House of Commons
(12 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Prayers
(12 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Oral Answers to Questions
(12 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)
1. What recent assessment he has made of the security situation in Northern Ireland; and if he will make a statement.
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr Owen Paterson)
The threat level in Northern Ireland remains at severe, meaning that a terrorist attack is highly likely.
Despite overwhelming community rejection of their murderous activity, terrorist groups continue to carry out indiscriminate attacks, as we saw in Londonderry last week. The Government remain committed to countering terrorism in all its forms.
Jack Lopresti
What measures is my right hon. Friend taking to ensure that young people do not gravitate to joining paramilitary organisations?
Mr Paterson
My hon. Friend touches on an important point. The problem cannot be solved by containment alone, although we pay full tribute to the Police Service of Northern Ireland and all those who are working in our security effort. The Prime Minister said that he wants a shared future, not a shared-out future, in Northern Ireland, and we are working closely with the devolved Administration. Only last week, Eamon Gilmore, the Tánaiste, was in Northern Ireland talking to the First Minister and Deputy First Minister about the very schemes to which my hon. Friend refers. A review is taking place to see which are the most effective, and which could be endorsed for a future PEACE IV programme.
Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)
Does the Secretary of State understand the anger and fear that is felt in my constituency and, indeed, throughout Northern Ireland, in the light of the release of Colin Duffy, a person charged on three different occasions with the murder of innocent people and who always seems to find a get-out card? What assurance can the Secretary of State give my constituents that they will be safe from brutal terrorists such as Colin Duffy, and not become another statistic in a long line of innocent victims?
Mr Paterson
I entirely sympathise with the concerns of the hon. Gentleman and his constituents. We believe in the separation of powers, and the decision was made by due process. I am delighted that there was one conviction for that appalling incident. I assure the hon. Gentleman that, as he knows from our private discussions, the Government will bear down on all terrorists. We have brought a further £200 million to Northern Ireland at the request of the Chief Constable, and we will stand by the PSNI and all those working to eradicate that very small number of totally unhinged, dangerous people.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
As the Member for the city of Derry, may I inform the Secretary of State that the overwhelming majority of its citizens deplore and resent the dissidents’ acts of civic sabotage on Ireland’s fourth city? Given the right hon. Gentleman’s locus on some security matters, what input does he have into the justice and security Green Paper, and what engagement is he having with the devolved authorities about its implications for Northern Ireland?
Mr Paterson
I wholly sympathise with the hon. Gentleman’s thoughts on behalf of his constituents. Last week’s attacks were completely incomprehensible to any sane person: elderly people in a home and disadvantaged young people in a home were at real risk. I pay full tribute to the incredible bravery and professionalism of those PSNI officers who led the evacuation. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I work closely with David Ford, the Justice Minister, and the Chief Constable. I spoke to them both this morning, and we are liaising on the justice Green Paper.
Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)
I associate myself with the Secretary of State’s remarks about the PSNI and others in Northern Ireland who are combating the threat.
Last week saw the inspirational launch of an exciting tourist initiative for Northern Ireland, NI 2012. When so many people are doing so much work to create a better future, does the Secretary of State agree that last week’s bomb attacks in Derry/Londonderry were reckless and futile? Will he guarantee to the people of Northern Ireland that all those coping with the terrorist threat are given our full support and the resources that they need to deal with any future threat?
Mr Paterson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his supportive comments and for the support he gives me on that in private. He is absolutely right to condemn the attacks, which play absolutely no part in the future of Northern Ireland.
On support for the PSNI, as I have just said, the Chief Constable requested extra funds soon after the Government came to office and we delivered £200 million over the next four years. He is quoted in April last year as saying:
“We have the resources, we have the resilience and we have the commitment.”
Vernon Coaker
I again assure the Secretary of State of the Opposition’s full co-operation in dealing with those matters. He will know that responsibility for national security in Northern Ireland rests with him. What assessment has he made of the effectiveness of the security services’ performance and the implementation of the five key national security protocols agreed between the security services and the PSNI at St Andrews?
Mr Paterson
I am happy to confirm that Lord Carlile, in his third annual report earlier this year, confirmed that MI5 and the PSNI are working very closely together. More work could not be done more energetically to deal with the difficult dissident republican threat.
Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
The devolution of policing and justice reinforced the determination of the political parties in Northern Ireland to face down the small minority who still engage in violence, but legislation stipulates that the Justice Department will disappear in May unless the Assembly resolves that it should continue. Will the Secretary of State update the House on the current thinking within the Executive and the details of any action he might need to take to maintain progress?
