice in Northern Ireland, which needs to be built on in other parts of the UK. What about the use of election day registration, as happens in an increasing number of US states? The Minister shakes his head, but we are talking about making the register as complete as possible, and the opportunity to vote throughout an election period would significantly widen the franchise at the point of its greatest relevance to citizens. It is therefore worthy of consideration.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) drew attention in her passionate contribution to the importance of the annual canvass in ensuring that members of the public are properly registered. Jean Basell, a constituent of mine, has done excellent work over many years as a canvasser in north Lincolnshire. She says that without the annual canvass, there will be a significant fall in the number of people registered, and she is somebody with experience of going from door to door in all weathers to lead the canvass.

The Electoral Reform Society was established in 1884. The words of Sir John Lubbock, its founder, should ring in our ears as we contemplate the changes. He said:

“I trust that Great Britain, the mother of Parliaments, may once more take the lead among the great nations of the world by securing for herself a House of Commons which shall really represent the nation.”

We have a duty individually and collectively to move forward in a way that preserves that ambition and integrity.

18:17

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

This debate, which is on voting in this country, is one that is naturally at the heart of our democratic process. In the past, electoral fraud was a small, minor problem, and few people worried about it, but in my view that has changed. The prevailing view is now that electoral fraud is much more widespread than it once was. The numbers being investigated and convicted show that we are certainly going downhill at a rate of knots when it comes to accountability.

In the past, the electoral register was accurate, and fraud was not a major problem. Anyone committing fraud would have needed the bravery to appear at least twice, and perhaps even three times, at the polling booth before they were caught. From what we can tell, that did not happen very often. Today, as a result of postal votes on demand, people can vote without ever having to see anyone. That has led to an unknown number of people listing fictitious residents at their properties and voting by post on their behalf.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

Will the hon. Gentleman explain his source for his last assertion—that large numbers of people are registering multiple times—because his Government’s review suggested that there was a negligible amount of such behaviour?

[David Morris]

I am speaking from personal experience. I have stood in three seaside resorts and have come across situations—including in the 2010 election—in which voters have died six months prior to their votes being cast.

Listing fictitious residents has led to an unknown number of people—

[Siobhain McDonagh]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way? Presumably he has contacted the police about that.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order.

[David Morris]

This has led to an unknown number of people listing fictitious residents at their properties and voting by post on their behalf. The vital failsafe in our system—namely, going to the ballot box in person—has been removed. This means we need a new failsafe, and I think that that is agreed on both sides of the House. There are various ways we can do this and I know the last Government saw ID cards as the answer. I do not.

I support fully the proposal to have individual voter registration. It is simple, cheap to administer—unlike ID cards—and fits in with the existing system, because it works on the same principle. Individual voter registration requires very few changes to our system, and we know from Northern Ireland that it works. But in today’s debate, some hon. Members have got two different issues muddled up. One is the issue of fraud that IER seeks to address, and the other is how we encourage more people to go to the ballot box. Making fraud easier will undoubtedly boost turnout, but it will not encourage more real people to vote. People do not bother to put themselves on the electoral register because they do not feel engaged, and do not want to vote. Similarly, there are millions of people on the register who do not want to vote. We need to make those people feel that their votes count.

It is not surprising that people cannot be bothered when 70% of our laws are edicts from an unelected Government in Brussels. People feel as if they cannot make a difference whichever way they vote, and that is the issue that we need to address. I really believe that repatriation of powers from Brussels, devolving more decisions to local councils and electing more police commissioners will help to engage people in the democratic process, but this has nothing to do with individual voter registration.

Individual voter registration is about reducing fraud and building confidence in the system. Today, once again, we see that electoral fraud and confidence in the system seem to be an entirely secondary considerations. They must be our central considerations, not least because people will have less confidence in the system if they feel they will be outvoted by electoral fraudsters. How many people will bother trudging to the ballot box when they rightly or wrongly believe that their views will be overridden by the fraudsters?

Maintaining the status quo will continue to undermine our system, so we do need to encourage more people to the ballot box, but the way to do this is with greater democracy. We need to stop electoral fraud, and the way to do this is to make people register individually.

18:22

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

I want to address one or two issues that have not yet been fully addressed. Reference has been made to the use of data matching to find out where people are so that letters can be sent to get them to register. It is very important that we assess how effective that is, and I hope that the Minister is minded to bring forward the reports on that at the earliest possible opportunity and that we have access to that information when we debate the proposed Bill.

Data matching will not be easy. It is said glibly, “We will have data matching”, but the Select Committee was told that some of the exercises have proved to be a lot more difficult than people anticipated. In Southwark, for example, 25% of Department for Work and Pensions records could not be reconciled with the records held by the local authority. That does not surprise me, especially in a place with a lot of flats and tenements. Addresses in Edinburgh, for example, can be recorded in a number of weird and wonderful ways. Traditional approaches, such as numbering each flat 1, 2, 3 and so on, have been replaced by abbreviations such as PF1, PF2 and so on. Someone might apply for a benefit and put their address as 3/1, but another person might record that address as PF2. Data matching is not, therefore, a magic implement, and we must have the opportunity to assess whether it has worked.

The hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) suggested that the issue of the boundaries is irrelevant because the register has been set for the current boundary review. Indeed it has, but the problem will arise in 2015, when the register used for the boundary review will not be the one used in the preceding general election. The Committee has suggested that it would be sensible to use the register as it stands at the general election earlier that year, because it contains the carry-over. That approach would run the least possible risk of our ending up with another set of boundary changes based on a low level of registration. While a low level of registration is not inevitable if we really work at it, the Northern Ireland experience tells us that it is likely to happen at least in the first instance. Whatever happens in the more distant future, I hope that the Government accept that particular recommendation.

[Mark Durkan]

Northern Ireland has had more frequent and relatively positive mentions in this debate than in any other debate in which no Northern Ireland Member has sought to catch the Speaker’s eye. In respect of the snakes and ladders experience that Northern Ireland had with individual electoral registration, I encourage Members to note that registration efforts post-election tended to be especially difficult. The Minister has said that he will rely on a canvass in 2015 after the general election, but registration post-election often means that people assume that because they voted at the election they do not need to register. That is one of the lessons that need to be learned.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, which supports the point that I was trying to make.

I am also concerned about the issue of postal voters. I am not suggesting that the system is perfect because voters already have to overcome certain hurdles. The signature issue clearly causes problems, especially when signatures change, and people’s votes have been discounted for that reason, but people—especially older people—have been used to getting a postal vote regularly for some time. I am sure that coalition Members have gone door-knocking and have encountered people who say, “I think I have a postal vote, but I’m not sure.” We are usually very reassuring, saying, “Don’t worry, it will come.” During an election campaign, we might say that they are coming out next week. The problem is that many people in that situation will not appreciate that to get their postal vote they will have to go through the individual registration process. Yes, they will be left on the register, at least until May 2015, but they will lose their postal vote. If they lost their postal vote, many of them will simply not be able to register their vote, and that is a very important point.

Given that we have certain safeguards in place for postal voting, and we are allowing the general carry-over, I do not see it as such a big change to suggest that we carry over the postal voting aspect of people’s registration at that stage. As the system beds in, that will probably become less necessary, but at this initial stage there is a great risk that people will discover that they are unable to vote in the next general election—not to mention the boundary issue.

What we really need to do on registration—and no one has done it well enough, although some local authorities are better than others—is to look at imaginative ways to get more people registered. Registration differs so much across cities—even across a ward. I was out door-knocking only yesterday and in one street of terraced houses almost everybody was on the register. Just around the corner, I found a block of six flats where only two households were registered. The two places are not fantastically different sociologically, but flats tend to have higher turnover, and that is the important difference. If we crack that problem, it will make a tremendous difference, but individual voter registration alone will not do it. In fact, the opposite is true, because it will be difficult to get people in multiply occupied flats to register.

The best electoral registration is where local authorities put a lot of resources into doing it and target, not necessarily everybody—a universal door-knocking exercise is not necessary—but those places where there are known to be deficiencies. We know where they are, and that would build up registration, which should be the priority at the moment. On top of that, I hope that the Government accept the recommendations made by the Select Committee on the proposed Bill.

18:29

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

I am grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak, particularly because this has been a debate between experts. I am not suggesting that Members are not experts in the subjects of other debates, but we have all won elections so we should know what they are about.

As other Members have said, the tone was set correctly at the beginning of the debate by the shadow Secretary of State and by my hon. Friend the Minister, who engaged in a constructive dialogue on the principle on which we are all agreed of individual voter registration.

I want to take a different approach from other hon. Members, although I support much of what they have said and have listened to the practical comments about the definition of a public duty and so on. I fully understand that, but it must be right in this day and age when we rely so much on democracy and the individual voter casting their own vote in secret that we should expect that that voter takes—and learns—responsibility by registering. I take a certain degree of umbrage at what was said by the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), although I know where she is coming from. She talked about mums doing the registering, whereas in other cases fathers do it and in others those whom everyone calls the heads of household do it. As an ex-teacher, I would ask how someone learns—

[Siobhain McDonagh]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

I will, if the hon. Lady will let me finish. How will someone learn that voting is important and that it is the responsible thing to do if someone else starts the process and puts them on the register? How will they feel that it is important? I am sure that we have all stood outside polling stations doing important things during elections and have seen that a significant number of people who are registered to vote do not have a clue about what to do, what to tick or cross or where to do it. I take on board the points made by the Minister about Northern Ireland and the education system. Perhaps we should debate on another day what we should do in our education system. As an ex-history teacher I might suggest that part of the problem is the fact that narrative history has gone, which means that many of our children have no idea about the amount of effort that went into getting the right to vote. Where do we start to instil the sense of responsibility? I agree that we should start with registration.

I said I would give way to the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I do not want to affect the time left for others who want to make speeches, but I am happy to have a chat with the hon. Gentleman afterwards.

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

I am always willing to have a chat afterwards, particularly with the hon. Lady.

My constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris), talked about fraud. I know that Labour Members have said that there are only one or two examples, but I have a suggestion for the Minister. I know that he is a listening Minister, as has been proven by this debate, on certain points. There are higher allegations of fraud in particular areas. There is not a massive amount of proof but, according to the polls, a third of the population believe that there is something dodgy about the way we vote. I commend the Minister for saying that we must try to prove to people that this system is as safe as we can get it and that individuals must therefore be responsible for registering, so that they cannot say that somebody else filled in the form for them. That message is vital. I think that somewhere there are draft proposals that people who act as proxies should by definition be registered voters. I fully support that, but I urge the Minister to go back to the old system for proxies.

With proxies, there has always been the allegation that something dodgy is involved because somebody has someone else’s vote. Before 2000, when certain laws were made a little more lax, when someone went to get a proxy they had to have a witness. Once we dropped the witness from those forms, anybody could allege anything because the party worker or candidate could get a proxy off someone and nobody else would know. It was a complicated process and the neighbour was usually the witness, but at least a third party was involved in what was seen as the most tricky element of the system. I urge the Minister to consider reintroducing that.

The issue of fraud was raised with me at the last general election. It did not affect my seat, but, in a certain seat, somebody said that they had gone to vote but somebody had already voted for them, so they came back and rang the different parties in desperation. My party advised them to go along and ask for a tendered ballot. Interestingly, the polling station did not have tendered ballots and some of the polling officers did not even know what one was. I have spoken to a number of people involved in elections who do not know what tendered ballots are and I suggest that we need some education on that. If anyone who believed that someone else had voted for them was automatically given a tendered ballot—I think they are pink, for some reason—those ballots could be stacked up and would provide proof in the polling stations of the level of accusations about fraud in that area.

As I understand it, there is a lack of information for parties, electoral officers in polling stations and the electorate about the ability to ask for a tendered ballot. That is one small practical suggestion that might deal with accusations and counter-accusations of fraud. We could then ask electoral registration officers to add up the number of tendered ballots in various areas, which would give us a better idea of where police investigations were needed and of the extent to which it was believed that fraud was going on. I shall vote against the Opposition motion this evening, because we need as soon as possible to get individual registration and responsibility for the most important act in a democracy—that of voting.

18:35

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

I apologise to the House, the Minister and my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State for not being in the Chamber for the opening speeches. I had made Mr Speaker aware of that.

Today’s debate goes to the heart of our democracy, because it is about people going to a polling station and casting their vote. We need to strike a balance between protecting against electoral fraud and not further disfranchising large sections of society from the formal political process. I have three concerns about the Government’s proposals: the rapid timetable for change; the erosion of the civic duty to register; and the long-term deterioration in the accuracy of the register.

We have already heard from numerous colleagues the astonishing figures for the number of people missing from registers, generally made up of the most vulnerable in our society. The Electoral Commission has raised serious concerns about the effect of the rapid timetable for the introduction of individual voter registration on the completeness of the electoral register. Its dire warning is that under voluntary individual voter registration, the electoral register could go from its current level of completeness down to as low as 60% or 65%. That would mean an astonishing 10 million plus voters falling off the register. We have seen what happened initially in Northern Ireland.

I fear that social divisions could widen, but that does not need to be the case. Individual voter registration could, without the haste with which the Government are seeking to introduce it, take away that threat. I am concerned that, despite the previous agreement of all political parties that the previous Government’s timetable was a sensible approach, the draft legislation proposes to remove the safeguards and simply to bring individual voter registration into force by 2014.

I appreciate that my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) wants to make a speech, so let me merely say that the principle of voter registration as a method of preventing electoral fraud and providing proper safeguards is what most of us are looking for, but the Government proposals are unfair and unforgiveable and need to be rethought.

18:38

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

We know that some 5 million people who are eligible to vote have not registered to do so, and the Government’s proposed reform will allow another 5 million-odd people to be knocked off the register. These reforms, plus the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, are a blatant example of gerrymandering of the type that the former leader of Westminster city council, who is now a fugitive from justice living in Israel and who was knighted for her dishonourable action, carried out on a magnificent scale in Westminster.

Some 10 million people will not be on the register because of a number of the Government’s proposals. If the Minister makes the following promises, my party will be able to support him: first, that the signing of the electoral register will not be optional; secondly, that door-to-door canvassing of properties that fail to reply to the electoral register will take place in 2014; thirdly, that postal and proxy voters who do not provide new personal information or send back new forms will be allowed to vote in 2015—as we know, the majority of such voters tend to be elderly—and, fourthly, that anyone who does not fill in the form properly, or who opts out, will be included in the 2015 boundary review.

The Labour party proposed that IER should be introduced in 2020, but only after the Electoral Commission has established the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the register. The Government should not abolish the Electoral Commission’s role, and the changes should not go live in 2015. The current proposal will reduce the numbers on the electoral register to as little as 65% of the population. That is the prediction of the independent Electoral Commission. As a result, millions of people will be disfranchised.

Those who will lose the ability to vote are likely to be the young, those from black and ethnic minority backgrounds, the disabled and those in social and private rented accommodation. This is a partisan move, and if the Government have their way, for the first time in its history the electoral register will become unrepresentative of the population as a whole. It is imperative that people beyond Parliament recognise just how insidious these proposals are: never before has the very fabric of our democracy been at risk. Every democrat has a duty to defend it.

18:41

[Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

Today’s debate has been a good one, with contributions from about 20 Members, and no one has spoken against the principle of individual electoral registration. Some Members are entirely happy with the Government’s proposals—I am thinking of the hon. Members for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) and for Burton (Andrew Griffiths)—but a number of Members on both sides of the House have expressed reservations. They include my hon. Friends the Members for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) and for Llanelli (Nia Griffith), the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) and my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), among many others.

Significantly, Members’ concerns are reflected in the opinions of many others outside the House who share our belief in the importance of representative democracy. The Electoral Commission, in particular, has made trenchant but very constructive criticisms, and the worries that Members have expressed today are increasingly expressed by those who recognise that the devil is in the detail of the Government’s proposals. As Members have said, we are discussing a huge change to our voting system. This is an issue that deserves to be understood and widely debated the length and breadth of our country. It is far too important to be the preserve of academics and political anoraks.

The Opposition believe that there is a very strong case for individual electoral registration in principle: it can reduce electoral fraud and is in tune with the modern structure of today’s families. Indeed, the previous Labour Government,’s proposals for the introduction of IER commanded a cross-party consensus. Unfortunately, the Government have ended any idea of a bipartisan approach towards constitutional reform, and their plans for IER have placed a question mark over the future integrity of the electoral register.

In the Government’s IER White Paper, electoral registration is seen no longer as an individual’s civic duty but as

“a matter of choice for the individual”.

At present, if the head of a household fails to co-operate with an electoral registration officer and does not return a completed electoral registration form, they can be fined £1,000. The Government say that that will remain—indeed it will—but crucially the obligation will not apply to individuals, yet this is all about individual electoral registration. Instead, individuals will now be invited to join the electoral register if they are so inclined.

We can easily visualise an ERO—if, indeed, there are EROs in the future—knocking on the door of someone’s home. A busy young mum comes to the door in the middle of making her children’s tea. The registration officer asks that young mum if she would like to fill in a form to be on the electoral register by writing down her date of birth and national insurance number. The busy mum explains that she is in the middle of making the kids’ tea and asks the ERO whether she really has to fill in the form. The ERO says, “No, it’s a matter of personal choice.” The predictable reply is, “Fine, in that case I won’t bother. I have to make the kids’ tea. Goodbye.”

Come the general election, that young mum believes that she has an opportunity to shape the country that her children are growing up in. She wants her children to have the best possible education and to have jobs when they grow up, and she wants her family to live in a safe community. She has taken the trouble to read all the parties’ manifestos and she has given careful thought to how she is going to cast her vote. She then goes along to her polling station on election day, but when she gets there she is told that she cannot vote because she is not on the electoral register.

Our fear is that millions of young mums will be excluded from the democratic process because they are not on the electoral register. All the evidence suggests that the young, the disabled, members of the black and ethnic minority communities, those who frequently move and people living in private rented and public housing will be the people most likely not to be on the electoral register under the Government’s proposals. These are the people who are threatened with disfranchisement.

The impartial Electoral Commission has predicted that if the Government do not change their plans, in some areas the number of people on the electoral register could be as low as 60% of the population. The number of people on the electoral register also determines the shape and size of our parliamentary constituencies. Members do not need reminding that we are going through a parliamentary boundary review. In 2015, there will be another boundary review, and if the electorate has been significantly reduced in certain areas, we will see further boundary changes that will have a big impact on inner-city and less prosperous areas of the country.