Mr Paterson
I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman’s hard work when he ran security under direct rule. As he rightly says, the position is that the current arrangements cease in May this year. Negotiations are going on within the Executive between the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister, in which the Government are also involved. As I understand it, the incumbent, David Ford, has the full support of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister. For the Government’s part, where we have overlapping roles, we have strong support for him and get on with him extremely well. I was in Dublin recently and I can confirm that Alan Shatter, the Irish Justice and Equality Minister, also enjoys working with David Ford. I hope that in due course this will become—
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
2. What recent discussions he has had with Ministers in the Northern Ireland Executive on job creation in the private sector.
The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr Hugo Swire)
We work closely with Executive Ministers in the joint ministerial working group on rebalancing the economy. I regularly meet the Enterprise, Trade and Investment Minister and her colleagues in support of the Executive’s efforts to create more jobs in the private sector.
Andrew Selous
I was delighted to see a recent CBI survey that said that 39% of firms in Northern Ireland expect to take on more staff this year, but does my right hon. Friend believe that the Northern Irish economy would do even better if it adopted the Work programme, which has been rolled out in the rest of the UK?
Mr Swire
Yes, I do. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: the Work programme provides tailored support for claimants who need more help to find jobs. I hope very much that Northern Ireland Ministers will adopt it as part of their welfare reforms. It provides a greater opportunity than did the future jobs fund.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
An Aviva survey released this week showed that a quarter of small business owners are thinking of jacking in running their own business and instead trying to get a job because their situation is so difficult. Are Ministers in the Northern Ireland Executive as frustrated as the rest of the country at the lack of growth that this Government are delivering?
Mr Swire
We have many things to celebrate in Northern Ireland that are occasionally eclipsed by other news stories. Today, Muldoon Transport Systems in Dungannon has secured a £1 million contract to supply 19 trailers to one of Saudi Arabia’s biggest businesses. Nearly a third of London buses are manufactured in Ballymena by Wrightbus. I look forward to joining the hon. Gentleman for an early summer holiday on one of Boris’s Ballymena buses after Boris wins the mayoral elections.
It is worth pointing out that Northern Ireland has won 7% of foreign direct investment to the UK with only 2.8% of the population, and that Belfast attracts more foreign direct investment than any UK city outside London. Those are good news stories in Northern Ireland on which we intend to build.
Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)
Does the Minister share my concern about the number of jobs that could be lost in Northern Ireland as a result of the carbon price floor—a tax that does not exist in the Republic of Ireland?
Mr Swire
My hon. Friend, the Chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, has raised that with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who in turn raised it with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is discussing it with the Northern Ireland Finance Minister, the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), who is in his place, and the Economic Secretary to the Treasury. They will report shortly.
Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)
Will the Minister provide us with a progress report on the resolution of the problem of the capital budget for Northern Ireland for the next 10 years, which the Northern Ireland Office has promised us? If that is satisfactorily resolved, it will help to stimulate the local economy—both public and private sector—and to sustain existing jobs.
Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)
Before Christmas, I had the privilege of meeting the Northern Ireland Federation of Small Businesses, and I was extremely impressed with its efforts and the work it is doing. Will the Minister join me in congratulating the Northern Ireland FSB on its work and its determination to get through the economic challenges of the next 18 months?
Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)
I find the Minister of State’s selective comments to be quite extraordinary. The Queen of Hearts suggested that one should believe six impossible things every day before breakfast, but does the Minister seriously expect us to believe that a shrinking private sector can somehow compensate for the highest public sector job losses of any UK region? That sounds like “Alice in Wonderland” to me.
Mr Swire
Let us look in the real glass, rather than the looking glass, and give the hon. Gentleman three quick facts. The unemployment rate for Northern Ireland was down 0.7% over the quarter and 1% over the year. The number of unemployed people in Northern Ireland was estimated at 59,000, down 7,000 over both the quarter and the year. Northern Ireland unemployment for 18 to 24-year-olds for the three months to October 2011 was estimated at 18.2%, compared with a UK average of 20.5%. No one is saying that this will continue. We hope it will, but we are trying to deal with unprecedented economic circumstances, both globally and in trying to right the appalling legacy of the Labour Government.
Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)
3. What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport on arrangements in Northern Ireland to mark the diamond jubilee of Her Majesty the Queen.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
4. What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport on arrangements in Northern Ireland to mark the diamond jubilee of Her Majesty the Queen.
Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
11. What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport on arrangements in Northern Ireland to mark the diamond jubilee of Her Majesty the Queen.
The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr Hugo Swire)
I am sorry, Mr Speaker. Such was the excitement following my previous remarks that I failed to hear you.
I have discussed this matter with the Minister for Sport and the Olympics, my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Hugh Robertson), who, like me, looks forward to Northern Ireland playing the fullest part in the diamond jubilee celebrations and welcoming Her Majesty to Northern Ireland later in the year.
Nigel Adams
I am grateful to the Minister, and 2012 represents a very big year in Northern Ireland, not just because of the diamond jubilee but because of the Olympics. In Yorkshire, we have managed to secure more than 30 overseas squads to use our excellent training facilities. What steps are being taken to ensure that overseas squads use the great sporting facilities in the Province?
Mr Swire
I congratulate my hon. Friend on attracting so many teams to his area. In Northern Ireland we have the Australian boxing team, the Chinese gymnastics team—which is probably capable of even greater contortions than Opposition Treasury spokesmen—and the Irish Paralympics teams, which will hold pre-games training events in Northern Ireland. For the golfers among us, we also hope that the Irish open championship will be followed in due course by the British open.
Michael Ellis
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the events of 2012 present a wonderful opportunity for Northern Ireland to showcase itself as an excellent place for tourists to visit, both from other constituent parts of the United Kingdom and from around the world?
Mr Swire
Yes, I most certainly do—2012 is the year to visit Northern Ireland, with the launch of “Your Time, Our Place” last week, before returning in 2013 for the UK city of culture. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his sterling work in encouraging Members to donate to his window to commemorate Her Majesty’s diamond jubilee. I did a quick ring-round of the Northern Ireland Office, and I am glad to say that I have donated—although I have not told my wife—the Secretary of State has donated and our Minister in the Lords has donated.
Glyn Davies
A visit by Her Majesty the Queen to the devolved nations can be a huge boost to their economies and, indeed, their morale. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that there is not only one visit, but perhaps more than one visit to Northern Ireland in 2012?
Mr Swire
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The royal family are regular visitors to Northern Ireland, not least to the annual garden party. We are informed by the Palace that Her Majesty will quite rightly be visiting Northern Ireland, as she will all other parts of the United Kingdom.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
Does the Minister agree that, commensurate with security considerations, it would be of great benefit in encouraging the participation and engagement of the public with the Queen’s diamond jubilee celebrations if they were given as much notice as possible of her visit to Northern Ireland? On previous occasions, such as her visit to Dublin and her engagements in London, people have been given only short notice.
Mr Swire
The right hon. Gentleman mentions Her Majesty’s historic visit to Dublin last year, and I have absolutely no reason to suppose that in her diamond jubilee year she will not be greeted in Northern Ireland with equally fulsome adulation and applause. He also mentions security. All visits by members of the royal family and other VIPs have to be handled tactfully by the Police Service of Northern Ireland, and we would certainly not try to second guess it. There is a balance to be struck, and security must be paramount.
Mr Dodds
I thank the Minister for his reply. It has rightly been said that this is a tremendous year for Northern Ireland, and not only because of the jubilee celebrations. We shall mark the centenary of the Titanic, with the opening of a £100 million visitor centre, and host the Irish open, as well as playing a part in the round-the-world yacht race. Northern Ireland will be a great place to visit. What is the Minister doing to encourage tourists coming to London for the Olympics to travel further across the United Kingdom to Northern Ireland?
Mr Swire
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The Olympics are, by definition, the London Olympics, but that does not mean that other parts of the United Kingdom should not benefit from them. He has just advertised what will be happening in Northern Ireland this year, and I would say to hon. Members and others outside the House: if you are not in Northern Ireland this year, frankly, you are no one.
Naomi Long (Belfast East) (Alliance)
I welcome the Minister’s comments about the Titanic centenary. The Titanic was built in my constituency, and we hope that “Titanoraks” from all over the globe will make their way to Belfast in 2012. What discussions has he had with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to ensure that people are aware of the unique opportunity to experience some of the authentic history of the Titanic story? [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. The House must come to order. This is very unfair on the hon. Lady. Fortunately, she has a clear and forthright voice, but I also want to be able to hear the answer.