The electoral register is a foundation on which our representative democracy is built, so it is wrong that it is being put in danger by these proposals, but, as Members have highlighted, it is important for other reasons too, and I will refer briefly to two. First, credit rating agencies regularly refer to the electoral register when deciding whether to provide a loan or mortgage to an individual or family. If someone is not on the electoral register, their chances of securing a loan are diminished. Secondly, in our legal system, juries are drawn from the electoral register. If our electoral register comprises a disproportionately large number of white, middle-aged, elderly and middle-class people, the likelihood is that our juries will reflect that. At a time when it is so important that we build trust in our criminal justice system and the rule of law, it is imperative that we have juries in which people can have faith and confidence.

I welcome the Government’s confirmation that they intend to drop their permanent opt-out option—that is one less drop of venom—but we will look carefully at what the Government actually propose in their Bill, and I have to say that they will need to make many more changes before their plans are acceptable. Before they publish their IER Bill, I urge them to stop and listen to the many informed voices now urging them to change their proposals. In particular, I urge them to heed the advice of the Electoral Commission, which has argued that there should be a full household canvass in 2014. It is right about that.

At the same time, the Government should use the opportunity to explain to electors that the system is changing and publish a detailed implementation plan when they introduce their primary legislation. Moreover, they should ensure that a consistent electoral service is provided to all parts of the country and that sufficient resources are provided to guarantee that as many people as possible are on the electoral register.

The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee has produced an excellent report on IER. I congratulate the Committee on its work and its Chairman, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), on his first-rate speech this evening. I now urge the Government to act upon the Committee’s eminently sensible proposals, and I would like to refer to one of those proposals in particular. As well as broadly supporting the Electoral Commission’s views, the Committee has recommended that the Government allow postal and proxy voting to be carried forward to the 2015 general election. I think that makes sense, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

Finally, above all else I urge the Government to recognise that being on the electoral register is a civic duty and not a lifestyle choice. Surely every Member in this House believes that our parliamentary democracy needs the active participation of the people of this country in the democratic process. Surely we should do all we can to have as many people as possible on the electoral register. The essential point is that people can choose whether or not to exercise their right to vote only if they are on the electoral register. I therefore urge the Government to listen to the genuine voices of concern and ensure that their Bill reinforces our democracy, rather than undermine it.

18:50

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

I, too, welcome the opportunity to have today’s debate and, generally, the tone of the debate. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) and the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David)—I think: he was a bit recidivist in places—for, generally speaking, the way they approached the issue.

I am particularly grateful to the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), the Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, for his comments. As he set out, what has happened in this case is, to some extent, the model of how we ought to approach legislation, where the Government put forward their proposals, ask for detailed consideration, ask experts and those in the House with a particular interest to make their comments, and then respond, positively wherever possible, to those suggestions. That seems to me to be the iterative process that we have followed in this instance. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman was supported in that view by other members of his Committee, such as the hon. Members for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) and for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore).

Let me deal with one issue that the hon. Member for Nottingham North raised. The Government will very soon issue a detailed response to the points raised by his Committee. The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who has responsibility for constitutional reform, has agreed to look again at whether there is any way of improving the proposal for the 2014 canvass, noting that the Electoral Commission has suggested moving the 2013 canvass to early 2014. Again, that is a recommendation that he will consider carefully.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh East, asked how the effectiveness of data matching will be assessed. That I absolutely agree that the information should be brought forward for the benefit of the House when it considers the proposals in detail, which will include not only the Government’s assessment, but the Electoral Commission’s assessment, which it is preparing.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) made one of the most important points in this debate when he said that the choice is not between integrity and completeness. That is absolutely right: we need both. Indeed, that is where the Government have continually placed the emphasis in this matter. It is right that we should move to a system of individual registration. Our current system is outdated and far too vulnerable to electoral fraud—the point raised by the hon. Members for Hendon (Mr Offord), for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris) and for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw).

The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) talked about international election observation missions. I have been on many such missions in other countries—indeed, I have led them—and have consistently found it embarrassing to point out that we have none of the safeguards that we insist upon for other countries to keep our system free from fraud. There is a genuine threat to what we have in this country. I am therefore grateful that there is, or appears to be, general support for the move to individual registration. I accept that concerns have been raised about the detail of some of the proposals—many hon. Members have touched on those points—but the encouraging tone of this debate and the general agreement on the value of individual electoral registration are to be welcomed.

The message obviously did not quite get through to some colleagues on the Opposition Benches—whether their text messaging went awry, I do not know. Clearly the hon. Members for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane)––whose speech I have heard many times now––for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr and for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) do not entirely accept that principle. So be it. They are entitled to disagree with the manifesto on which they stood, if they wish.

Let me address some of the other points that were raised. The hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr Evennett) said that some councils do a much better job of electoral registration than others. Perhaps we ought to look more at why some councils fail in that task, whereas others do not. He thinks that there are insufficient checks on personation, which that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary is looking at.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion talked about the position in areas with lots of students and people in houses in multiple occupation. It is interesting that the research shows that the biggest determinant of incompleteness in the register is actually length of residence. The completeness rate is only 26% among those who have been resident for less than a year, compared with 91% among those who have lived in their properties for over five years. That is where we need to concentrate our efforts.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) talked about second home owners. The important thing in this instance is that electoral registration officers should actually apply the law. Very often the problem is not that the law is incomplete, but that people do not apply the law as it stands.

One point that has been raised repeatedly is about the civic duty to vote. Let us be absolutely clear: the Government believe that there is a civic duty to vote, and there is no change—[Interruption.] I do apologise: to register, rather. Let us be clear: the Government believe that there is a civic duty to register—in fact, there is a civic duty to vote as well, but the point today is about the civic duty to register. It is because we have listened to the points that have been made that, as my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary repeated, we are thinking again about the so-called opt-out provision, which the hon. Member for Sheffield Central described as back-pedalling. It is not back-pedalling to put forward a proposition, listen to the response and then adapt proposals to meet those responses. We will never have a grown-up Parliament if we cannot do that without people criticising the process.

The hon. Member for Scunthorpe is normally very moderate in the way he presents his case to the House, but I am afraid that today he was a little edgy on this issue. He simultaneously said that we should learn from Northern Ireland, where there is no canvass, and then talked about the crucial importance of the canvass—a slight inconsistency. Of course we must learn the lessons from Northern Ireland, because there are important lessons to be learned. Indeed, the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) raised one of them in an intervention, when he talked about the canvass immediately after an election.

The overall position of right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed to today’s debate is that they want individual electoral registration, but not at the expense of the completeness of the register. We understand that, which is why we are determined to do everything we can not only to maintain the register’s completeness, but to go further and ensure that we reach those parts that have not been reached before. That is why my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary is working overtime to look at ways to address that issue and ensure that councils that are perhaps not as assiduous or competent in reaching the electors in their areas are encouraged to do so.

We must be careful when we talk about this issue not only to avoid plucking figures from the air or assuming that we can quote any old figure and it will be believed, but so as not to be as patronising as I felt some contributions today were to some of our electorate, by assuming that young people simply will not register if their mums do not tell them to do so. That has not my experience when talking to young people in our schools and colleges, and it has not been the experience of the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean in Northern Ireland, where this system is already in place and where there is a higher level of registration among young people attaining the age at which they can register than there is in Great Britain.

I am optimistic that we can get this right. We must continue to listen, and to bring forward our proposals. I hope that the legislation will go ahead and be successfully implemented, and that we will then continue to monitor it to see whether it is effective. That is what the hon. Member for Nottingham North was talking about, and that is the way in which the process ought to work, particularly in areas as crucial as voter registration and the electoral system in this country. I ask hon. Members to reject the motion before us today, but I ask them, as my hon. Friend the Minister did, to do so in the right spirit, and to take a constructive view of how we can move forward together to get this right.

Question put.

19:00

Division 422

Ayes: 234

---

Labour: 227
Plaid Cymru: 3
Scottish National Party: 3
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 1

Noes: 321

---

Conservative: 266
Liberal Democrat: 51
Democratic Unionist Party: 2

NHS (Private Sector)

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

19:17

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House believes there is an important role for the private sector in supporting the delivery of NHS care; welcomes the contribution made by private providers to the delivery of the historic 18-week maximum wait for NHS patients; recognises a need, however, for agreed limits on private sector involvement in the NHS; notes with concern the Government’s plans to open up the NHS as a regulated market, increasing private sector involvement in both commissioning and provision of NHS services; urges the Government to revisit its plans, learning from the recent problems with PIP implants and the private cosmetic surgery industry; believes its plan for a 49 per cent. private income cap for Foundation Trusts, in the context of the hospitals as autonomous business units and a ‘no bail-outs’ culture, signals a fundamental departure from established practice in NHS hospitals; fears that the Government’s plans will lead to longer waiting times, will increase health inequalities and risk putting profits before patients; is concerned that this House has not been given an opportunity to consider such a significant policy change; and calls on the Government to revise significantly downwards its proposed cap on the level of private income that can be generated by NHS hospitals.

It is a year this week since the Health and Social Care Bill was introduced in this House. Unlike the Government, we wanted to mark the anniversary, and having this Opposition debate seemed the right way to do it. It is being held because the Government have effectively sidelined this elected House from the debate about the future of the national health service. No single issue matters more to the people who put us all here, but what the future holds for the hospitals in our constituencies is no longer up to us. Instead, it is the unelected House that is right now carving up England’s NHS through back-room coalition deals. Ministers are making a series of desperate concessions in the other place to try to preserve the pitiful levels of support that remain for this unwanted and unnecessary Bill.

For the avoidance of doubt, let me summarise this scandalous situation. Here we have a Bill that nobody voted for. It was not in either the Tory or the Lib Dem manifestos, and it was ruled out specifically by the coalition agreement, yet it was rammed through this elected House so that the real decisions could be taken down the corridor in the unelected House. It is truly an affront to democracy that our nation’s most valued institution should be treated in this way. It thus falls to the Opposition to let this House take a view this evening on the far-reaching amendments to the Bill that are now being tabled, which Ministers were clearly too scared to table in this House.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

As we are debating the role of the private sector in health, does the right hon. Gentleman agree with the former Labour Health Secretary who said “PFI or bust”, and should he not have said “PFI and bust” given the way Labour ran PFI?

[Andy Burnham]

No, I would not agree. I shall explain the policy that our Government adopted on the private sector and how different it was from that of the Government whom the right hon. Gentleman supports. In making our argument we will expose the terrifying gap between the Prime Minister’s rhetoric on the NHS and what he is doing in reality. People will recall the efforts that went into rebranding the nasty party. The Conservatives were at great pains to tell us that they would be pro-environment, a bit less tough on crime and pro-NHS going forward. Many photo calls were arranged to send those messages to the public, but it was poor old NHS staff who featured far more than huskies or hoodies in being brought in to promote hastily made political promises. We were told there would be real-terms increases for the NHS, a moratorium on accident and emergency department closures, thousands more midwives and, famously, no top-down reorganisation—four promises made in opposition: four promises broken in government. I still have not worked out how a Prime Minister can go from agreeing there should be no top-down reorganisation with his coalition partners after the election to bringing forward just weeks later the biggest top-down reorganisation ever in the history of the NHS. How does that work? Perhaps Lib Dem Members will enlighten us this evening.

Our evasive Prime Minister is the master of making statements that sound good at the time only to turn out to be meaningless in practice. Tonight we will focus on his most outrageous yet. On Monday 16 May last year, under pressure to reassure people about the Health and Social Care Bill and in the middle of the enforced pause, the Prime Minister said, in a speech:

“That’s why, when I think about what our NHS will look like in five years time, I don’t picture some space-age institution, a million miles away from what we have now. Let me make clear: there will be no privatisation”.

Those were his words—“no privatisation”.

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)]

indicated assent.

[Andy Burnham]

The Minister of State says that is right, and he is free at any point to get up and challenge what I say or to prove how he can make that statement. I will give him the opportunity to do so soon.

The Prime Minister could not have been clearer—“no privatisation”. Similar statements were made during the pause by the Deputy Prime Minister. On the Marr programme on 8 May, he promised that safeguards would be brought forward in the health Bill. He said:

“What you will see in this legislation are clear guarantees that you are not going to have back-door privatisation of the NHS.”

He followed that up on 14 June with this promise:

“Patients, doctors and nurses have spoken. We have listened. Now we are improving our plans for the NHS. Yes to patient choice. No to privatisation. Yes to giving nurses, hospital doctors and family doctors more say in your care. No to the free market dogma that can fragment the NHS.”

Those statements from the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister were significant for two reasons. First, they revealed an understanding at the top of Government about how, more than anything else, fears about privatisation and the market in the NHS were driving professional disquiet about the Health and Social Care Bill—a Bill that was sold as putting doctors in charge but that had a hidden agenda of breaking up the structures of the national planned health system to allow a free market in health. Secondly, they implied that major changes to address those concerns would be made to the Bill and that there would be a return to the existing policy of the managed use of the private sector within a planned and publicly accountable health system.

Let me be clear. As our motion states, we believe that there is a role for the private sector in helping the NHS to deliver the best possible services to NHS patients, and that was the policy we pursued in government. Without the contribution of private providers, we would never have delivered NHS waiting lists and times at historically low levels, but let us put this in its proper context. Our policy was to use the private sector at the margins to support the public NHS. So, in 2009-10, 2.14% of all operations carried out in the NHS were carried out in the independent sector and spend in the private sector accounted for 7.4% of the total NHS budget. I would defend those figures, because that helped us to deliver the best health care to the people of this country.

Furthermore, we supported a system allowing foundation trusts to generate income at the margins of their activity from treating private patients but with a clearly defined cap to protect the interests of NHS patients at all times.

[Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that the cap was not clearly defined but was very variable according to the hospital, and will he now say that it was wrong for the previous Government to set the cap at over 30% for the Royal Marsden hospital, which is a centre of excellence?

[Andy Burnham]

I agree that the cap varied according to historical levels of private sector activity within the different trusts. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about that, but he must agree that it was clearly defined in respect of every individual NHS hospital. They had a clear number and local people were able to hold them to account for that number. Where hospitals had large numbers, the cap froze their level of activity at the level when the cap was introduced.

[Mr Stephen Dorrell (Charnwood) (Con)]

Just to be clear, could the right hon. Gentleman explain why it is in the interests of NHS patients in a particular hospital for that hospital’s capacity to generate additional revenue from the private sector to be limited by a cap?

[Andy Burnham]

I will explain that very clearly. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will have read the impact assessment to the Bill, which warns of the risk of lengthening NHS waiting lists if existing capacity is made available to private patients. It says that if additional capacity is provided, there might be no effect on NHS waiting lists. That is why this is dangerous, because all the progress that Labour made on reducing long NHS waits would be put at risk by the careless and cavalier policy of simply abandoning the principle of the cap, which has stood us in good stead.

[Mr Dorrell]

rose—

[Mr Simon Burns]

rose—

[Andy Burnham]

I shall give way to the Chairman of the Select Committee on Health once more and then to the Minister.

[Mr Dorrell]

I apologise to my right hon. Friend on the Front Bench. Could the right hon. Gentleman explain more clearly than he has so far why a hospital should reduce capacity at the same time as it is increasing revenue?

[Andy Burnham]

That is not what I said. I understand that the preferred policy was to have no caps or limits, but even if a generous and liberal cap was introduced there would be a major risk that hospitals under financial pressure would give beds, theatre time and appointments to private patients, enabling them to jump the queue and giving a much worse deal to NHS patients. That is the risk that the cap was designed to mitigate and that is why we support it.

[Mr Simon Burns]

Could the right hon. Gentleman explain the logic, under his Government, of having a cap on a minority of trusts—foundation trusts—while he as the Secretary of State and his Government did not impose a cap on the majority of trusts that were not foundation trusts?

[Andy Burnham]

There is a simple explanation. The right hon. Gentleman will remember, as I do, the debate on the foundation trust legislation. There were worries that if hospitals were made more independent and were not directly managed by the Department they would put the treatment of private patients before that of NHS patients. The cap was introduced to mitigate that risk. He will know that we had a policy that all trusts should become foundation trusts in time—a policy that his Government have adopted—so that the cap would apply to all NHS hospitals in time. I think that answers his question.

[Mr Burns]

If that is the case, rather than that it being forced on the Labour party by a rebellion of Back-Bench MPs in 2002, why did the right hon. Gentleman’s election manifesto in 2010 say that Labour would remove the cap?

[Andy Burnham]

It did not, and I would expect a Minister not to make misleading statements like that in a debate of this kind. It did not propose the removal of the cap: it said that more freedom would be given to NHS hospitals with a modest loosening of the cap. That was my policy as Health Secretary. We did not propose removal of the private patient cap.

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend know whether the private operations will be charged at tariff? Is there a limit on the charge hospitals can make? Will it be at tariff or at a premium on tariff? Would that not be a way of increasing the amount of resources coming in? Less work would be done on the NHS.

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend raises an important issue. We have not had those safeguards; there has been no explanation from the Government of any safeguards that will be introduced under this liberal measure. This evening, we need to probe exactly what they have in mind. During the pause, they said that they would restrict any competition on price in the NHS, yet they are bringing forward a measure that would allow NHS facilities to be used for the treatment of private patients with no guarantee that the private sector would not try to undercut NHS tariffs. Those are precisely the questions that the Government have to answer.

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

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the fundamental change in the Bill is that the Government are imposing a new form, Monitor, which directly applies competition regulation in NHS delivery of services and undermines the principles and rules for co-operation and competition—PRCC—that arbitrate between commercial services and the NHS, which controlled the market?

[Andy Burnham]

That is exactly the point. The proposal has to be seen in the context of the health system the coalition Government want to create. They want a broken-down system where one hospital is pitted against another, where there is a duty on the Secretary of State to promote the autonomy of NHS organisations, so that they are out there on their own, having to stand or fall on their merits, with a clear incentive to drive up income gained through a relaxed private patient income cap. I shall come to that point in a moment.

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

Ministers are shouting, “Choice”, but is my right hon. Friend prepared to reflect on the merits of the private sector, both in the UK and abroad, in the efficiency of the service that it delivers?

[Andy Burnham]

When the Bill was introduced, great claims were made that it would improve NHS efficiency. That was one of the reasons the Government gave for subjecting the NHS to a huge top-down reorganisation; they wanted to make the system more efficient, but they made a mistake that many people make over time. They claimed that the NHS is inherently inefficient when in fact international evidence shows the exact opposite: the NHS model is the most efficient health care system in the world. That is because control of the system is democratically accountable, and national standards can be set through bodies such as the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence and entitlements can be set at national level. If that control is removed, we will see the emergence of a much less efficient health care system, like the many market-based systems.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

The motion

“notes with concern the Government’s plans…increasing private sector involvement in…commissioning and provision of NHS services.”