Mr Swire
Thank you for that, Mr Speaker. It is equally unfair on me, as I try to hear the hon. Lady’s question. She mentions the Titanic. As they say in Belfast, “She was fine when she left here”—the Titanic, that is, not the hon. Lady, who is of course fine wherever she goes. I do not feel that I need to discuss the Titanic with the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, because I think that everyone knows that it was built in Belfast and that we are going to celebrate that fact. When people come to Northern Ireland, they should certainly go to the Titanic quarter.
Dr Alasdair McDonnell (Belfast South) (SDLP)
5. What discussions he has had with Ministers in the Northern Ireland Executive on the Welfare Reform Bill.
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr Owen Paterson)
I discuss welfare reform regularly with the First Minister and Deputy First Minister. We now have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reform the welfare system and to tackle the problems of poverty and welfare dependency by ensuring that work pays, and is seen to pay.
Dr McDonnell
I am sure that the Secretary of State understands the concerns and fears being expressed by many in Northern Ireland, given that the report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that, after London, Northern Ireland will be hardest hit by the proposals in the Bill. There is a suggestion that some £600 million will be lost. Does he find it surprising that civil society and Church organisations across Northern Ireland—and, indeed, the UK generally—oppose the Bill? Will he also give me an undertaking that no one will be left homeless as a result of the reforms?
Mr Paterson
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question. The four Church leaders came to London to meet the Minister responsible for welfare reform, my noble Friend Lord Freud, who is taking the Bill through the Lords. He explained many of the details of the Bill, which, sadly, is not well understood in Northern Ireland. I see great benefits in making work pay, and we will ensure that every person, regardless of their opportunities, will be better off if they work one hour longer.
Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)
6. What recent discussions he has had with Ministers in the Northern Ireland Executive on dealing with the legacy of the past.
Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)
8. What recent discussions he has had on dealing with the legacy of the past.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
10. What recent discussions he has had with Ministers in the Northern Ireland Executive on dealing with the legacy of the past.
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr Owen Paterson)
Since taking office, my right hon. Friend the Minister of State and I have met the political parties and other interest groups to discuss the issue of dealing with the past, but there is no consensus. I shall meet the parties again in the coming weeks.
Chris Skidmore
I thank the Secretary of State for that answer and I welcome the progress made by the Historical Enquiries Team. Is my right hon. Friend confident that all cases will be dealt with by 2014?
Mr Paterson
My hon. Friend is quite right to comment on the HET, whose satisfaction levels have been extraordinarily high, with some 90% of families being either satisfied or very satisfied. I last spoke to the Chief Constable about this a few weeks ago and he was confident that on his current track the HET would complete on time.
Lindsay Roy
What discussions has the Secretary of State had with victim and survivor groups, how often has he met the Commission for Victims and Survivors and what have been the positive outcomes?
Mr Paterson
As I said in my opening answer, my right hon. Friend the Minister of State and I have met the local parties and numerous groups around Northern Ireland since we came to power, seeking a way forward on the issue of the past. We do not own the past, however. We can help facilitate, but ultimately the solution is very much in local hands and depends on local groups and local parties reaching consensus. Sadly, we have so far not found consensus.
Huw Irranca-Davies
Further to that helpful answer, back in November the Secretary of State said that he would meet parties to move the issue forward. Does he agree that bilateral discussions are no substitute for multilateral discussions, and will he tell us when he will make progress on bringing all the parties together to discuss this matter?
Mr Paterson
That is a very helpful question. There was a debate in the Assembly that asked me to call for talks, so I consulted the Speaker of the Assembly and decided to write to each party individually. I am not convinced that a great summit with satellite camera vans outside Hillsborough is the answer. The issue needs to be discussed soberly, quietly and privately to see whether I can find a way forward. I do not own the past—the solution must come from local politicians themselves. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. There are far too many very noisy private conversations taking place in the Chamber. I want to hear Mr Gregory Campbell.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
Does the Secretary of State accept that part of the problem in dealing with the past and trying to get the parties around the table is that one party was party to the major problem of the past—the Provisional IRA. It will not own up to the part it played in creating the past—rather, it tries to deem everyone equal, innocent and guilty alike.
Mr Paterson
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question and he touches on the problem of arriving at uniform consensus. We were elected on a platform of no more costly and open-ended inquiries, because we do not like the asymmetry of applying an extraordinary intensity of effort and expense to a very small number of cases. That is why I am trying to find a broader approach, working with all local parties.
Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)
7. What assessment he has made of the work of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims Remains; and if he will make a statement.
The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr Hugo Swire)
I commend the work of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims Remains, which has to date located nine of the 16 disappeared. The commission is information-driven and is committed to investigating any further information it receives regarding the remaining seven disappeared.
Mr Swire
If my hon. Friend looks at the early-day motion, he will see that we and the Irish Government remain committed to the work of the ICLVR. We pay tribute to the two commissioners, Sir Kenneth Bloomfield from the British side and Frank Murray from the Irish side. They have done sterling work and they are in stand-by mode. We are determined to continue this work, if the information is available, to, we hope, bring some resolution to the families who have lost their loved ones.
Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)
Can the Minister of State confirm that the commission continues to search for my young constituent, Lisa Dorrian, who was murdered and disappeared by those with loyalist paramilitary connections several years ago and who remains unfound? Can he give closure to her family?
Mr Swire
I suspect that the only thing that can give partial closure to the hon. Lady’s constituents is the location of this individual. I am not certain whether the hon. Lady has signed the early-day motion, but if she has not I urge her to do so. Clearly, if the information is there the ICLVR will act on it, and it will be properly resourced so to do both by ourselves and by the Irish Government. We are absolutely determined that we will work our way through as many of the missing as we can, but I stress that this is an information-led process and we urge anyone and everyone with any information to bring it before the two commissioners.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 25 January.
The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)
This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others, and in addition to my duties in the House I shall have further such meetings later today.
Nia Griffith
The Prime Minister frequently claims that he is not complacent about the tragedy of youth unemployment, so can he tell the House why his youth contract scheme still has not started?
The Prime Minister
The youth contract scheme is going to make a big difference to young people because it will, over the coming years, have 160,000 places for people in private sector firms. That will be far better than the failed future jobs fund, which in some cases had more than 97% of its jobs placed in the public sector. It will be up and running this year and it will make a big difference to young people.
Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)
Today is the anniversary of the birth of the great Scottish poet Robert Burns. Does the Prime Minister agree with Burns’s impassioned plea for the unity of our nation in his poem, “The Dumfries Volunteers”,
“Be Britain still to Britain true,
Amang oursels united;
For never but by British hands
Maun British wrangs be righted!”?
The Prime Minister
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her question, and the point she makes is a good one. Burns night will be celebrated not just across Scotland but across the whole of the United Kingdom and in many parts of the world. When I hear the Scottish nationalists, who are so keen to leave the UK yet so anxious about having a referendum, I think that perhaps they should remember Burns’s words when he referred to the
“Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!”
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)
We are 18 months into the Prime Minister’s Government, and today’s figures show that our economy is not growing but is shrinking. What has gone wrong with his economic plan?
The Prime Minister
These are extremely difficult economic times and these are disappointing figures—although they are not unexpected, because the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast a small decline in gross domestic product at the end of last year. I will be frank with the right hon. Gentleman: they reflect three things. They reflect the overhang of the debt and the deficit that we have to deal with; they reflect the higher food and fuel prices that put a squeeze on household income towards the end of last year; and they also reflect the crisis in the eurozone that has frozen Europe’s economies. The forecasts for France, Germany, Spain and Italy for the end of last year forecast as great a decline, or in many cases a greater decline. This is the year when we have to take further action to get our economy moving, but the most important thing is to have a credible plan to get on top of the deficit, which has given us the lowest interest rates for more than 100 years.
Edward Miliband
People are fed up with the right hon. Gentleman’s excuses about what is happening in our economy. He blames the eurozone. Growth has been flatlining in our economy since well before the eurozone crisis—in fact, since his spending review in autumn 2010. And what has characterised the Government’s approach throughout this period? Total arrogance. In his first Budget the Chancellor painted a glowing picture of what his policies would deliver for our economy. He said that his policies would deliver
“a steady and sustained economic recovery, with…falling unemployment.”—[Official Report, 22 June 2010; Vol. 512, c. 168.]
We have a shrinking economy and the highest unemployment in 18 years. How bad do things have to get in our economy to shake the Prime Minister out of his complacency?