In Dover, our hospital was run down over the 13 years until 2010 and is now a shell. Why should the GPs not be able to commission another provider if the foundation trust will not fulfil its long-standing pledge to build a hospital and provide proper services for my constituents?

[Andy Burnham]

My argument would be that if those decisions are to be made, the people who make them should be accountable to the hon. Gentleman and the House, whereas the Bill that his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is introducing proposes to push those things away. There will be an independent commissioning board that GPs and clinical commissioning groups will not be able to overturn; it will make the decisions. That is a completely unacceptable state of affairs.

Before the last election, we proposed a modest loosening of the private patient cap in response to pressure in another place when we were debating the Health Act 2009, but compared with our modest reforms, the Government’s plans are off the scale. Instead of private sector activity at the margins, the Health and Social Care Bill places market forces at the heart of the system. The private sector will not support the NHS, but will replace large chunks of the service in commissioning and provision.

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

I should be interested to learn—as I am sure would the whole House—the right hon. Gentleman’s definition of modest loosening. In the four years between 2006 and 2010, the amount of money going to the private sector rose from £2 billion to about £12.2 billion. Does the right hon. Gentleman simply oppose the 49% cap or will he pledge to reverse it if he returns to government? What exactly would the cap be? Would it be 30% or 12%? Please let us know.

[Andy Burnham]

May I refer the hon. Gentleman to the motion? Its request to the Government is not unreasonable; it asks them “to revise significantly downwards” the cap they have proposed.

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Andrew Lansley)]

To what?

[Andy Burnham]

I remind the Health Secretary that he is the Secretary of State, not me. It is for him to bring forward proposals. Forty-nine per cent: in that proposal he is saying that NHS hospitals can give equal priority to the treatment of private patients—that it can be as legitimate an objective for an NHS facility, paid for by the taxpayers, to be used equally for the treatment of private and NHS patients. I put it to the hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) that I am not prepared to accept a cap on that scale. It could lead to an explosion of private sector work in NHS facilities and I do not think that is in the best interests of NHS patients. I would be prepared to accept the Government’s bringing forward proposals that fulfilled a modest loosening of the cap, to give the NHS more freedom at this difficult time, but I am talking in single figures. I am not talking about a doubt-digit, 50% cap—a recommendation that hospitals devote half their resources to private patients.

[Mr Simon Burns]

Will the shadow Secretary of State kindly answer the questions put by my right hon. and hon. Friends about what modest means? [Interruption.] If I might read it out, the 2010 Labour manifesto says:

“Foundation Trusts will be given the freedom to expand their provision into primary and community care, and to increase their private services—where these are consistent with NHS values, and provided they generate surpluses that are invested directly into the NHS.”

There was no mention of a modest increase; it was open-ended.

[Andy Burnham]

The Minister is not listening. I answered his question. I proposed a small increase in the cap—in single figures; a couple of per cent, as I am on record saying at the time, to give NHS hospitals more freedom to generate more income, to be put back into improving standards for NHS patients. Can the Minister honestly look me in the eye and tell me that 49% is not a world away from the NHS that he inherited from our Government?

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

The manifesto that we put together in 2010 did not envisage a health service where the Health Secretary had given up control. It envisaged a health service where the Health Secretary would still have control and could set a cap for foundation trusts.

[Andy Burnham]

That is absolutely the point. The Government want to create an NHS where Ministers can no longer say what can or cannot be done, so we have GP practices, such as Haxby in York, sending letters to their patients saying, “We have decided that we are not going to fund your minor operations any more, but by the way, we are now providing those operations. Here’s our price list.” That is absolutely disgraceful, but it is a glimpse of the NHS that will emerge if the Health and Social Care Bill goes through. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: we must consider the wider context, within a system with competition at its heart and where every hospital is on its own and they are fighting each other. That is the context in which this 49% proposal needs to be considered. It represents a break with 63 years of NHS history and a “genie out of the bottle” moment. That is why we ask the House to reject it.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

My right hon. Friend is making a strong point. The Minister says that the cap was flexible during our term, but that was under principles and rules for co-operation and competition rulings. That meant that the servicing out of the contract was based on care quality. Unfortunately, the Bill does not have any area dealing with quality of care; it is purely about price. It is about allowing Monitor to apply the pure regulatory format of the Competition Commission as it exists in other utility markets.

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend anticipates me. I shall come to precisely that point in a moment, and it will backs up his point that the Bill is akin to the privatisations of the 1980s.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

What?

[Andy Burnham]

Just hang on and listen. Nothing has been done to the Bill to bring together the Prime Minister’s and Deputy Prime Minister’s promises that there would be no privatisation. There has been no substantial change since the pause.

Let me come directly to whether the Bill represents a privatisation of the kind that we saw in the 1980s. In doing so, I shall refer to a report from the King’s Fund, which I recommend to the hon. Lady. The Government have failed to introduce measures that they promised, months after the pause, so it is still considered appropriate for a body as respected as the King’s Fund to make a fairly shocking comparison that, indeed, the Bill is similar to the privatisations of the Thatcher Government. The report says:

“The Government’s proposals draw heavily on the regulatory framework developed in telecoms and utilities regulators …Interestingly, Secretary of State for Health Andrew Lansley’s own ideas for the reform of the NHS, developed while in opposition, were born out of his experience of the privatisation and regulation of utilities in the mid-1980s when he was Principal Private Secretary to Norman Tebbit.”

There we—[Interruption.] Okay, there we have it. That is the view of the King’s Fund—this is a privatisation along the lines of those we saw in the 1980s.

To back up that point, the King’s Fund quotes from a speech that the Secretary of State gave in 2005 to the NHS Confederation. He said this of the 1980s privatisations:

“The combination of the introduction of competition with a strong independent regulator delivered immense consumer value and economic benefits.”

There are two problems with that statement. First, there are real questions about whether gas, electricity, water and rail customers feel that they have had immense value. Secondly, it is troubling that the Secretary of State for Health, of all people, considers the delivery of health care directly comparable to telecoms and utilities.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman recall saying in 2007 that he celebrated the role of the private sector in the NHS?

[Andy Burnham]

This is getting a little tedious. May I refer the hon. Gentleman to the motion, which indeed does the very same thing? It recognises the fact that there is

“an important role for the private sector”

in the delivery of good NHS care and celebrates the role that it played in helping us to deliver the lowest ever NHS waiting times. Before intervening in future debates, he might like to read the motion that the House is considering.

Let me quote the Secretary of State’s interesting 2005 speech to the NHS Confederation, which set out the essential ingredients that we now see in his Health and Social Care Bill. His plan was to

“maximise competition, transfer risk to the private sector…appoint a strong, pro-competitive regulator…set out clearly the standards which have to be met and how operators will be held accountable for them…be clear about how and by whom universal service obligations are to be met…ensure high quality information for customers”

and have

“more customers rather than fewer.”

That is, do not have a few monopolistic health authority purchasers. The Secretary of State is nodding in assent that that is, essentially, his Health and Social Care Bill. This is, of course, the basic framework that the House of Lords is considering, despite the Deputy Prime Minister’s claim to have rejected

“the free market dogma that can fragment the NHS.”

A phrase leaps out of that 2005 speech that, in the light of recent events, needs to be challenged. It is

“transfer risk to the private sector”.

While acceptable in theory, I wonder whether recent experience with the private cosmetic surgery industry has led the Secretary of State to reconsider whether and how, in the health context, that can be delivered in practice. In an NHS based on commercial contracts, would there not always be arguments about legal liability when things went wrong? Would it not be much harder to control quality and costs in such a way, rather than through the current planned and managed NHS system that we have?

[Mr Redwood]

On the point about implants, why did the NHS under Labour buy the same difficult implants that the private sector bought?

[Andy Burnham]

The point that I am making is about how to manage the system, how to ensure proper regulation and how to ensure that NHS providers and the system work in the interests of NHS patients. If the right hon. Gentleman is arguing that there would be the same control managing the system through a series of fragmented commercial contracts, I would be interested to have that debate with him. Frankly, I do not believe that he is being serious, if that is his point.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I have been contacted by constituents who access their cancer and cardiac care from Barts and from the London hospital. They fear that as a result of the Bill their health needs will be deprioritised in favour of private patients who can afford to pay. What would my right hon. Friend say to my constituents about their fears?

[Andy Burnham]

I wish I could allay the fears of those people, but when there is a proposal placed at the heart of the NHS for hospitals to devote half their facilities—their beds, their appointments—to private patients, how is it possible to give that guarantee to those patients, particularly when the Government are relaxing the waiting time standards that we did so much to establish in the NHS, with the two-week wait for cancer referrals and 18 weeks for elective operations, and a four-hour wait in A and E? How can we have that confidence when, effectively, the Government are taking those safeguards off the public and giving the green light for a massive expansion of private sector treatment in NHS hospitals?

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

Does my right hon. Friend have any answer to the question whether private providers with obligations to their shareholders will inevitably face a conflict if risk is offloaded to them when their responsibility to their shareholders is naturally to ensure the best possible financial outcome for them?

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: this proposal brings that conflict right to the heart of the NHS. At the moment, NHS hospitals have a paramount and overriding duty to the treatment of NHS patients, but considering a health care system whereby services would be delivered through a series of commercial contracts brings that conflict of interest into the health care system—shareholders on the one hand, patients on the other. That is why there is such deep disquiet among health professions about these proposals. It is why those professions applied so much pressure last year, and the pause was ordered. It is why, I am afraid, they are still unhappy today—the Government have not addressed their concerns.

[Mr Lansley]

Before the right hon. Gentleman continues with this wholly erroneous line of discussion, will he reflect on the fact that the Bill introduces, for the first time, a transparency in accounting between NHS activity and any private income in any foundation trust, which he did not put into legislation? The Bill introduces a transparency that there can be no cross-subsidisation between NHS resources and any private activity. It introduces a legal requirement for any foundation trust to explain to the public at its annual meeting how it has used any private income to the benefit of NHS patients. Will he reflect on the fact that the primary purpose of a foundation trust is to provide NHS services? For it to do anything that was to the detriment of NHS patients, involving private patients, would be contrary to its primary purpose and unlawful.

[Andy Burnham]

There are a lot of questions there. The Secretary of State discusses the safeguards, but he has introduced them precisely because he has made a major break with 63 years of NHS history. He needs them because he wants a different health care system in this country, in which much more work is done by private providers and in which the commissioning of services is largely handed over to the private sector. That is why he has had to introduce those safeguards. We had a health service that was planned, managed and publicly accountable, but he is throwing all of that away.

[Dr Poulter]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is very generous. Does he not agree that the two hospitals with the highest patient cap—the Royal Marsden and the Royal Brompton—use the money that they make through private income very effectively, and put it back in to make them centres of excellence for all patients, particularly their NHS patients?

[Andy Burnham]

That was the policy of the previous Government, but the cap was clearly defined. It was a tight cap, and it reflected historical levels of work. What we are talking about is a liberalising measure to enable the private sector to double if not quadruple the amount of work that it is doing, which is why we are debating the motion.

I shall pose a question for the Health Secretary, who mentioned safeguards. If it is all fine to create a different NHS in which we have many more private contracts, might not the NHS risk register have something to say about the risks of creating such an NHS and the additional challenges of delivering health care through a system based on commercial contracts? Might it not lead to a diversion of spending on lawyers and consultants, away from patient care? Is there not a great irony, as we have heard the Health Secretary bemoan a lack of ability to intervene in the recent situation while, at the same time, here he is promoting a Bill that removes his ability to do so on a much wider basis? He wants to hand over his ability to intervene to the independent NHS Commissioning Board. The irony of his position will not be lost on many people listening to the debate.

[Dr Phillip Lee (Bracknell) (Con)]

I have attended this debate to try to ascertain the direction of travel of Labour policy and to try to gain an understanding of its philosophy and underlying principles. I am somewhat confused, because you seem to be all over the place. Do you believe that health care is a commodity—[Interruption.] I apologise; I meant the right hon. Gentleman. Do you believe that health care is a commodity or not? Do you believe that access to health care is a right or not? The answers to those questions underpin the policies that you will introduce, I presume, in the next couple of years.

[Andy Burnham]

I do not know whether those questions were for me or for you, Mr Deputy Speaker, but let us assume that they were for me.

I introduced the NHS constitution, which enshrined for the first time the basic rights of NHS patients. I am proud to have done so, so I do not need any lectures from the hon. Gentleman about what we should do to improve health care in this country. I said in the motion that I am prepared to go back to my policy before the election in which we said that we would consider loosening the private patient cap. That is the policy that I have introduced to the House tonight. I am not prepared, however, to accept the wholesale abolition of that control to create a situation in which NHS hospitals can devote half their beds to private patients. If he is happy with that in his constituency, let him make the argument for it, but I am making an argument for a very different NHS from the one envisaged by Ministers.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

Is not the real question for the Government why on earth they have written the Competition Act 1998 into the Bill? Why have they written the Enterprise Act 2002 into it, and why have they allowed European competition law to create the haemorrhaging of a socially provided service under category B legislation? Why have they done that? What is the point? It can only be to loosen enterprise within the NHS for competitive purposes so that the private sector can come in.

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. If the Bill was really about clinical commissioning, as the Government said at the beginning, and putting GPs in control, that could have been done through existing NHS structures. They could simply put clinical teams in charge of existing PCT structures. It could be done without any hassle or cost, but no, they completely broke down and rethought the whole system, because it was an ideological reform. Doctors oppose the measure, because they saw through the Bill, and saw it for what it was: a privatisation plan for the NHS.

Let me give three examples that demonstrate why the Prime Minister has not lived up to his “no privatisation” claim. The first is a letter sent by the Department on 19 July last year to NHS and social care leaders entitled “Extending Choice of Provider”:

“The NHS is facing a period of significant transition and financial challenge. But this is not a reason to delay action to address patient demands for greater choice”.

It went on to require all PCT clusters and clinical commissioning groups to identify three community services by 31 October that would be subject to an “any qualified provider” tendering process. That is significant because it exposes the ideological agenda behind the Bill and explodes the myth that it is about putting doctors in charge. If that was the case, logic would demand that it should be for doctors to decide whether or not any underperforming services could benefit from open procurement. That mandating of compulsory competitive tendering, even before Parliament has given its consent to the Bill, reveals the real direction of the policy. We simply ask how that can possibly be consistent with the Prime Minister’s promise of no privatisation.

The second example is the Department's guidance document to CCGs entitled “Developing commissioning support: towards service excellence”. I shall quote from the beginning of the document, which gives a clear statement of intent:

“The NHS sector, which provides the majority of commissioning support now, needs to make the transition from statutory function to freestanding enterprise.”

It could not be clearer, which is why members of the British Medical Association council called the document a “smoking gun”, confirming their fears of a stealth privatisation. The document confirmed that the Government envisaged large-scale privatisation of services to support commissioning—jobs that are currently carried out by public servants. It puts into practice the comments made by Lord Howe on 7 September 2011 at the Laing and Buisson independent healthcare forum:

“The opening up of the NHS creates genuine opportunities for those of you who can offer high quality, convenient services that compete favourably with current NHS care. If you can do that then you can do well. But you know that won’t be easy, the NHS isn’t a place to earn a fast buck...they will not give up their patients easily”.

On commissioning, he said:

“Commissioning support is an absolutely critical area for CCGs. Some of it will come from the PCT staff who will migrate over to the groups but there will need to be all sorts of support at various levels…There will be big opportunities for the private sector here.”

With reference to that second example, I ask the Secretary of State how on earth is that policy consistent with the promise made by the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister of no privatisation?

That brings me to the third example, which we have discussed tonight. Just before the Christmas recess, the plan, which threatens to change the very character of our hospitals, was sneaked into the House of Lords. I do not seek to argue that that provision would change the NHS overnight, but in the context of a competitive NHS, where there is an obligation to promote the autonomy of hospitals, I believe that it would completely change the character of our hospitals and the way they think and function over time. The effect of a cap at this scale—a staggering 49%—means that hospitals could give equal priority to private patients. It sets the NHS and private sector in direct comparison with each other, and creates the conditions for an explosion of private work in NHS hospitals.

It is such a liberal provision that the Government’s amendment will have virtually the same impact as abolishing the cap completely, and it is a world away from the current situation. It fails to protect the interests of NHS patients by giving equal priority to other patients. Indeed, it creates a conflict of interest, as trusts could even seek to push patients into their private beds.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way; he has been extraordinarily generous in accepting interventions. When he discusses privatisation of services, does that include services taken on by charities, social enterprises and mutuals?

[Andy Burnham]

I am not against services being taken on by charities, voluntary providers and, indeed, the private sector. I have never set my face completely against that, but I see clear limits on the involvement and the role of the private sector in the delivery of NHS services. I see the private sector supporting the NHS, working at the margins, providing innovation and support. The Health Secretary sees the private sector replacing large chunks of the NHS, set up in direct competition with it, which is a very different policy. I ask the hon. Gentleman whether he was elected to the House to support such a policy. Do not the constituents of Dover quite like the NHS that we have, and want it to continue as it has for its first 63 years?

I want briefly to mention the impact assessment. It gives this specific warning if hospitals loosen the private patient cap without creating additional capacity:

“there is a risk that private patients may be prioritised above NHS patients resulting in a growth in waiting lists and waiting times for NHS patients. This is the eventuality that the PPI cap was originally introduced to prevent.”

In other words, there would be a return to that traditional Tory choice in health care—wait longer or pay to go private.

That sums up the big difference between this Government’s approach to the private sector and that of the previous Government. In our system, the private sector was encouraged to throw its lot in with the delivery of the best possible NHS standards of care to NHS patients. By contrast, the world view of this Government sees private health care as a way out of the public NHS, trading on its failures as a means of boosting the private market.

The next question that I ask the right hon. Gentleman to answer is whether the 49% plan can possibly be consistent with the Prime Minister’s promise of no privatisation. We make a reasonable request this evening. We do not reject out of hand any change to the existing PPI cap on foundation trusts. Voting for the motion does not imply opposition to the entire Health and Social Care Bill. But we do reject a 49% cap, which is tantamount to abolition, and we call on the Government to revise it significantly downwards. Voting for the motion will send a signal from the House that the Government need to rethink.

In conclusion, I give notice that we will continue to oppose the Bill outright, and we will put everything we have got into that fight. Let me be clear. The Prime Minister should withdraw his “no privatisation” promise or he should withdraw his Bill. He cannot have it both ways. If the Bill is passed, I do not think there is any question but that it will lead to the privatisation of large chunks of commissioning and NHS provision. The truth is that this is an illegitimate Bill. Nobody voted for it, and it is a Bill that the Health Secretary has mis-sold to the public and professions. He claimed that it was about putting doctors in the lead, but doctors can see it now for what it is. From here on in, we on the Opposition Benches will call it what it is—a privatisation plan for the national health service.

We have called the debate tonight to bring these dangers home to a much wider audience. Time is running out for the NHS and I will give everything I have got to protect the NHS that I believe in. This is worth fighting for because the NHS stands for something different in a world where large parts of our national life have been taken over by profit and money. Recent events have shown the dangers of mixing medicine with the market. People see health as different from other areas and overwhelmingly support the NHS as it is. By and large they trust it and see it as one area of national life where the money motive has not taken over. They want it to stay that way and they look at social care as a warning, showing how a fragmented system can drag standards down. Nye Bevan said there would be an NHS for

“as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it”.

This is the moment of greatest threat to our health service and I tell the Health Secretary and the Government straight tonight to drop this illegitimate Bill or face the fight of their lives. I appeal to Members in all parts of the House who have worries about where the Government are going with the Bill to send a direct message to the Government and to vote as their constituents would want them to—for an NHS that will always put patient care before profits. I commend the motion to the House.

20:03

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Andrew Lansley)]

We start 2012, and what is the Labour party’s priority? Is it to welcome the NHS improvements in performance, as reported before Christmas—that waiting times are low and stable, that there are now 90% fewer breaches of mixed-sex accommodation standards than at the same time last year, that hospital infections are at their lowest ever levels, or that there are more doctors and fewer managers in the NHS than at the election? No, none of those was Labour’s priority. Was it to welcome the increase next year announced just before Christmas in NHS funding for primary care trusts, or since Christmas an increase in the funding available this year direct to clinical commissioning groups to enable them to meet the needs of their patients? No, it was not that.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

I know that the Secretary of State was at Salford Royal hospital last week, where the abundance that he is describing does not seem to be around. That hospital—he went there to talk about nursing—will have to lose many hundreds of its nurses. It seems strange to us that we do not seem to see the abundance that he talks about and it certainly was not apparent at Salford Royal.

[Mr Lansley]

That is exactly the same question that the hon. Lady asked during oral questions. The Prime Minister and I did indeed go to Salford Royal hospital and we were tremendously impressed by what is being done there but, like other hospitals across the NHS, as part of a process of using resources more effectively and as part of the consequences of a transfer to supporting patients more in the community than in the acute sector, that hospital is changing the way it manages its services, and it is delivering cost improvements. We make no bones about that.

We delivered £4.3 billion of cost improvement in the NHS in the last financial year. We are aiming to do more this year. We delivered £2.5 billion, according to the deputy chief executive of the NHS, in the first two quarters. Every penny saved by reducing costs in the NHS is available to be reinvested in the NHS. That is why we are in a position to improve the performance. The hon. Lady did not talk about how that funding is becoming available through savings on central costs—for example, £150 million extra funding this year announced since Christmas for support for the integration of health and social care.

Was that Labour’s priority? No. Did Labour come to the House and say, “We want to welcome the way the NHS has achieved an increase in the flu vaccine uptake,” or the simple fact that flu activity at this stage is at its lowest level for the past 20 years? No, none of that. The hon. Lady talked about Salford Royal and the way nurses are engaging in some best practice—

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

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Lansley]

No. I am still answering the previous intervention. Nurses are engaging in best practice to improve the quality of care for patients in Salford Royal. Was that the basis upon which the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) chose to come to the House to talk about the things that matter to patients—the quality of care being delivered to patients? No, it was none of those things.

[Barbara Keeley]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Lansley]

No. I answered the hon. Lady’s question.

Labour Members came to the House not to pursue the priorities of patients or of those who work in the NHS, but to pursue Labour’s priorities. They are not in 2012; they are not even in the 21st century. They are back in the past. Talking of the past and somebody who lives in the past, let us listen to the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris).

[Grahame M. Morris]

The Secretary of State has quoted a series of statistics. Does he welcome the 29% increase in patients waiting more than 18 weeks since May 2010 as a result of dropping targets?

[Mr Lansley]

Let me explain to the hon. Gentleman. The average time that patients waited for in-patient elective procedures in the NHS according to the latest data was 8.4 weeks, which is exactly the same as at the time of the last general election. For out-patients it was 3.9 weeks, compared to 4.3 weeks at the election. For diagnostic tests, despite the fact that the NHS has performed 440,000 more diagnostic tests, the average waiting time is 1.8 weeks, the same as at the election. Long waits? The hon. Gentleman did not say that according to the latest data published the number of patients waiting more than a year for their treatment went down 40%, compared with what we inherited from the Government at the time of the last election.

The motion is all about Labour’s going back to the past. I am staggered. It is almost like revisiting Barbara Castle’s antipathy towards the private sector, or that of the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), the only former Labour Secretary of State now, even including himself, that the right hon. Member for Leigh seems to agree with.

I will ask the House to reject the motion, but in a way I am asking the House to reject those sentiments all over again, because we have been here before with this debate. Far from the House not having had an opportunity to consider issues including the private income cap, I remember having exactly this debate on Report. We were very clear about that. We discussed it when the White Paper was published, we discussed it when the Bill was debated on Second Reading, when it was in Committee and on Report, and it has been debated again in another place. I hope to use this opportunity to trample on some of the myths that the right hon. Member for Leigh and his friends are propagating about the Bill.

[Dame Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

I have received information from inside King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust that priority is being given to private cancer patients in both diagnosis and treatment. Will the Secretary of State either confirm or deny that that is a fact?

[Mr Lansley]

If the right hon. Lady has any such evidence, she should give it to me. Let me explain that at the moment any individual member of NHS staff would be acting contrary to the NHS staff code of conduct if they saw a conflict between private sector and NHS activity and gave priority to private patients to the detriment of NHS patients. Technically speaking, under the legislation we inherited it is not explicitly unlawful for a foundation trust to do that but, as I explained to the right hon. Member for Leigh, a whole series of specific safeguards relating to the relationship between private and NHS activities was introduced into the Bill in another place. It makes it clear that the principal purpose of a foundation trust is to benefit NHS patients and NHS services. To do anything that is to the detriment of NHS patients will be unlawful. There are specific safeguards stating that foundation trusts cannot cross-subsidise between NHS activities and services and private services. If the right hon. Lady has information of a particular instance, she might as well give it to me.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way again. Does he not understand that a person who has this information is terrified of putting it into the public domain—[Interruption.] I am sorry, but he is wrong. We are talking about someone’s job and livelihood. I simply asked him whether this is correct or not. Does he know?

[Mr Lansley]

I have no knowledge of what the right hon. Lady describes. Let me remind her that those working in the NHS have a responsibility to disclose anything that that they think is to the detriment of their patients’ interests, and under legislation on public interest disclosure they have protection. I announced just before Christmas that in the latest contract for an enhanced advice line there should be a whistleblower advice line.

[Kate Green]

I note what the Secretary of State says about staff who have concerns being encouraged to express them, but in the case of Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust, where a private company has just been commissioned to provide orthopaedic pain relief services, the staff had absolutely no knowledge that that commissioning was going on. How can he be sure that staff will be able to raise concerns when there is such a lack of transparency?

[Mr Lansley]

What the hon. Lady describes is precisely what has happened time and again under the legislation we inherited, which is not transparent. Primary care trusts were not accountable or transparent and an enormous amount of activity went on with tenders that involved the private sector and was not conducted in the way that we want, which is on the basis of a tariff and on the basis of which provider is best able to deliver the highest quality.

Let me deal with the first of the myths propagated by the right hon. Member for Leigh: that we have some kind of privatisation agenda. We do not. As I recollect, the only time any Government had a specific objective to increase the role of the private sector in the NHS was when he was a Minister, his hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) was a special adviser to the Department for Health and Patricia Hewitt was Secretary of State. That was when they were saying they wanted to increase the role of the private sector to 10% or 15%, and the Health and Social Care Bill contains specific provision not to allow such discrimination in favour of private providers in future.

[Andy Burnham]

The Secretary of State says that he has no proposals to increase privatisation. Will he confirm that he has sent a letter through the Department asking clinical commissioning groups to identify three community services that will be subject to a compulsory competitive tender?

[Mr Lansley]

No, because it is not compulsory competitive tendering. It will extend access to any qualified provider—

[Andy Burnham]

That is the same thing.

[Mr Lansley]

It is not. The right hon. Gentleman, having been Secretary of State, ought to understand the difference between compulsory competitive tendering and any qualified provider. Under compulsory competitive tendering, it is the primary care trust that gets to choose who provides the service, but under any qualified provider it is patients who get to choose. One example is access to wheelchair services. Voluntary sector organisations, such as Whizz-Kidz, are setting out to provide a better service. From its point of view, that is not competitive tendering. Wherever Whizz-Kidz provides the service, patients in that area—[Interruption.] If he wants to have a conversation with other Members, he may by all means do so, but I will sit down.

I answered the right hon. Gentleman’s point and I am afraid that it proceeds from a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between competitive tendering processes, which have been the stuff of primary care trusts—in the past it was they that decided who should provide services—and giving patients access to choice so that they can drive quality. Unlike competitive tendering, which was generally price-based tendering decided on cost and volume, under any qualified provider it is not about price, but about quality.

[Charlie Elphicke]

My right hon. Friend mentioned the provision of wheelchair services, which we have been looking at in Kent when considering how commissioning can be taken forward. Whizz-Kidz offers really great and radical ideas. Is it not the case that the Labour party would have condemned disabled people to the same standard-issue NHS wheelchairs rather than allowing them real choice across the spectrum?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is precisely why on that basis, using the any qualified provider approach, the chief executive of the NHS can set out the ambition that a child who needs a wheelchair should get it in a day. In the past they would have to wait and then would not necessarily get the wheelchair they wanted, or in any reasonable time scale. This is about driving improvement and quality. Many NHS providers will respond positively to that and deliver the quality, but if they do not we ought to be in a position to believe that what really matters in the NHS is the quality of the service provided to patients. That used to be what the Labour party believed in, which I suppose was why its last manifesto, written when the right hon. Gentleman was Secretary of State, stated:

“Patients requiring elective care will have the right, in law, to choose from any provider who meets NHS standards of quality at NHS costs.”

That is a complete description of what we are setting out to do. It is a description of the any qualified provider policy and something that he has now completely abandoned, and he has abandoned patients in the process. It is absurd.

The objective of the Bill and of the Government is simple: continuously to improve care for patients and the health and well-being of people in this country, and that includes improving the health of the poorest fastest, and to ensure that everyone, regardless of who or where they are, enjoys health outcomes that are as good as the very best in the world. That is what we are setting out to do.

The motion states that the private sector already plays an important role in providing that care. Indeed, once upon a time the Labour party was in favour of it. The right hon. Gentleman said in May 2007:

“Now the private sector puts its capacity into the NHS for the benefit of NHS patients, which I think most people in this country would celebrate.”

Like my hon. Friends, I do not understand where he is coming from. The motion tries to face both ways, stating that Labour agrees with the private sector but also wants to have less of it. It agrees that the private sector can make a valuable contribution, but wants to stop it doing so. What matters to patients is the quality of care they receive, the experience of their care and the dignity and respect with which they are treated. Whether the hospital or community provider is operated by the NHS, a charity, a private company or a social enterprise is not the issue from the patient’s point of view. From our point of view, we should not make that the issue. The reason it will not matter is that, whoever is the provider of care, the values of the NHS—universal health care, paid for through general taxation, free and based on need, not ability to pay—will remain unchanged. No NHS patient pays for their care today; no patient will pay for their care in future under this Government. On that basis, I can absolutely restate what the Prime Minister said: under this Government and on our watch the NHS will not be privatised.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

With all due respect to the Secretary of State, I am afraid he cannot say that. We heard the excellent example of Whizz-Kidz, which is a fantastic organisation, but he cannot guarantee that it will get the contract, because Monitor, as we all know from the Bill, has primary control over who gets the service, and it will apply competition law, purely and simply. There is absolutely no guarantee that the third sector or co-operatives will get in, and in any case there is no guarantee that care quality will be applied in the decision.

[Mr Lansley]

Forgive me, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I hardly know where to start, given the degree of ignorance associated with that point. Monitor does not decide who gets the service; patients and commissioners do, and the clinical commissioning groups determine how they commission the services. Quality is absolutely at the heart of the Bill, and at the heart of how we structure the statutory duties of all organisations concerned, but the hon. Gentleman goes on about the application of competition law. Actually, there is no extension of competition law in the NHS and no extension of EU competition law as a consequence of the Bill; it simply enables the NHS to have a health-specific regulator so that the application of competition law and EU competition rules, in so far as they apply because the Bill does not change their application at all, is carried out by a health sector regulator.

Myth No. 2 is that the impact of a wider range of providers in the NHS will drive down the quality of care, but we will give patients more choice and more control over their health care. If people are given clear information about the quality of different providers, they will, with their doctors and nurses helping as their commissioners, choose the provider that is best for them, and the Health and Social Care Bill means that all providers will compete on the quality of their services, not on the prices that they charge.

There will be no incentive for doctors to encourage their patients to opt for the cheapest option, because there will be no cheapest option; there will only be the best-quality option.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

It will be Monitor’s option.

[Mr Lansley]

No, it is nothing to do with Monitor in those circumstances; those whom I have mentioned will make the choice.

The more choice there is, the more innovation there is, the more new ideas there are and the more pressure there is on all providers from all sectors constantly to raise their game for patients. The evidence supports that.

[Andy Burnham]

I have been listening to the right hon. Gentleman very carefully, and he made a statement a moment ago about there being no privatisation—that privatisation will not result from the Bill. Is he saying to us that his Health and Social Care Bill will lead to no additional privatisation of commissioning or provision in the national health service? It is a very clear question.

[Mr Lansley]

There will not be any transfer of responsibility for services from the NHS to the private sector; the NHS will continue to be responsible. The balance in the NHS—[Interruption.] No, I shall answer the right hon. Gentleman’s point. He is trying to interpret “privatisation” as every service currently provided by an NHS provider being provided by an NHS provider in the future, but whether services are provided by the NHS or by a private enterprise, a social enterprise or a charity will be determined by patients choosing who is the best-quality provider. So that is not privatisation; the service remains free, and it remains an NHS service. It is guaranteed to patients in exactly the same way, and there is no presumption in the legislation—in fact, it excludes any presumption—in favour of a private sector provider as against an NHS provider.

The right hon. Gentleman is in absolutely no position to make any criticism of that, because he served in a Government who introduced independent sector treatment centres. They went through the process of giving the private sector contracts that were not available to the NHS, with an 11% higher price on average and a guarantee that they would be paid even if they did not necessarily provide the treatment. The net result was £297 million spent on operations that never took place, and the private sector walked away with that money, so he is in absolutely no position to make any criticism, because we are going to exclude such practices. The contracts that the Labour party gave to the private sector when he was a Minister are exactly the contracts that our legislation will exclude.

[Henry Smith]

Will the Secretary of State confirm that, under the previous Administration, private sector involvement in the NHS went up by 78%?

[Mr Lansley]

Interestingly, under the so-called extended choice network that the Labour Government introduced, the number of elective operations conducted in the private sector went from, I think, 16,000 in 2005-06 to 208,000 in 2009-10—an enormous increase. From the right hon. Gentleman’s point of view, it was marginal capacity that did not really matter, but the point is that patients said that they thought it provided good quality care. In a Care Quality Commission survey, some 96% of NHS patients using independent facilities said that the elective surgery they received was “excellent” or “very good”. The figure for NHS facilities was 79%. On the NHS Choices website, nine of the top 20 highest-rated NHS-funded providers were run by the independent sector; there were no independent-sector hospitals in the bottom 20. The general proposition is that the private sector is worse in the NHS, but there is no evidence to support that.

The right hon. Gentleman will recall that the Royal College of Surgeons conducted a study of the quality of care, and its general conclusion was that the quality of clinical care offered to NHS patients by private sector providers was as good as the care offered by the NHS. So what is his point? He used the private sector, patients used the private sector and patients were happy. What is his point?

[Andy Burnham]

We did, and I have celebrated it already, because it delivered the lowest-ever NHS waiting lists, which I celebrate again. But I am listening to the right hon. Gentleman, and I get the impression that he is completely confused. He cannot admit that his Bill will lead to more privatisation, but that is at its core, and people listening to this debate would have more respect for him if he came to the Dispatch Box and made an argument for what he is trying to do—to create a market in health care. Is he just floundering around? He is no longer able to say what the Bill is really about. It is about more privatisation, so why does he not try to make an argument for what he is trying to do, instead of avoiding the issue?

[Mr Lansley]

When the right hon. Gentleman finds that his argument is not working, he resorts to abuse. It is very simple: the Bill is not about privatisation. Patients will have access to NHS-funded services; the commissioners of those services will be NHS commissioners who are accountable to the NHS through statutory bodies, and they will not be able to transfer that responsibility to the private sector. Provision will be determined by the choices that patients and their doctors and nurses make about who is the best-qualified provider, and that choice will be made on quality, not on any other basis.

On the simple fact that we are looking to use competition within a tariff system, studies from Imperial college and the university of Bristol have recently shown that when it is introduced quality increases. Indeed, research from the university of York’s centre for health economics suggests that, if anything, the use of such competition has tended to support a reduction in the inequalities of access and care, rather than to lead to greater inequalities.

Let me provide some examples, bearing in mind the path that the Labour party is looking to go down. The Eastbourne Wound Healing Centre, a social enterprise set up by a nurse and an occupational therapist, specialises in wound healing. Patients who go to their clinic often have wounds that have not healed over three years, but more than eight out of every 10 of them have those wounds healed in just six weeks. Should we prevent patients being seen there because it is not actually owned by the NHS?

The City Health Care Partnership in Hull provides palliative care at home for patients and does not put profit before patients. One carer said that

“this clinic is so different, the focus is about how the illness is affecting you and what can be done to support you through it.”

Should we stop it doing that?

Another example is Inclusion Healthcare, a social enterprise in Leicester, which the hon. Member for Leicester West might know. It provides specialist health care to the homeless. Jane Gray, its director of nursing and development, stated:

“We’re providing a better service than we did in the NHS. We’re able to innovate and shape our services without constraint.”