The Prime Minister
As usual, the right hon. Gentleman writes the question before he listens to the answer. I did not just say, “This is an issue of the eurozone.” It is an issue of debt and deficit; it is an issue of squeezed household incomes—issues that are affecting many other economies. He talks about what our policy is. We remember what his policy was: “No more boom and bust”. And yet he gave us the biggest boom and the biggest bust, which we are having to recover from. There is not one ounce of complacency; that is why we are cutting corporation tax, we scrapped Labour’s job tax, we have introduced the enterprise zones, we are investing record sums in apprenticeships—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition must be heard.
The Prime Minister
We are doing all of these things, but the Labour party has only one answer, and that is to deal with a debt crisis by borrowing more and adding to debt. That is his answer. That would wreck our interest rates, wreck our economy and make things much worse.
Edward Miliband
The Prime Minister says that there is not one ounce of complacency, but he and his Chancellor are the byword for self-satisfied smug complacency, and that is the reality. He talks about borrowing; he is failing not just on unemployment, not just on growth, but on borrowing as well. Because of his failure on growth and unemployment, he is borrowing £158 billion more than he forecast. And now we know—he said unemployment would fall; it isn’t. He said our economy would grow; it hasn’t. He said, “We’re all in this together”; we’re not. When will this Prime Minister face up to the fact that it is his policies that are failing our country?
The Prime Minister
Our economy grew last year, but the right hon. Gentleman cannot find it in himself—[Interruption.] There are more people in work today than there were at the time of the last election. But we were given—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. The House must calm itself, and will hear the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister
We were given a very clear instruction yesterday. At 5 o’clock in the afternoon the shadow Chancellor said that the Government should listen to the IMF and change course. At 7 o’clock in the evening the IMF told us what we should do. It said that it does not think that fiscal consolidation adds to the problem, and that
“The fiscal consolidation is part of resolving problems facing the UK economy.”
That is the truth. There are two parties in this country taking responsibility for clearing up the mess; there is one party refusing to take responsibility for causing the mess.
Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)
Sir Fred Goodwin has recently been censured by the Financial Services Authority in its report on the RBS shambles. Can the Prime Minister tell the House when the Honours Forfeiture Committee will be sitting, to consider stripping this man of his ill-deserved knighthood?
The Prime Minister
The forfeiture Committee will, as I understand it, be meeting this week, and it will be considering all the evidence—including, as I have said before, the Financial Services Authority report on RBS and what went wrong, and who was responsible for what went wrong.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Q2. It seems, Mr Speaker, that the SNP gets more reaction from Labour than their own Leader does. Does the Prime Minister agree that in Scotland the people are sovereign, and therefore for improvement they have the right to determine their own constitutional future as they see fit?
The Prime Minister
Of course this is an issue for the people of Scotland, and I think we should bring forward the date when we put to the Scottish people the question of whether they want to stay in the United Kingdom—which I dearly hope that they do—or to leave the United Kingdom. But the point that everyone needs to understand is that options for further devolution—options for changes across the United Kingdom—are matters for all of the United Kingdom, and matters that all of the United Kingdom should rightly discuss.
Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
May I put it to the Prime Minister that for Britain to commit still more funds to the IMF would, in effect, be providing a subsidy to Germany, because it is still not fully supporting its own currency, while benefiting from its depreciation?
The Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend makes an important point. Of course the IMF managing director, Christine Lagarde, is in London today, and our message has been clear: there should be no question of committing further IMF funds until the eurozone itself has shown that it is comprehensively going to stand behind its own currency. In her speech in Germany last night Christine Lagarde made it absolutely clear that the IMF’s role is to support countries, not currency zones, and the Government support that position.
Edward Miliband
Last September the Prime Minister said about his flagship health Bill:
“we have the Royal College of GPs, the physicians, the nurses and people working in the health service supporting the changes we are making”.—[Official Report, 7 September 2011; Vol. 532, c. 352.]
Will he give the House an update on the support for his Bill from the medical profession?
The Prime Minister
I have certainly learned that when it comes to the NHS you should always expect a second opinion—or conceivably even a third opinion.
The point is this: there are thousands of GPs throughout the country who are not just supporting our reforms, but actually implementing our reforms. Let me give the right hon. Gentleman just one example of a supportive GP, who happens—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Hon. Members should not be yelling out. The question was asked, the answer will be given, and the answer will be heard.
The Prime Minister
I think they want to hear from this one particular GP, who hails from Doncaster. When he was the acting chairman of the Doncaster GP commissioning group, he said:
“Becoming one of the first national pathfinder areas is a real boost for Doncaster.”
I think that what is good for Doncaster is good for the rest of the country, too.