Should we shut it down? Would that reduce inequalities? No, it would make them worse.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

I endorse entirely the Secretary of State’s criticism of the previous Government’s bias towards the private sector. I would be grateful if he clarified an issue in respect of the integration of health services. Does he agree that, particularly at the secondary and tertiary level, the question is not so much about privatisation because if the NHS was to lose its preferred provider status, the gradual loss of many aspects of secondary and tertiary services in, for example, an acute general hospital might undermine the viability of the hospital?

[Mr Lansley]

The position is very clear, as the hon. Gentleman should know from the debates that we have had. Continuity of access to services through the NHS is one of the central responsibilities of commissioners and of Monitor. If there is any threat to the continuity of those services, they can step in and take measures to ensure that the services continue, including by agreeing funding beyond the tariff to make that happen. If the extension of any qualified provider could lead directly to the loss of access to essential services for patients, the commissioners and Monitor do not have to go down that path. They can make those judgments.

I caution the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) about hanging his hat on the NHS as preferred provider. Before the last election, the right hon. Member for Leigh said that the NHS should be the preferred provider. His philosophy said that the NHS should be allowed to get it wrong twice before the private sector gets a look in. From the patient’s point of view it is, of course, a very cheerful thought that they will be surrendered to the policy of NHS as preferred provider.

Curiously, in March 2010, before the election and at the same time as he said that his policy was the NHS as preferred provider, the right hon. Gentleman published the “Principles and rules for cooperation and competition”, which he seems to be very fond of and which we are maintaining. That document stated:

“Commissioners must commission services from providers who are best placed to deliver the needs of their patients.”

It also stated:

“Commissioners and providers must not take any actions which restrict choice against patients’ and taxpayers’ interests.”

The reason that the right hon. Gentleman published that document was that he knew that the policy of NHS as preferred provider was already going to be the subject of a legal challenge and that it would not survive that challenge. That is why he restated exactly the principles of co-operation and competition that we intend to incorporate directly and without amendment into the way in which Monitor does its job.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Lansley]

No, I am going to move on. There has to be time for people to contribute to the debate, so I do not want to go on for too long.

The Health and Social Care Bill will, for the first time, ensure that private and voluntary sector organisations have to meet the same exacting standards and be regulated in exactly the same way as NHS organisations when they provide NHS services. Because that extends to any organisation providing NHS services, whether it be private or voluntary, it is disingenuous at best and possibly disreputable for the right hon. Member for Leigh to draw any comparison with the PIP breast implants scandal. There is no comparison between the position of a private company working in the private sector providing private services and the role of a private company operating inside the NHS under NHS controls. He knows that there is no comparison. In the NHS, the patient will be wholly protected. It is our intention to ensure for the first time—this did not happen under the Labour Government—that when a private sector provider operates in the NHS, it has to provide equivalent indemnities to its patients as would be provided through the NHS. That did not happen when the independent sector treatment centres and other things were brought in. There will be better protection. The private sector operating outside the NHS is a different matter.

Myth No. 3 is that raising the cap on private income will lead to a worse deal for patients. The paradigm example is the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. Its private patient cap is set at 31%. That is because in 2002, 31% of its income was derived from private sources and that was the basis on which it became a foundation trust in 2004. Its current private patient income is 25.8% of its total income. The fact that it has a cap does not mean that it goes up to it. In fact, its private patient level has come down slightly. The effect of setting the cap at 10%, as suggested by the right hon. Member for Leigh, would be to take about a fifth out of the income of the Royal Marsden. The Royal Marsden, like Great Ormond Street, is a classic example of how having a thriving private income from research, joint ventures and patients coming from overseas can get a hospital to a place where it can also consistently be recorded as one of the most excellent hospitals in the NHS, where NHS patients get the best care. It has on one hand the highest level of private patient activity—or, strictly speaking, private income—and on the other hand the highest standard of NHS care. The two things are entirely compatible.

[Andy Burnham]

May I just ask the Secretary of State to correct what he has said about the statements that I made? I did not say that I would reduce the Marsden’s cap. I said that we would allow a small increase on the existing cap that is linked to trusts’ own historical levels of private work. It would help the debate if he would be careful to get my position right. I was not talking about an across-the-board, blanket 10% cap, I simply said that some trusts with a much tighter cap of 1% or 2% were asking for a little extra leeway, which I said should be provided. I am not proposing a 10% cap across the board.

[Mr Lansley]

I think I could be forgiven for not understanding what on earth the right hon. Gentleman was talking about, since he did not put it in his motion and my colleagues had to ask him three or four times before they got anything close to an answer—he was saying “10%, or in single figures, we’re not quite sure what it would be”.

We have always been clear that there is an inherent unfairness in some foundation trusts having a cap set at the maximum 31% and others having it set at 1.5%, as all mental health trusts did when they were allowed to become foundation trusts. Technically, all NHS trusts have no cap at all, and some of them use that flexibility. Great Ormond Street, for example, is an NHS trust, not a foundation trust, and it uses that freedom, mainly to treat patients from overseas. Are we to stop that happening? I ask the right hon. Gentleman where he would set the cap for Great Ormond Street. I will give way to him if he will tell me.

[Andy Burnham]

I am not defending the existing policy. The cap was set for each trust individually to reflect historical levels. The reason trusts such as the Marsden and Great Ormond Street have a more generous cap is the large amounts of private work that they carry out. [Interruption.] Yes, but if and when they become foundation trusts under the Secretary of State’s policy, they will have caps reflecting their historical levels of work if he adopts my suggestion. I have proposed that each individual cap be modestly loosened, but he proposes an across-the-board 49% cap applying to all NHS hospitals, effectively meaning that every NHS hospital could devote half their beds to the treatment of private patients. Will he confirm that that is the effect of the policy that he is bringing forward?

[Mr Lansley]

Answer came there none. The truth is, we are doing exactly what the right hon. Gentleman and his party intended to do. At the election, Labour said in its manifesto:

“Foundation Trusts will be given the freedom to expand their provision into primary and community care, and to increase their private services—where these are consistent with NHS values, and provided they generate surpluses that are invested directly into the NHS”.

That is what we are doing.

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

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Lansley]

No.

We are giving foundation trusts freedom to generate revenue from other sources that can be invested directly into the NHS. When Moorfields, for example, sets up a clinic in the middle east in a joint venture, should we say, “No, you’re not allowed to do that, because it might imperil your ability to support NHS patients”? Actually, it will help their ability to do so, with NHS Global encouraging the NHS.

I believe in the NHS and in the ability of NHS hospitals and providers, which in the past have had their horizons limited, to move beyond those horizons and deliver much better care. That can include turning them into international providers of choice in joint ventures across the world, and even joint ventures in this country, whether in research or the provision of additional services. However, as I explained to the right hon. Member for Leigh in an intervention, under the Health and Social Care Bill the principal purpose of any foundation trust will be the provision of NHS services. Doing anything that would be to the detriment of its provision of NHS services would be unlawful. Foundation trusts cannot cross-subsidise from NHS services into private services.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Lansley]

No.

Individual staff in the NHS have a duty not to allow their private activity to be to the detriment of their NHS activity. Foundation trusts will have an obligation to be transparent in accounting for the two sources of income, and they will have an obligation to report at their general meeting how they have used their private income to benefit their NHS patients.

I am afraid that what the right hon. Member for Leigh says is a tissue of nonsense. The 49% amendment was introduced only to make it abundantly clear that if the principal purpose of a foundation trust is the provision of NHS services, by extension that would not be consistent with the balance of its activity being private rather than NHS activity—hence 49%. There is no specific intention that NHS foundation trusts should increase their private income to any specific degree.

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

Is it not true that the cap is “up to” 49%? Does my right hon. Friend agree that the best decisions are made not at the Dispatch Box by plucking numbers out of the air, but by patients, clinicians and hospital trusts?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Labour party appears to be going backwards. Its 2010 manifesto said:

“We will support an active role for the independent sector working alongside the NHS in the provision of care”,

but tonight’s motion says that Labour has abandoned that policy. I quoted earlier the Labour party’s commitment to giving patients the choice of the best available provider. Its policy tonight is to abandon patients, including the 81% who told a survey that they want to exercise choice. Labour’s manifesto said it would give foundation trusts freedom to expand and increase their private services. It has now abandoned that policy.

Why does Labour do that? Why did it abandon those policies? Perhaps it is because the Labour party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the trade unions. Labour is interested not in patients or the NHS, but in the trade unions, because its policy is all about the protection of trade union interests—vested interests. The guarding of the vested interests is the remaining activity of the Labour party, but it will diminish over time.

Let me tell the shadow Health Secretary very simply what we are setting out to do. Under this Government, the power to choose will increasingly lie in the hands of patients, doctors and nurses, and incentives will encourage all providers to integrate their care and improve the quality of their care. The result is not a fragmentation of the NHS or inequalities, but better, higher-quality care, and integrated NHS care that offers everyone the very best care available. We will use choice—patients’, doctors’ and nurses’ interests in delivering that choice—and the best quality provision to deliver better outcomes for patients. That is why I urge the House to reject the Opposition motion.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We have very limited time and I wish to get quite a lot of Back Benchers in, so I am going to start with a six-minute limit. I may have to reduce it, but I am going to try to ensure that we get everybody in.

20:42

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

To respond to some of the misrepresentations of the Opposition, I worked for the NHS for some 12 years and hold it in the very highest regard. I am here to defend the NHS against privatisation, and I make no apology for doing so to Government Members or anyone else for that matter.

It is fitting to pay tribute to all those who work in the NHS and who make it such a tremendous institution. I also pay tribute to members of the British Medical Association consultants committee who took part in Bevan’s run to mark their opposition to the dreadful Health and Social Care Bill as part of the “Drop the Bill” campaign. They ran 160 miles in six days from Nye Bevan’s statue in Cardiff to deliver a postcard to the Department of Health in Whitehall to call on the Secretary of State to drop the Bill.

In the limited time available, I should like to address the point in the motion about the cap and to address Government Members’ misrepresentations. The private patient income cap, which was set up under the previous Labour Government in the Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Act 2003, which established NHS foundation trusts, was a protection against the need for profit overtaking the needs of NHS patients. With all hospital trusts set to become foundation trusts by 2014, a meaningful cap on the amount of resources that can be directed to the care and treatment of private patients becomes even more important.

The passage of the Health and Social Care Bill—it is in the Lords at the moment—can only be described as a shambles. It is an incredibly unpopular measure. There could have been agreement on, for example, clinical involvement in commissioning, but that could be achieved without this incredible disruption to the service. I certainly believe that it is harmful to the future existence of the NHS. There is no mandate or basis for it in the Conservative or Lib Dem manifestos or in the coalition agreement. This NHS privatisation plan might be better described as an NHS privatisation paving Bill—

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Grahame M. Morris]

With all due respect, I have very limited time and I am not going to take any interventions.

Any utterance about the nature of the NHS reforms planned by the Secretary of State during the general election campaign was heavily disguised. He weaved a tangled web in private health care during his seven years as Opposition spokesman on health. A few moments ago, he mentioned Labour’s involvement with the trade unions, but it is the involvement of the Conservatives with private health care interests that should be the subject of scrutiny.

NHS professionals, staff, the public and experts alike have all rejected the ethos of profits over patients, but the Secretary of State will not be deterred. He has defended his move by claiming that foundation trusts have a core legal duty to care for NHS patients. However, at the same time he is telling these trusts that they must make a profit to survive, and that if they run a deficit, they risk failure. That could mean being taken over by another trust or, as we have seen in the case of Hinchingbrooke hospital in Huntingdon, being taken over by a private sector provider.

We have not seen the Bill’s risk assessment, but as a member of the Public Bill Committee, I saw the impact assessment, and in point B95 it confirms that rather than improving services at hospital level through performance management, poor providers

“may need to contract or exit completely.”

That has created the ultimate Catch-22 for foundation trusts, with a conflict between patients and profits. A further Government proposal to scrap the provision in the 2006 Act which allows failing foundation trusts to return to NHS control puts further pressure on the need for trusts to pursue profits and has been opposed by the NHS chief executive, Sir David Nicholson.

I urge hon. Members to vote for the motion to ensure that patient care is placed before private profit and to send a clear and strong message to the Government that they must think again about their plans to ratchet up privatisation in our beloved NHS. The Minister of State, Department of Health, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns) has often quoted Nye Bevan, but to quote Robin Cook,

“If he believes that the spirit of Nye Bevan supports his changes to the NHS then there is a wheel missing from his ouija board.”

20:48

[Mr Stephen Dorrell (Charnwood) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris). He and I are both members of the Health Committee and, surprisingly perhaps, we more often find ourselves in agreement about the objectives that we are trying to deliver than is obvious from the nature of the debates across the Floor of the House.

I shall focus my remarks on the speech by the shadow Health Secretary. I have some quite good news for him—he was a far better Secretary of State than he himself appears now to believe. As Secretary of State, he did not allow himself to fall victim to the kind of prejudices that have been ventilated this evening. Tonight, he fell into the old trap of eliding two concepts and pretending that they are the same. The two concepts are, on the one hand, privatising the health service, and on the other, involving the private sector in the improvement of care available to patients. As Secretary of State, he was well able to distinguish between those two concepts and pursued policies of involving the private and voluntary sector when there were opportunities to improve care for patients. He now prefers to forget the fact that during his time as a Minister we not only heard plans for involving the private sector in improving the care delivered to patients but saw an open-minded attempt to bring in the private sector to improve the process of commissioning in the health service. That was what world-class commissioning was designed to deliver. We are now asked to turn our mind away from all those ideas.

I, like my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, am in favour of tax-funded care for patients. I am in favour of equitable access to high-quality care, like my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and like the shadow Health Secretary. I am also, however, in favour of plural provision, looking for the best solution for patients and the best value for taxpayers. In that respect, I am, as the shadow Health Secretary used to be but apparently no longer is, a straightforward Blairite. This was the breakthrough that Tony Blair taught the Labour party that it now appears to have forgotten. It was Tony Blair who advocated the introduction of private hospitals into the delivery of care and Tony Blair who stressed the importance of the third sector in finding new ways of improving care for patients, yet it is now my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State who has to pick up the Blairite torch that has been so unceremoniously dropped by the shadow Health Secretary.

It is worth reflecting, is it not, on whether this Blairite consensus is the inevitable consequence of the principle of commissioning—

[Andy Burnham]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Dorrell]

I would be delighted to.

[Andy Burnham]

If the policy that the Secretary of State is pursuing is a continuation of our policy in government, why do the Government need many hundreds of pages of legislation and a new Bill?

[Mr Dorrell]

The right hon. Gentleman is in danger of creating another consensus. Indeed, there is a debate about whether the Bill moves things forward as far as the rhetoric suggests. I am on the record many times saying that the claims made for the Bill by, if I am honest, both the Government and the Opposition spokesmen are grossly overstated. It introduces greater engagement by clinicians in commissioning and greater engagement by local authorities in commissioning through the health and wellbeing boards, and those are good things. I agree, however, with the tone of the right hon. Gentleman’s last intervention: the new world is not quite as far removed from the old as he sometimes likes to suggest and as he suggested in his speech.

Let us focus for a second on what it means to have commissioners in the health service. When the shadow Secretary of State has more time one day, I would like to hear him talk us through the process, which he would, on occasion at least, advocate, of turning down a good idea that is brought to a commissioner to improve care for patients and good value for taxpayers because that idea comes from the private sector. I hold no brief for the private or public sector in the delivery of care; I hold a brief for tax-funded equitable access to higher quality care from whomsoever provides that care. That is what I mean when I say that I am a straightforward Blairite and I look forward to welcoming the shadow Health Secretary back into the fold.

20:54

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

I want to speak in support of the motion and argue that NHS hospitals are not private businesses and should not be turned into private businesses, pitted against each other and competing for the most lucrative procedures.

Many of the dangers inherent in the Government’s plans have been displayed in the saga about PIP implants. In that case, tens of thousands of women have been left worried sick about implants received in surgery in private clinics. There are, of course, serious questions about regulation of the products used in private clinics on those tens of thousands of women. Indeed, it has emerged that the PIP implants were effectively counterfeit goods below medical grade, and I understand that some of the gel used in them is designed for use in mattresses.

On 23 December, the Health Secretary’s initial response to the scare affecting tens of thousands of women was that his current advice was that there was

“no need to routinely remove these PIP breast implants. In the meantime we would recommend that all patients who have questions about their PIP breast implants should seek advice from their implanting surgeon.”

As we have heard since, however, some women who had that surgery could not even contact their original surgeon and many clinics demanded hundreds of pounds even for a scan—money that the women involved just might not have. Last week, many private clinics said that patients must pay in cash to have the implants removed.

I did not feel that the initial advice would reassure the women involved, who were left with all their fears and concerns over Christmas and new year, so I asked fellow members of the Health Select Committee to consider an inquiry into the saga and the issues of regulation that it raised, and I am glad that Committee members agreed and that there will now be an inquiry. We have to remember, however, that reviews and inquiries move slowly for people worried sick about their health. I believe that the NHS should stand by these women, which it reluctantly now seems to be agreeing to do.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency passed the products despite their being substandard or, as I said last week and previously, effectively counterfeit. I thought that the point was well made in an article by the health writer and commentator Roy Lilley. He wrote that

“women who have PIP made breast implants are the victims of a crime”,

having

“spent fortunes on enhancements that have turned out to be counterfeit and possibly…injurious to their health… The NHS would not turn away a patient convulsing from consuming counterfeit vodka. Neither should it turn these women away.”

This saga raises many issues about not only the quality of implants but regulation—or the lack of it—in private medicine. That is key to this debate. More issues have been raised in recent days about the ability of surgeons who practise cosmetic surgery in private clinics. Apparently, they are not always trained or skilled enough to apply to be consultants or even to practise in the NHS without supervision, but they are skilled enough to operate alone in cosmetic surgery and private clinics. To what standard do those private clinics operate? What about the many other products implanted in surgery—hips, knees and heart valves, for example? How well regulated are those products and how can we be sure of their quality? I hope that the Health Committee inquiry can tackle some of those regulatory issues.

The concerns raised recently about the cosmetic surgery industry prompt many questions about where we will be if the Government continue with their Health and Social Care Bill. Last week in a letter to The Times, 14 consultants, general practitioners and public health experts wrote:

“The government proposes a vast increase in private provision of health care just as we are told that existing private providers are unable to supply adequate records of what they have been doing and are charging exorbitant sums to consult their records for those women seeking information on what happened to them.”

They continue to warn that the Health and Social Care Bill, now in the other place,

“provides much less protection for patients should their provider fail than is available to people booking package holidays.”

We have to think about that, because the implications are frightening for the future of the NHS.

The other major area of decline is waiting lists—this has been touched on in the debate—which are already getting longer, to the detriment of NHS patients. We must question what will happen when up to half of hospital beds are being used for private patients. In 1997, this country had a Conservative Government and NHS waiting lists were shockingly long. I was out campaigning in the 1997 election with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), and I met a man who had been told that he would wait two years for vital heart surgery. He was worried that he would die while on the waiting list. That was the reality of the NHS then.

After 13 years of a Labour Government and while campaigning in my constituency in 2010, I met a man who told me about a totally different experience of the NHS. He visited his GP on Monday and was sent for blood tests. On Tuesday, he was told that he could have serious problems and was admitted to a north Manchester hospital for further investigation. They had a specialist surgeon there who operated on him on Thursday and told him that the surgery had saved his life—four days to save a life in the NHS after a Labour Government had run it for 13 years versus a desperate two-year wait back in 1997 under a Conservative-run Government.

The Health and Social Care Bill challenges the NHS’s founding principle that access to services should be based on need, not ability to pay. I know that my constituents do not want these changes. Many of them have asked me to be here for this debate and to vote for the motion. I am happy to do so.

In conclusion, I join my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) in mentioning the brave participation of Dr Clive Peedell and David Wilson in running 160 miles in six days to draw attention to the growing campaign to drop the Health and Social Care Bill. It is time the Government listened.

21:00

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I am grateful to be called, Mr Deputy Speaker. I had three reasons for writing to Mr Speaker requesting to take part in this debate. The first is that I genuinely wanted to hear, in this Opposition day debate on the NHS, what the Opposition’s plans really are for the future of our health service. The second reason is that I want to describe the experience that my constituents went through, over 13 years of a Labour Administration. Finally, I want to talk about how already, in anticipation of the Health and Social Care Bill becoming law, clinicians in Crawley are working to deliver a better national health service.

I do not mind telling the House that I am forgoing an invitation to a dinner this evening, so great was my desire to hear exactly the official Opposition’s view on the NHS. What I have heard this evening is incredible—or, so that I am not misunderstood, not credible. It is amazing that a party that massively increased the PFI programme during its tenure, spending billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money in an inefficient way through the national health service, should come to the House this evening and try to claim that what we are trying to achieve in the Health and Social Care Bill will somehow privatise the national health service. Let us be quite clear: this Government are committed to providing a national health service that is available regardless of the ability to pay. The difference, I contend, between Government Members and Opposition Members is that they are ruled by some sort of centralist dogma that says that if the Department of Health has not willed it, it cannot happen, whereas the Government are trying to introduce a pragmatic approach, in which outcomes are far more important than the strict processes that a dogmatic system for delivering health care should produce.

I said that I wanted briefly to mention the experience of the NHS during what we are often led to believe were the golden years of the health service, under the previous Government. Those years were not so golden for my constituents, because in 2001—a decade ago—we regrettably saw the downgrading of maternity services at Crawley hospital. Crawley is a growing town; indeed, its motto is, “I grow and I rejoice”. However, there was not much rejoicing when its maternity services were taken away and transferred almost 10 miles up the road to East Surrey hospital, where there is now increased pressure on maternity services, as it is having to cope with the increased number of people from not only east Surrey, but the north-east of West Sussex.

To add insult to injury, in 2005 Crawley hospital saw its accident and emergency department closed. Again, it was moved miles up the road to East Surrey hospital, even though there is little public transport between that hospital and Crawley—a growing and ageing town, with increasing health needs and major transportation links, not least the nation’s second biggest airport, London Gatwick—and single-carriageway roads. At best, that is inconvenient for patients and for families wishing to visit them in hospital; at worst, it is potentially fatal. That is my constituents’ experience.

[Barbara Keeley]

The hon. Gentleman is making a defence of A and E and maternity services, but does he not recognise that, despite the promises made by the current Secretary of State during the election campaign, many hospitals have, for clinical reasons, done the very same thing? They include Salford Royal, which has lost its maternity services, and others in the north-west, even though the Secretary of State promised that that would not happen to them. Does the hon. Gentleman not see that those things are going on now?

[Henry Smith]

The principal reason behind the closure of the accident and emergency unit at my local hospital was the European working time directive, which had a massive impact across the national health service. The NHS as an institution will of course evolve, the better to serve patients up and down the country. That is absolutely right.

That brings me to the third point that I wanted to make: the opportunity that the Health and Social Care Bill will provide for greater localisation in decision making on the future of health care services. I am delighted that the clinicians and GPs in Crawley have already come together to form a GP commissioning body, which is very ably chaired by Dr Amit Bhargava. It is brimming with ideas for innovative ways in which patients can be provided with much better services. For the first time in many years, decisions about the future of health care in Crawley are being made by Crawley clinicians, in conjunction with their patients and in the light of their patients’ needs. The group is working in conjunction with the local authorities—West Sussex county council and Crawley borough council—which, incidentally, will be providing oversight of some of the private sector contracts in the national health service, as envisaged in the Bill. The provision of that democratic oversight for the first time will achieve a localisation of services that is more relevant to the needs of the local communities, as well as a far greater degree of oversight.

I reject the motion before us, and I welcome the Health and Social Care Bill. It will be better for patients and better for democratic oversight. Ultimately, we should be talking about, and delivering, better outcomes for health care in this country, not remaining wedded to an outdated dogma which does not deliver services as efficiently as it could and should deliver them.

21:07

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

The NHS is rightly the most valued institution in this country. It has an impeccable track record of continuing improvement and innovation going back more than 60 years. The staff on the front line and those in the support services who are disparaged by Conservative Members as somehow irrelevant to the success of the service have never been frightened to face up to the challenges of change. They are, however, sick and tired of the constant demands of know-it-all politicians on all sides for endless reorganisations, restructuring and re-profiling. That is why they were so disappointed after the Prime Minister had told them that there would be no more top-down impositions from on high; they and the British public were, quite simply, misled.

The fears around privatisation are a reflection of yet another change to the structure of the NHS, and it is a very unwelcome one. The Secretary of State tried to rubbish the trade unions tonight. He did not mention all the other professional bodies in the NHS that are opposed to the changes. The only people who seem to be in favour of them are those in the Tory party, and their friends in the Liberal Democrats. None of the people who are delivering the services want the changes to happen. That includes the GPs that the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) was talking about. They might well be doing good work in Crawley, but the key is that they do not want to have to do it in that way. The general public are also worried about the changes.

The Secretary of State said that we should not look back, but if we do not learn the mistakes of history, we will repeat them. We need to look at the situation that prevailed a long time ago. The working people in this country in the first half of the last century were desperate for a health care system. People came back from the devastation of world war one to a worldwide influenza epidemic. They were living in desperate conditions and working in massively unsafe workplaces. They were bringing up families whose lives were blighted and shortened by the diseases of poverty: tuberculosis, rickets, malnutrition and pneumonia. Their conditions of life at home and at work had changed little since the days of Dickens, yet we saw yet another world war where money that could not be found to build a decent society in peacetime was miraculously produced to kill millions in wartime.

At the end of that war, the men and women of this country were determined not to continue with that and were not going to put their faith in a Government and a private sector-driven economy that had failed them so badly. They turned instead to a Government who, despite the biggest debt crisis ever, determined that the health and well-being of this country’s people was paramount. That is why Labour built millions of homes for people, why swathes of industries that had been disgracefully run down by the private sector owners were nationalised, and why we, the Labour party, built the NHS to ensure that never again would the quality of a person’s health care depend on the depth of their wallets.

People quite rightly felt bitter about the way they had been treated for decades. That was perhaps best summed up by Nye Bevan, who set up the NHS, when on 4 July 1948, two days before the NHS came into being, he said:

“no amount of cajolery and no attempts at ethical or social seduction can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory party that inflicted those bitter experiences on me.”

As expected, the Opposition did not like that, and Mr Churchill labelled Mr Bevan “the Minister for Disease”. Equally as expected, Nye Bevan was having none of it. Speaking from the platform of the Durham miners’ gala, he reminded people of the reality of life under Tory rule when he said—

[Chris Skidmore]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Anderson]

Go on, then.

[Chris Skidmore]

The hon. Gentleman is quoting history, so I wonder whether he would agree that Nye Bevan could be seen as the pioneer of private sector involvement within the NHS, given that he accepted that more than 4,000 pay beds should be part of the NHS in order to ensure bags of investment in facilities?

[Mr Anderson]

Of course, the reality is as envisaged by my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State, who has accepted that there is a role for the private sector within the health service, but the debate is about how big it should be and how much control there should be of the health sector. [Interruption.] May I carry on?

As I was saying, Nye Bevan responded to Churchill’s criticism by saying:

“Who should be called the Minister for Disease? I am keeping mothers and children alive when he half starved them to death.”

That is the legacy with which the Conservative party is lumbered. It is the burden round the neck of Conservative Members when the people of this country get worried about private involvement in health care. I have no doubt that Conservative Members will not agree with me, but it was right and proper when my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) drew an analogy between this privatisation and that of the utilities. We should look at the results of those privatisations: unfettered and uncontrolled expansion, with our energy supplies now controlled by foreign companies; huge, uncontrolled price increases; millions of people in fuel poverty; no control over the security of supply; a national grid not fit for purpose; and an incoherent strategy to face up to the challenge of climate change. Those are all the result of giving away our vital services to the highest bidder. People are quite right to say, “Why would it be any different in health?”

The people of this country do not want the NHS to become a copycat version of the American model—a model that costs twice as much as ours to run, yet leaves 20% of the population out in the cold when they are ill. Our NHS has a tremendous track record, dealing with millions of people every week. Our life expectancy levels have risen rapidly, especially over the period when the previous Government reversed the years of underfunding that were the trademark of the last Tory Government. Public satisfaction rates were at record levels when we left office 18 months ago.

This present Government have broken their promise to the British people. They have lied to the staff who work magnificently to deliver our NHS. They are intent on breaking up the NHS and replacing it with a system based once again on a programme that puts profits before patients. If Conservative Members really believe in privatisation, they should ask the people what they want. The people have woken up to the reality of the Conservative party; they realise that once again the NHS is not safe in Tory hands—even though they are wearing the yellow gloves provided by the Liberal Democrats. Patients, as the figures clearly show, want no further privatisation of our NHS.

21:14

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

Far be it from me to presume to criticise the wise counsel of other Members, but it is absolute nonsense to think that the NHS has always been a monolithic system of public provision. It is absolute nonsense to think that private health providers always think only of profit instead of providing a good service or that services delivered by a public body are necessarily less costly or always better than those delivered by a private provider. It is nonsense to think that choice and competition are never needed, that diversity is bad or that reform or improvement—I prefer that word—is not needed. Sensible, pragmatic, evidence-led arguments can be made for mixed provision, for improvement, for choice and competition, for the involvement of the private sector and for diversity. That is not the problem.

The problem is that pragmatism and evidence count for very little because for the past eight years health policy in this country has been in the grip of an unspoken ideology. Put very simply it goes like this: the Government have no real business in providing health services but should buy them from health providers in a market. Some will be private providers that will make a profit, some will be voluntary bodies or social enterprises and others will be the fragmented, dissected pieces of the old NHS—foundation hospitals, trusts and the like. All can be branded as NHS providers if we want and all can have the NHS logo. The differences between them all will become increasingly blurred and of no consequence. Some people believe it should not matter which of these bodies delivers health services so long as the taxpayer and not the patient pays and the Government keep out of the provider business. That idea is rather like what exists already in other countries, except that generally in those places it is insurance, not tax, that funds the system.

And it is not privatisation. Ministers can truthfully say, “We are not privatising the NHS.” It is marketisation. What is happening is that the Government are buying health in a market, either national or local—an external market. They are gradually giving up on providing health services and in my view clearly mean to do so. It is a beautifully clear, coherent ideology that is rarely explicitly set out, defended, discussed within parties or put to the electorate. Indeed, to do so might be electoral suicide.

Stage by stage over the past eight years that ideology has been progressed. If one assumes it and holds it in mind one can understand why hospitals have to become foundation hospitals independent of the state—that was a Blair idea—and why it was necessary to create a bigger private sector by offering it preferential terms, which was another Blair idea. One understands why services formerly run by primary care trusts, such as community nurses and the like, are being forced to become social enterprises and why it is suggested that NHS hospitals might do up to 49% private work and that private hospitals can do as much NHS work as they like. One also understands why the Health and Social Care Bill abolishes the Government power to start a new hospital, why there is such unseemly haste to extend “any willing provider” and why the Secretary of State, even at the cost of peace in the Lords, does not want the word “provide” back in the list of his powers. If anyone is unpersuaded regarding any of that, let them turn it the other way around and point to one—just one—recent policy initiative that clearly shows that that market solution is not the endgame and the ultimate goal.

I do not believe that ideology is in itself bad, and this ideology has the virtues of being clear, consistent and radical, but in my view it is basically wrong because a health market cannot ensure that health services integrate well—the Future Forum spotted that—or that scarce NHS funds are spent in the most efficient way, as previous Treasury reports have shown in abundance. It cannot ensure that people get the services to which they are entitled and it cannot ensure that health inequalities are properly addressed. It clearly cannot easily make the strategic planning decisions needed to sustain services, encourage training and organise research, which is precisely why these issues have been so problematic in the Bill and why we are going to find slimming down the financially challenged hospital sector so painful and so uncontrollable in its consequences.

I am not here to argue against this market ideology, because, frankly, few have the honesty to argue for it openly. It is not the official Labour policy or the official Liberal policy. I do not believe it is even the official Conservative policy. It was smuggled past all of us, including the general public, shrouded in vague pragmatic talk about choice, diversity, reform and independence, but we should have no doubt: it is ideology. How else can we possibly explain the headlong pursuit at pace of a set of reforms that complicate and make riskier the huge £20 billion efficiency programme? How else do we explain the overloading of bodies such as the Care Quality Commission and Monitor, whose inadequacies, if not apparent now, will soon become painfully apparent after the Mid Staffs inquiry reports?

[Andrew George]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be worth revisiting the issue of whether the NHS should be pre-eminent as first provider or in some other role before we finally make what may be a catastrophic error?

[John Pugh]

My fundamental point is that this is not evidence-led pragmatism. If we join up the policy dots, we see pure, simple, unalloyed faith in the market system to deliver health in this country. Time after time, in issue after issue, ideology trumps pragmatism and prudence.

The Labour motion is a potpourri of varied sentiments, some of which are true and some of which are confused, and some, given the history, that it is surprising the Opposition have the gall to table at all. However, we should be genuinely grateful to them because they have given us an opportunity—a platform—to name the beast, to define real choice and to cut to the quick.

Chris Mullin, in his excellent “Diaries”, describes a discussion with a fellow Member of this place, a Yorkshire MP, “a mild-mannered fellow”—I do not know who that would include—who in 2005, prophetically, said of the Labour party:

“We’re opening the door…Whatever safeguards we put in place, whatever assurances we give will be absolutely worthless once the Tories are in power…I think we will lose the next election. The Tories will come to some sort of understanding with the Lib Dems—”

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order.

21:22

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

I agree with a substantial number of the points made by the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh). The Government claim that their proposals are just an incremental extension of the Labour Government’s involvement of the private sector, bringing private patients into NHS hospitals. In fact, they are nothing of the sort; they are dramatically different in nature and scale. To justify them, the Government grossly exaggerate the contribution the private sector has made.

I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Charnwood (Mr Dorrell) has left the Chamber, as in 1997 when I took over from him as Secretary of State for Health, the NHS was carrying out 5.7 million operations. By the time Labour left office, the figure was 9.7 million—4 million more than when he was in charge. Of those 9.7 million operations a year, 9.5 million were being carried out in NHS hospitals and the private sector was doing 200,000, or 2.1% of the total. So much for its massive contribution to improving the service for ordinary people.

The private sector cherry-picked operations and patients, yet now we have the proposition that things will be franchised out; it was to be to “any willing provider,” but now it is to “any qualified provider.” Recent events suggest that it will be to any willing profiteer—to people who are good at the sales pitch and say that they can keep costs down and are superior to the NHS. They will be the people who use the cheapest breast implants and when things go wrong expect the national health service to bail out the patients they have harmed. They are a bit like the bankers: they are in favour of competition and a free market, but when things go wrong, they say, “Will the taxpayer please bail us out?” That is what we are seeing.

We also see in the proposals that the NHS hospitals should in future be able to undertake up to half the work on private patients. The right hon. Member for Charnwood talked about increased revenue. This year sees the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. He had a character called Mr Micawber, and he would have noticed that it is not the revenue that counts, but the revenue against the cost of providing the service. If the cost of providing the service to private patients is greater than the revenue that comes in from private patients, we are running at a loss and the NHS is subsidising them.

I say that about the Royal Free hospital, which does a very good job in serving my constituency. It just so happens that I have its figures, because I asked for them. In the last year for which figures are available, the Royal Free hospital took in £17.3 million in revenue from private patients. According to the figures it gave me, the cost of providing those services was £15.6 million—an apparent gain of £1.7 million. However, it went on to say that “costs are estimated” and

“not all costs are split between private and NHS patients in this way”.

The costs are not clear. It might look as though the income is clear, but I then asked what the private patient debt is from those people.

[Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Frank Dobson]

No, I do not have time and others want to speak.

The answer is that, over the past five years, private patient debt has never been lower than £6.4 million, against an income of £17 million. They are not exactly subsidising NHS patients out of the private sector income at the Royal Free, because they do not have enough income to subsidise them.

I recall years ago, when I was shadow Health Minister, running a campaign on this issue. The Tory Government said that they would change the rules and introduce a system, backed up by the National Audit Office, as it is now called—then, it was the Comptroller and Auditor General’s office—that ensured that any private sector contribution produced a surplus. No such arrangements were put in place, and I challenge the Minister to identify what the position is with all those private patients in NHS hospitals. How many are running a surplus and how many are running at a loss?

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I will reduce the time limit to four minutes to try to get everybody in.

21:27

[Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

It is always a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), but he was rather disingenuous about my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Mr Dorrell). My right hon. Friend said—I think we all agree about it—that where the private sector can add value for money and add value to patient care that always has to be a good thing, as well as something that I think Members on both sides of the House agree on.

My right hon. Friend made the point, which was also well made by the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), that this is not a debate about whether the private sector is a good thing or a bad thing in the NHS; it is a good thing, clearly, where it improves care for patients and offers high-quality patient care. The debate is about whether having a cap on the role of the private sector in foundation trusts is a good thing.

It appears that the private patient cap is set arbitrarily and varies from trust to trust. On the basis of what we know, it is difficult simply to argue that having the private sector heavily involved in the workings of a trust is necessarily a bad thing. We know that the 30% private sector activity at the Royal Marsden is hugely beneficial—not only to the private patients, but to those patients looked after by the Royal Marsden who are NHS patients. We see the same at the Royal Brompton, Moorfields and many other hospitals with a relatively high private patient cap. At those hospitals, the money raised from private activities and the private sector is pumped back into the hospital to improve research and to provide high-quality patient care for all NHS patients at those hospitals. Simply saying that having the private sector involved in a hospital to a larger extent is a bad thing because it compromises patient care is plainly not the case. Some of the best hospitals make the case that, in fact, a cap set at a high level is right. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, at hospitals such as the Marsden, even when they could set 30% private activity, they use only a proportion of that cap, because what they look at first is their primary duty to their NHS patients and their primary duty to provide high-quality care.

It is difficult to argue for a cap set at an arbitrary level, because what everyone in the NHS is interested in, and what we in Parliament are interested in, is producing high-quality patient care. In that respect, my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood was absolutely right. Tony Blair believed that, and it was at the heart of his health care reforms. In that respect, the Government are carrying forward the mantra of patients’ best interests.

I have discussed a little the fact that an arbitrary cap does not work, and is not in patients’ best interests. I have also discussed the benefits that involving the private sector in hospitals can bring to NHS patients. The good thing about those hospitals, particularly the Royal Brompton and the Royal Marsden, which are centres of excellence, is the fact that private sector involvement improves the quality and the output of medical research. That is another reason why those hospitals are pioneering examples of high-quality patient research, which benefits patients, particularly in the NHS. This is a good motion, as it endorses the role of the private sector, which can be a good thing as long as it is for the benefit of patients. However, it is a bad thing to impose arbitrary caps that do not benefit patients.

21:31

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

There is no escaping the fact that the role of the private sector in the national health service is one of the most contentious issues to arise when discussing or debating the health service. Some people would suggest that there was no appreciable difference between the policies of the Labour Opposition and the Conservative Government, especially on the use of private companies to deliver services.

I believe that there is a huge chasm of difference, which has been borne out by this debate. It comes down to this: what we saw under previous Labour Governments was the private sector being used to add grit to the system. It operated in the system with strict limitations, and it was deployed, for example, to drive down waiting times from 18 months to 18 weeks. In tandem with targets, the private sector offered a means of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the NHS, delivering choice and quality to patients. That is where our policies and those of the Government diverge.

It is clear that the intention of the Conservative-led Government is completely different. The NHS is under siege from the Government, who regard the private sector as a means to undermine and weaken the NHS. For all the rhetoric of the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary about their love of the NHS, I would assert that their actions have shown only that they do not fundamentally believe in the principles, values and ethos of the NHS. Those actions attack its very purpose and everything that people hold dear in that world-revered service.

The Government are pushing ahead with their Bill in the face of widespread opposition. Along with the majority of health professionals and the British public, I believe that the Bill should be stopped. Let me make it clear: nothing that I have heard from Health Ministers is reassuring for anyone who has fought to save the NHS. When the Government talk about a regulated market for the NHS people are, and should be, filled with fear.

There will be an increasing role for the private sector, and organisations can be both providers and commissioners. Any A-level business student could explain that that leads to a conflict of interest, and it contradicts and inhibits the notion of introducing genuine competition in the NHS, if that was the intention. I think that the Health Secretary may be mixing up words beginning with “c”. Instead of “competition”, I believe that the word he has been looking for is “cartel”. However it is dressed up, there is one thing I am certain of: allowing such a situation to develop is not in patients’ best interests. There are many questions that need answering. With the private income cap set at 49%, what guarantees are there that hospitals will be able to deliver choice and meet waiting times? What assurance can the Secretary of State give the House that private providers will not cherry-pick the best income-generation services, leaving cost-intensive services such as—

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that removing the cap will do nothing to help the problem of health inequalities and that it will in fact exacerbate the problem?

[Rosie Cooper]

National health services should be provided on the basis of need, not the ability to pay, so I agree.

I was saying that cost-intensive services such as accident and emergency services may well be threatened. How will the overall capacity of the health care market be managed effectively? How would the Government ensure that the proposal did not impact on the ability of hospitals to deliver urgent care?

We have had to proceed very quickly, but there are some major issues to consider. In conclusion, I urge Members to support the motion for the simple reason that it shines a light on how, once again, the Government are developing policy based on ideology and not on what is best for patients. The people’s trust was hard won and the Government have broken that trust yet again. It is another example of ill conceived, poorly developed, incomprehensible policy that we have come to expect from the Government, which leaves Members, the medical profession and our constituents with more questions than answers. A commentator said that the NHS was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I believe that the way to save it is to kill the Bill.

21:36

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

We have heard much this evening from Opposition Front Benchers about celebrating the role of private providers, but the message that goes out from so many of the Back-Bench speeches is one of fear and alarm. It is the single message “public good, private bad”, and it tries to tarnish every private health care provider with that notion.

I want to use my brief remarks this evening to pay tribute to the staff of the newest NHS facility in my area who are working hard to tackle health inequalities and offering a great service to busy people in my constituency, but these hard-working health workers work for a private sector provider. When they are providing their service in an NHS facility, they must feel mystified and rather let down, I suspect, to be constantly criticised by the Labour party.

I agreed with the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), who is not in her place, when she said in 2008 that the private sector has much to offer in tackling health inequalities. That is what that NHS facility run by Care UK is doing in my constituency—tackling health inequalities, helping busy, highly mobile young people who cannot register with a GP to get the service that they need, and helping shift workers, migrant workers and those whose working day starts too early for them to get to the doctor during normal hours.

The Junction health centre in Clapham junction, a busy transport hub, opened in March 2010. It was commissioned in 2007-08 and provided by Care UK, a private sector provider but an NHS facility, working to agreed NHS standards. Yes, the Opposition should take pride in having commissioned it. Instead, we see them rowing back from that previous sensible pragmatic position. The facility in my constituency is an excellent example of partnership working, and it is providing care for my constituents. They judge it as an NHS facility. They do not worry about who is providing the care. They worry about the quality of the care and service being provided, and they are voting with their feet.

The target that the facility was set was 2,000 patients by March 2012. There are already well over 3,000. Many of them were not registered with a GP before. The facility is registering homeless patients. How much more universal a service can there be than that? It deals with unregistered walk-in patients—more than 30,000 last year, and in many cases people who would not otherwise have got to see a GP. This is all good. But what do we hear from Labour Members? They talk it down. A previously consensual position on private sector provision is now incredibly polarised around an ideological position that suits this Parliament. Alan Milburn was right when he said in 2009:

“Quality should be the only yardstick, not the type of provider.”

The thousands of people who have attended the Junction health centre in Battersea over the past two years are being well served by hard-working and dedicated health professionals. It might suit the Opposition for narrow party reasons to denigrate the efforts of those health workers who work on behalf of the NHS, but I want to pay tribute to them publicly and say how glad I am that they are providing this much needed and greatly appreciated NHS service, free at the point of delivery, to my constituents. I oppose the motion.

21:40

[Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)]

Private sector involvement in the NHS will always be an emotive and contentious subject. As members of the party that founded the NHS, we on the Labour Benches are clear that there are, have been and always will be times when the private sector can and should provide an important function in supporting the delivery of NHS care, but recognising that role is in no way comparable to opening up the NHS to full-blown privatisation, which is the clear intention of the Government’s shambolic Health and Social Care Bill, which is quickly acquiring the same level of popularity as the poll tax. There is a world of difference between using private providers to support the work of the NHS and privatising the NHS. This legislation and the Government’s desire to set free the ravages of the market on what we believe to be the country’s most treasured institution commands no public support and no democratic mandate.

The reality is that the NHS, as a publicly owned and publicly funded world-class health care service providing medical care free at the point of need, is one of the defining institutions of our society and one of the most important hallmarks of our national identity. Established in the aftermath of the greatest conflict our country has ever faced, the NHS was built by a tired nation and an exhausted people from the wreckage of the second world war. They knew that it would help to build a better country and that it could not be done by the private vested interests that so bitterly opposed its creation, and they were right. Every Member of Parliament must recognise that to the people we serve and to our country as a whole the NHS is more important than any of us, collectively or as individuals, and that it is much more important, more trusted and more respected than any one of the political parties represented in the House.

Politicians across the House must recognise that they damage the NHS at their peril. The public do not want the NHS to be opened up to the market, because they know where that leads: the wealthy customer will take priority over the patient in need. The Government know that the public would never have voted for any party with that objective at the heart of its health policies. For that reason, the privatisation of the NHS is being undertaken by stealth. It was a former Conservative Secretary of State, Michael Portillo, who told the BBC’s Andrew Neil last January that the Conservatives

“did not believe they could win an election if they told you what they were going to do because people are so wedded to the NHS.”

He was entirely right. The Prime Minister knows it, the Secretary of State—the architect of so many privatisations when he worked for Lord Tebbit—knows it, and the Liberal Democrats know it.

We in this Chamber are often too slow, too ungracious and, frankly, too partisan to pay tribute to those outside our own parties when tribute is deserved, so I now commend the four Liberal Democrat MPs who voted against the Bill on Second Reading. They did so not simply because it was not in the coalition agreement and has no democratic mandate, and not just because they recognise that the NHS is bigger and more important than any of us or the fortunes of any political party, but because they recognise that the Bill paves the way for the privatisation of the NHS. May I just say “Ahoy” to the Education Secretary, who has just entered the Chamber? To paraphrase the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), for whom I have a great deal of respect, those Liberal Democrats at least did not want to become the architects of the NHS’s demise.

We have heard many promises from the Prime Minister on the NHS, none of which, sadly, is backed up by his or his Government’s actions. He promised real-terms increases for the NHS, but in his first year in office he delivered a real-terms cut. He promised no top-down reorganisation, yet he delivered the biggest and most unwanted reorganisation since the NHS’s creation. Most sickeningly of all, he played fast and loose with the trust of health campaigners across the country when he promised a bare-knuckle fight against hospital and ward closures. Now the Department of Health talks openly of nationwide hospital closure programmes, and wards and services are being lost all over the country.

It is essential to listen to health professionals on matters of health service reconfiguration, but it is deceitful to pretend to oppose those reconfigurations, to trade on the hopes and fears of ordinary patients and to say one thing in opposition and do another in government. But it is perhaps the Prime Minister’s assurance of “no privatisation” in the NHS, given in May last year, that illustrates that pattern of behaviour most clearly.

Last year, Mark Britnell, one of the Prime Minister’s hand-picked health advisers, told a conference of private health care providers:

“In future, the NHS will be a state insurance provider, not a state deliverer.”

He continued:

“The NHS will be shown no mercy and the best time to take advantage of this will be in the next couple of years”—[Interruption.]

I advise those Government Front Benchers who are chuckling—perhaps the bars have closed early—to dwell upon the phrase “no mercy”.

With the shambles of a Bill plunged into crisis, the Prime Minister was forced to demonstrate that he was across the detail of the Bill, and in a speech at Ealing hospital he said:

“Let me make clear: there will be no privatisation… These are red lines we will not cross.”

Yet just before the Christmas period, perhaps ignorant of the Prime Minister’s guarantee or based on the fact that there is no mandate for the changes and the Government are not in the habit of ever doing what they say they will, the Secretary of State tabled amendments to his health care Bill that would allow NHS hospitals to devote 49% of their beds and theatre time to private patients, opening the door to an explosion of private work in NHS hospitals and inevitably resulting in longer waiting times for ordinary NHS patients and widening health inequalities not just between but within different communities throughout England.

I therefore call on the Government to answer this simple question: how can it be right to allow the wealthiest in our country to use publicly funded services, paid for by the taxes of those most in need, to jump the NHS waiting lists that are now growing under this Government?

That is a Mickey Mouse policy, and speaking of Mickey Mouse I should say that Members who have been to Disneyland or any other holiday park for that matter—perhaps on a Tory party policy seminar—will have seen fast-pass systems in operation. The fast-pass system works in exactly the same way as the Government hope 49% private sector involvement in the NHS will: everyone pays to get into the theme park, the queues are too long so the richest pay more to beat them, and eventually all but the poorest buy the fast pass and the queues become as long as they were in the first place. The only difference is that everyone ends up paying double for the same queues they were suffering at the beginning.

The Prime Minister may not want to admit to the privatisation of the health service, and he may not be able to acknowledge that his attempt to change his party, based on a cosmetic change of attitude to the NHS, was never real and was always hollow, but the inescapable reality is that his Government, through the Health and Social Care Bill, are taking a sledgehammer to Britain’s most valued public service by not simply allowing but encouraging, as a matter of principle, a private sector free-for-all in England’s health service.

That is why in a speech in November last year the Prime Minister stated that he wanted the NHS

“to be a fantastic business for Britain”—

a line strangely omitted from the official transcript of the speech—[Interruption.] The Minister of State, Department of Health, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), chunters from a sedentary position, but he himself told “Newsnight” in January last year that the Prime Minister’s Bill would turn the NHS into a “genuine market”.

Labour Members believe that the NHS is an unprecedented force for good in our society, the mainstay of so many of our communities and the guarantor of a fairer, better society. We believe it speaks to who we are and what kind of nation we aspire to be. It is not the Prime Minister’s to sell, and it is not for sale.

Only a few months after becoming a Health Minister, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow), representing the Liberal Democrats—he is not in his place—told reporters from The Daily Telegraph:

“I don’t want you to trust David Cameron…he has values that I don’t share.”

The Minister was right then, and if we listen the to the rank and file membership of the Liberal Democrats we find that that is what they believe now.

The inescapable reality is that the Liberal Democrats find themselves in a constitutionally and historically unique position. They can now determine the future of the NHS in England, as either a world-class public service treating people equally, providing medical care to those who need it and free at the point of use, or as a fragmented, US-style health system, that will see publicly owned hospitals, publicly funded services and health professionals employed by the public purse giving up 49% of hospital beds and theatre time not to those who need them but to those who are most able to pay for them. That is an enviable responsibility, and Liberal Democrats Members can stop that creeping, stealth privatisation of the NHS. The Minister was right to distrust his Prime Minister, and his party colleagues can stop this attempt to take a wrecking ball to the NHS as we know it.

After the gold rush, the NHS might never be the same again. That is why the editor of The Lancet, Richard Horton, told the “Today” programme last week:

“What we will see with private providers is a fragmentation of the NHS, with no accountability…we will see the diminution in the quality of care. And unfortunately what we are seeing with the breast implant scandal is the future of the NHS, it will be destroyed.”

Tonight, the Secretary of State has dissembled and fumbled his way through an attempted defence and explanation of the Bill, but he could not provide it. He does not know what he is for, what he is against, what he is replacing or what he is introducing. It is no wonder that the medical profession neither believes nor trusts him. He either does not know what his policy is or he is afraid to say. The country deserves better. This is now a bare-knuckle fight and the Government must think again.

21:50

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)]

To begin on a conciliatory note, I congratulate the hon. Member for Copeland (Mr Reed) on his first speech from the Front Bench as a junior shadow Health spokesman. I did not agree with a single word that he said, but I congratulate him on the way in which he spoke.

I have no idea what new year resolutions the Labour party has made, but perhaps I could suggest one: to get their facts right. Having listened to the endearing speech of the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), the same speech that I have heard on many occasions from the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris), the slightly bizarre speech of the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) and the speech from the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper), I have to say that they really have got it wrong. It is wrong to seek to misrepresent by repeating a fallacy.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Mr Dorrell) on his lucid exposé of the contradictions in the arguments of the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham). I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter), for Crawley (Henry Smith) and for Battersea (Jane Ellison) for their thoughtful contributions. I listened carefully and with great interest to the speech by the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) but, to be honest and frank, I was not carried by the strength of his argument on the issues.

I fear that many of the contributions of Opposition Members that my hon. Friends and I have had to listen to have given a series of misrepresentations and misinformation. I remind them that for 36 years, just over half the 64 years of the national health service, it has been under the stewardship of the Conservative party. We have never sought to privatise the health service and we never will privatise the health service.

[Frank Dobson]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Burns]

Because of the time, I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman, but to no one thereafter.

[Frank Dobson]

The Minister suggested that I had used figures that were not factual. If they are not, he should know that they all came from parliamentary answers signed by him.

[Mr Burns]

I did not in any shape or form suggest that the right hon. Gentleman’s figures were wrong. I argued that his arguments and his philosophy were wrong. They are based in a time that is pre-Blair, let alone Blair, which I know is now anathema to the Labour party. Ironically, one might say, as I think did my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood, that Government Members, in this respect, are all Blairites now.

Rather than pour scorn on an invented problem, the Opposition should welcome the healthy relationship between the national health service and private providers—a relationship that is mutually beneficial, that has existed since 1948, that is better for patients and, I hesitate to remind the right hon. Member for Leigh, that flourished under his Government. The previous Labour Government expanded the involvement of the private sector in the provision of NHS care in a way that no previous Conservative Government had done. Labour’s general election manifesto of 2010, which was written by the current Leader of the Opposition, said:

“We will support an active role for the independent sector working alongside the NHS in the provision of care”.

Rather more surprisingly, given the nature of today’s debate, the Labour manifesto also stated:

“Patients requiring elective care will have the right, in law, to choose from any provider who meets NHS standards of quality at NHS costs.”

To reinforce that, it went on to promise to remove the private patient cap on foundation trusts. In addition, on 8 February 2010—at No. 10 Downing street, no less—the now Leader of the Opposition and the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell), who I believe is a close personal friend of the right hon. Member for Leigh, hosted a meeting with non-NHS providers to examine their future role in delivering NHS services, among other public services. There is a certain irony and nerve in Labour’s bringing this motion before the House tonight.

I remind Members of the benefits of extra income to the NHS, which are so clear as to be self-evident. Any and all money made by the NHS is returned straight into care, not to the Treasury. The principal purpose of NHS providers has always been to serve NHS patients, and that will not change. In fact, trusts say that changing the cap will help them do that better than ever. The Labour party knows that. In 2009, the then Health Minister, Mike O’Brien, said that to cap the number of private patients would be nothing but a sop to militant Labour MPs. It now seems, though, that they are all militant Labour MPs.

I know that he has not been the flavour of the month for a while now, but as none other than Tony Blair once said, the private sector

“has got a valuable role to play in delivering NHS services.”

Even the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) called for greater use of the private sector.

I wish to take a second to look at the last Government’s record on using the private sector. Through choose and book and through giving patients the right of the choice of provider, the number of patients treated as NHS patients in the private sector escalated. Under choose and book alone, the number of procedures increased from only 11 in 2000-01 to more than 208,000 10 years later. By May 2010, more than 7% of all NHS-funded first out-patient appointments were booked with independent sector providers. In monetary terms, between 2006 and 2010, £12.6 billion was spent in the private sector on NHS health care.

Let us pick an example at random—say, independent sector treatment centre contracts. “Wonderful things”, said Labour. “Cutting waiting times”, it said. What happened? Private companies were paid even when they had not treated any patients; hundreds of millions of pounds were taken from the public purse and wasted; and the NHS was barred from competing with private companies, even if it could offer a better service. What is more, seven of those ISTC contracts were signed while the right hon. Member for Leigh was a junior Minister at the Department of Health—hardly a glorious record.

My hon. Friends and I had a while in opposition, and I know how uncomfortable the Benches on that side of the House are. They make people itch—itch to disagree with everything that is said by Government Members. However, I say to the right hon. Gentleman that it is wrong to scaremonger about the role of the private sector in the NHS. As he found out in government, because his Government greatly expanded that role, there is a responsible role for the private sector not at the expense of the NHS but working with it. On that basis, I urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to vote against the motion.

Question put.

21:59

Division 423

Ayes: 234

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Labour: 231
Democratic Unionist Party: 2
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 1

Noes: 321

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Conservative: 269
Liberal Democrat: 47
Plaid Cymru: 3

Business without Debate

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

Delegated Legislation

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Immigration

That the Accession (Immigration and Worker Authorisation) (Amendment) Regulations 2011 (S.I., 2011, No. 2816), dated 23 November 2011, a copy of which was laid before this House on 25 November, be approved.—(Angela Watkinson.)

Question agreed to.

Early Reading

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Angela Watkinson.)

22:14

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the chance to introduce this debate. I want to praise and promote the inspirational Imagination Library in Rotherham, thanks to which, each month, more than 13,600 young children receive a book sent directly to their home and addressed to them. I want to press the Minister to work with us to assess and fully evaluate the Imagination Library. In the meantime, I also want to press him to extend the scheme to three special groups of children who start life facing some of the biggest hurdles and who could benefit most from this scheme.

I am glad to see the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), in his place. If I had to choose one of the Education Ministers to answer the debate, it would be him. We might disagree with much of what he is doing, but I have watched closely over 18 months how thoroughly he has mastered what I regard as one of the big six Minister of State jobs. He and I were elected and entered the House together in 1997, which set me thinking this evening. In almost 15 years as an MP, one of the very best things I have done has been as a dad, when our son first went to primary school. Every Friday afternoon during that reception year, for nearly an hour at the end of Friday afternoons, I read with children in my son’s class—one to one, outside in the corridor, perched on those small chairs. Some, at the start, could read fluently and had a big appetite for books, but we spent a whole month with one little girl teaching her to recognise two letters, an R and a D—the initials of her first and second names. The difference lay in what had happened to those kids at home before they came to school.

It hit home how important early reading was to giving a child a good start in life and at school—and the importance of learning at home, not just in school. As I have gone on and looked harder, it has become clear that this conclusion is strongly supported by academic studies as well as anecdotally. The Institute of Education did a report in 2008 into pre-school, school and family influence on children’s development, and it noted that

“the quality of early years HLE (home learning environment) promoted intellectual and social development in all children”

and that reading at home was an important part of cultivating that environment.

What parents do is much more important than who they are. The Institute of Education report came to an important conclusion:

“The case study findings on pupils who ‘succeeded against the odds’ showed that what they had in common was higher scores on the early years home learning environment”.

That evidence is borne out by the evidence of international studies as well, including some of the institute’s own work comparing early years reading programmes across Europe. The Minister himself has recognised that. Last year, on the number of pupils who still did not reach the expected reading level at the age of 7 at key stage 1, he explained:

“It is vital that all children learn how to read early in their education”

and that

“we need to do more to ensure that our children have the skills as early as possible, to develop into confident, enthusiastic readers.”—[Official Report, 24 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 61WS.]

Given the clear link between early reading, the home environment, a child’s development and successful learning, let us keep in mind this stark fact: one in three young people do not have books of their own. Last year, the National Literacy Trust, in “The Gift of Reading”, a report that established that fact, underlined the importance of children having books that they see as their own and

“the clear relationship between receiving books as presents and reading ability”.

Teachers in Rotherham report that there are children who, without the books they receive from the Imagination Library, would have no books at home at all.

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

My right hon. Friend makes his case eloquently. I rise to speak not only as something of an early years reader myself, but as someone who has seen the work of the Imagination Library in action in my constituency in Luton. I know that he will speak about this, but I just want to mention the sponsorship given by Wates, the construction company, which worked with us on the Building Schools for the Future programme, the partnership with the local authority and the fact that kids in my constituency are getting 60 books by the age of five, growing with their learning and learning to love reading, which is making such a big difference in my constituency.

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend has been a strong supporter of the scheme in Luton right from the outset. I pay tribute to the council for helping it get off the ground, and to Wates and its foundation trust, as the Building Schools for the Future partner in the borough, for providing the funding to make that happen. I think around 2,000 children in Luton—but a number growing every month—are now receiving books in that way.

As Labour in government, we set up the Bookstart scheme, which took some useful steps in providing all young children with the opportunity—the gift—to read at home. However, the Imagination Library takes a running leap over the limitations of the Bookstart scheme by ensuring that all children, wherever they live and whoever they live with, regularly receive their own books directly at home. Something similar was first started in the United States by Dolly Parton, who has backed our book scheme in Britain. I am proud that the first Imagination Library in this country was set up in Rotherham, and is now run right across the area. I pay tribute to Roger Stone, our council leader, who took the idea forward with great vision and determination. As you know, Mr Speaker, my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) is a good friend of mine. However, when I tried to see him while he was Education Secretary, it was less my links and more the fact that our council leader promised to bring Dolly Parton with him that opened the doors to his office on that occasion. Indeed, they report in the Department that the permanent secretary had never been so keen to attend a meeting with the Secretary of State—and, of course, have his picture taken with Dolly Parton.

I also pay tribute to Alison Lilburn, who now runs the Imagination Library in Rotherham for us, and to Natalie Turnbull, who runs the national Imagination Library, making the links with Luton and a small-scale scheme supported by primary schools in two wards in Wigan, as well as Scotland, where work is beginning through local authorities to ensure that every looked-after child has access to the scheme. In Rotherham, we now have more than 13,600 children, all aged between nought and five, receiving a book a month. Those signed up to the scheme at birth will have received their own library of 60 books in total by the age of five, as my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) said. Importantly, nine out of 10 of our Rotherham youngsters are signed up to the scheme, which goes from strength to strength each year. It has been running for four years now, but no child will have completed the full five years of the programme before the summer of next year, 2013. It is therefore still too early to draw conclusive evidence about its long-term effects.

However, Rotherham has seen a year-on-year improvement in young pupils achieving a good level of development at the foundation stage, with 50% in 2009 and 58% in 2011. Within that improvement, children enrolled in the Imagination Library have outperformed those who are not enrolled by more than 6.5%. Above all, our Rotherham scheme shows the power of a parcel arriving with a child’s name on it and their own book inside. It sparks a kid’s imagination from the very earliest age, giving every young child a better start in life and a better chance to read.

Teachers, parents and—most importantly of all—children love the scheme. It fires a desire in the child to read, but it often fires a determination to do so in the family as well. I was with a group of parents and their young kids in Rawmarsh about 10 days ago, and one of the dads was telling me how excited his son was whenever the postman arrived. He thought that every parcel was for him; it was like Christmas every month. One of the mums said that whenever her daughter got a new book, she would bring it directly to her and demand that she read it as soon as it arrived.

Some of the teachers across Rotherham report similar experiences. Anita Butcher is a lead teacher in one of our children’s centres. She says:

“Many of the children in our area are brought up in low income homes where English is an additional language and parents have poor literacy skills. Without the Imagination Library gifting scheme it is very unlikely that these children would experience books within their home environment, leaving them at a distinct disadvantage when starting school.”

Another of our lead teachers is Sarah Lyall. She counters the sense that we sometimes get that learning and education are purely instrumental, saying:

“Once this foundation to reading has been installed you have children on the right path to a whole world of imagination, awe and wonder.”

Donna Mackinnon is the foundation stage co-ordinator at Wath Victoria primary school. She reports on the way in which the school has started to use some of the same books that the Imagination Library is sending to the children’s homes, saying:

“The children started to talk to their parents/carers about how we had used the books and were then asking for them to be read at home. The book lending scheme at school is now used by significantly more children…This has developed directly from the Imagination Library texts being sent into the homes of our children.”

What about the cost? The Rotherham Imagination Library, which is funded by the council, cost about £300,000 to run last year. The scheme costs £2 per child per month, and that covers the cost of the books and the postage. That is £24 for each child each year, or £120 over the full five years. Let us compare that to the average spending on each child in the country during their primary school years. Last year, it was £4,139.

I shall now turn to my direct asks for the Minister. First, I ask him to take a serious look at our Rotherham scheme and to work with us to evaluate fully its potential to be widely followed across the country. Secondly, I ask him to look hard at how the scheme could be extended, and to make a start by backing the young children who start life facing the biggest hurdles. They include children who are in care, babies born to mums who are in prison and children whose parents are serving in our UK armed forces.

Our experience and the academic evidence show that getting our kids to love reading often happens at home before school, but children in care can miss out on that. Once they fall behind, many never catch up. Long-term looked-after children’s achievements are far lower than those of others. In this country last year, 58% of students—almost three in five—gained five A to C grades at GCSE, including English and maths. For children in care, however, the figure was one in eight. In March last year, there were 65,620 looked-after children in England, of whom one in five—about 18%—were under the age of five. With the cost at £2 per child per month, extending the Imagination Library to benefit every child under five in care could be expected to cost less than £300,000 for the books and postage. Of course, signing up the children would be straightforward, as local authorities are the legal guardians of looked-after children; this is what is being done in Scotland and it should now be done in England.

As far as mums in prison and their babies are concerned, there are seven special mothers and babies units in women’s prisons around the country with a total capacity of 75 places. It is hard to get firm figures on the numbers born in prison each year, as many of the babies do not stay there long, but the Imagination Library would offer a small contribution to both the mother’s and the child’s start in life.

That brings me finally to forces children. Forces families move around a lot, with their children’s education often disrupted by their parents’ postings. Imagination Library books follow the kids, so the scheme is a great fit for the lives of service families. There are about 120,000 children whose parents are in our armed forces, most of whom live in the UK. If the proportion under five is similar to that in the general population, about one in four of those—about 30,000—will be armed forces children under five years old, so extending the benefit of the scheme to every child under five with a parent serving in the forces would cost about £750,000 a year. Indeed, the Education Secretary has recognised this special case, saying:

“Service children…face unique challenges and stresses.”—[Official Report, 13 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 71WS.]

He has pledged £200 a year as a pupil premium to the school of every such child. A much smaller sum—£120 over five years—would give all children in forces families a boost in the vital earliest years as babies and toddlers. I would like to see the Government make this extra modest effort to reward the extra sacrifice that forces families make for the rest of us. Ministers say that they are on the side of Britain’s servicemen and women. Extending Rotherham’s book scheme would be a simple way of showing it.

Finally, I would like to say to the Minister, “Come and see for yourself. We will make you welcome in Rotherham. You can meet Roger Stone, our council leader, and if you are serious about extending the scheme, we might even be able to arrange for you to meet Dolly Parton as well.”

22:32

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) on securing this debate on a subject that could scarcely be more important, and thank him for his kind words in his introductory remarks. We entered the House at the same time in 1997—in the last century—and if I recall correctly, we agreed that we would pair for voting purposes. Alas, after 14 and a half years, this is our first pairing in the House—and it is a pleasure to be on the other side for this debate. I watched the right hon. Gentleman’s ministerial career under the last Labour Government with huge admiration and not a touch of envy.

It is clear there are still too many children failing to learn to read properly. The figures speak for themselves: only 73% of all pupils on free school meals and only two thirds of boys eligible for free school meals achieve the expected standard in reading at key stage 1; more than 83,000 seven-year-olds achieved below level 2 at key stage 1 this year; and one in five 11-year-olds leave primary school still struggling with reading. Even worse, 9% of 11-year-old boys achieve only level 2 or below at key stage 2, which means a reading age of seven or younger.

Looking just at white boys eligible for free school meals, 60% are still not reading properly at the age of 14, and the reading ability of GCSE pupils in England is more than a year behind—this is right across the age group population—the standard of their peers in Shanghai, Korea and Finland, and at least six months behind those in Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and Australia. Overall, over the last nine years, England has fallen in the programme for international student assessment tables from 7th to 25th in reading.

We know that children who cannot read are more likely to become disengaged and behave badly in school, creating a vicious circle of underachievement and isolation. A recent report by the Centre for Social Justice showed that between half and three quarters of children permanently excluded from school display significant literacy problems. As the author of that report said,

“many display challenging behaviour to hide the fact that they cannot read.”

There are still too many children who grow to adulthood without learning the basic literacy skills they need to be successful in their adult lives. Army recruiting officers recently revealed that hundreds of would-be soldiers are being turned away because they cannot pass the most basic literacy and numeracy tests as they do not have a reading age above that of an 11-year-old. As a report by Civitas has stated:

“Weak reading lies at the heart of the educational apartheid between the advantaged and disadvantaged, and England’s low social mobility. The inability to read properly is the single greatest handicap to progress both in school and adult life.”

Tackling literacy is an urgent priority for this Government. We are determined to improve the teaching of reading in primary schools and to help all children from all backgrounds to become fluent and enthusiastic readers and to develop a lifelong love of reading—and that is not just a Government priority. A range of charities and organisations are doing excellent work in supporting literacy and encouraging children to read. Tesco now provides books as part of its vouchers for schools initiative, and only last week McDonald’s and the publisher HarperCollins announced that they are linking up to give away copies of Michael Morpurgo’s “Mudpuddle Farm”—which I have not read, I hasten to add—with children’s meals.

We welcome initiatives that make it easy for children and parents to access and share good books and that encourage them to read more. Anyone who cares about reading should welcome that approach. I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on the work he has being doing personally in Rotherham to promote reading and on the work he is doing with the Imagination Library. I also thank the Imagination Library for what it is doing around the country.

The Government fund the book gifting programme delivered by Booktrust to the tune of £7.5 million. That programme gives books to all families with children of six to 12 months as well as to three to four-year-olds and four to five-year-olds. The books come with advice about sharing books and about stories and rhymes. In 2012, it will reach more than 2.5 million babies, toddlers and children. We will continue to reflect on the appropriate shape of book gifting in the coming years in terms both of the models of delivery and of the groups that can benefit the most. Local authorities remain free to work with book gifting schemes such as the Imagination Library and Letterbox Club to provide the support that they consider is most appropriate to their community’s needs.

I listened very carefully to the right hon. Gentleman’s speech and I will look at the evaluation of the Rotherham Imagination Library programme. Cost is of course a factor in the current climate. A quick calculation based on the figures he presented shows that his £300,000 would extrapolate to roughly £45 million a year, which is not an insignificant sum in the current climate. However, I would like to take up his invitation to return to Rotherham. I stood for election there in 1994 with mixed success, and it would be a pleasure to return and see the scheme in action. Any scheme that can promote a lifelong love of books and reading is hugely valuable, and we will say more about this issue and how to develop that lifelong love of reading in the coming year.

For children to love reading, they must be able to read. That is why we are placing such strong emphasis on promoting the use of systematic synthetic phonics, which international evidence has shown to be the most effective way for children to learn to read. Synthetic phonics is equally effective for children of all abilities, from all backgrounds and for boys and girls alike. We also know that it is a necessary but not sufficient condition for success in reading. It should be taught as part of a language-rich curriculum, so that children can develop their vocabulary and comprehension at the same time. Grasping the mechanics of reading early on allows children to go further and to begin to read quickly with comprehension and understanding.

To ensure that children have that building block, from June, a year 1 phonic screening check will help teachers to confirm whether individual pupils have grasped the fundamental skill of phonic decoding, and will identify which children may need extra help. The check will consist of a list of 40 words and non-words that a child will read one to one with their teacher. The pilot for the check took place last year in around 300 schools across the country. It was independently evaluated by a team from Sheffield Hallam university, and showed that three quarters of the schools taking part felt that the check assessed phonic decoding ability accurately, while the vast majority of schools—90%—thought that most aspects of the check’s content were suitable for their pupils. Most important, half of the pilot schools indicated that the check had helped them to identify pupils with phonic decoding issues of which they were not previously aware. The check will provide a national benchmark for phonic decoding, allowing schools to judge their performance on a local and national level.

Only 32% of pupils in the pilot for the screening check met the expected standard, which was set by teachers themselves. That shows that some schools will benefit from reviewing their phonics teaching to make sure it is systematic, with sufficiently high expectations being set for their pupils. It will also help to give parents confidence that their child has learned this crucial skill, reflecting research that found that 73% of parents thought a year 1 reading check was a good idea.

To support teachers before the check, and so that all schools have access to high-quality resources, we have introduced match funding of £3,000 per school. That funding, together with our new catalogue of well respected phonics products and training, will support schools in choosing and purchasing the appropriate resources for their pupils. We are considering running a new procurement process for inclusion in an updated catalogue in the spring.

To ensure that teachers have the necessary skills and training, we have reviewed, under Sally Coates, the qualified teacher status standards. It is now an explicit requirement that teachers of early reading should demonstrate a clear understanding of the theory and teaching of systematic synthetic phonics. As a consequence, the Training and Development Agency for Schools, together with the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers, is working to ensure that all university teacher training faculties are improving the training of teachers in this area. I listened with interest to what the right hon. Gentleman said about his experience of a primary school teaching a child the basic sounds of the alphabet, which is a key part of learning to read, with no exposure to literature and books at home.

Finally, Ofsted has published a new inspection framework that draws a closer link between teacher quality and the overall grade schools receive. That new way of inspecting schools will allow Ofsted to spend more time in the classroom, and I am very pleased that, for the first time, Ofsted inspectors will listen to pupils reading aloud to check their rate of progress, with a particular focus on the weakest readers in the school.

We hope that those measures will help all children to master the essential and life-changing skill of turning words on the page into images, information and ideas in their heads. Nothing could be more important than children developing a lifelong love of reading. I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman for the work he is doing in Rotherham, and I look forward to joining him there in a few months.

Question put and agreed to.

22:43

House adjourned.