Edward Miliband
How out of touch is the Prime Minister with what is happening in the NHS? Let me tell him what the medical profession is saying. The latest survey of the Royal College of General Practitioners says that 98% of GPs want the Bill withdrawn. The Royal College of Nursing has said:
“the turmoil of proceeding with these reforms is now greater than the turmoil of stopping them”.
In his famous listening exercise, the Prime Minister said:
“change—if it is to endure, to really work—should have the support of people who work in our NHS. We have to take our nurses and doctors with us.”
If he wants to hear the voice of doctors and nurses across our NHS, why does he not listen?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman seems to be out of touch with what is happening in Doncaster. He asks what is happening in the NHS. Let me tell him what is happening in the NHS: 4,000 extra doctors since the election; 100,000 more patients treated since the election; in-patient and out-patient waiting times lower than they were at the election; and £7 billion of the £20 billion already saved. At the same time, we have got hospital-acquired infections at their lowest ever level. That is what is happening in the NHS, but if we listened to him, we would be cutting spending in the NHS and scrapping reforms of the NHS, and the NHS would be getting worse, not better.
Edward Miliband
I shall tell the Prime Minister what is happening in the NHS: waiting lists up, morale down. What does the majority-Conservative Select Committee on Health say about his reorganisation? It says that it will be a
“disruption and distraction that hinders the ability of organisations to”
release savings.
Let us be frank: this is a Bill that nobody wants. It is opposed by doctors, nurses and patients. Before the election the Prime Minister said, “No more top-down reorganisation.” Is it not time he kept at least one promise, put aside his pride and arrogance, and dropped this unnecessary and unwanted Bill?
The Prime Minister
I know that the Leader of the Opposition panics and backs down the first time a trade union says no, but this Government do not. Of course if you introduce choice, transparency and competition and say that the private and voluntary sectors should play a greater role you face a challenge, but that is what doing the right thing is sometimes all about. Let him remember what his party’s Health Secretary said about GP commissioning:
“That change will put power in the hands of local GPs to drive improvements in their area, so it should give more power to their elbow than they have at present. That is what I would like to see”.—[Official Report, 16 May 2006; Vol. 446, c. 861-62.]
What a shame they talk about it in government, but do not have the guts to face down opposition when they are in opposition.
Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD)
Following the death of 167 workers in the Piper Alpha disaster in the North sea, this country developed a world-leading safety case regime for offshore oil and gas, which is now threatened by regulations from the European Union. Will the Prime Minister use his best endeavours to back his Department of Energy and Climate Change in persuading the rest of the EU that what we need is not more regulation, but a— [Hon. Members: “Derogation?”] No—I am sorry Mr Speaker. What we need is not regulation, but a directive, which can be implemented flexibly.
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. I well remember the Piper Alpha disaster and the huge suffering and loss of life it caused. Since that day, we have put in place what I agree is a world-leading system of regulation, and I shall do all I can to support the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change in making sure that we get a result in Europe that means we can go on with the right regulations for the North Sea.
Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
Q3. On 2 May 2010 the Prime Minister said that“The test of a good society”was how it cares for the frail and the vulnerable, adding that that was“even more important in difficult times.”Will he not be offending the basic sense of decency of the British people if he persists next week with proposals to take away up to £94 per week in employment and support allowance from up to 7,000 recovering cancer patients across the country?
The Prime Minister
What our plans envisage is more people with cancer receiving the higher level of benefit and fewer people having to have the face-to-face interview. That is the case. As the hon. Gentleman knows, there are two types of employment and support allowance. Those in the support group get that money for ever—for as long as they need it and as long as they are unable to work. Many people with cancer go straight into that group, and quite right too.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
Q4. I know that my right hon. Friend is aware that the Coryton oil refinery in my constituency went into protective administration yesterday. Although the future is uncertain, it is by no means bleak. Does he agree with me that what is needed now to protect the 1,000 jobs the refinery provides is the full support of the customers and the suppliers, and accurate reporting of the situation? Will he agree to ensure that I meet all the relevant Ministers to discuss what further action the Government can take to secure the future of that important business?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is right to raise that case and to mention the importance of the role played by the customers and the suppliers. I shall certainly make sure that he meets Ministers as appropriate. The key is the role of the administrator, which has made it clear that its immediate priority is to continue to operate the refinery operations at Coryton and the other Petroplus sites in the UK while the financial position is clarified and all the restructuring options are explored. We are confident that the administrator is doing all it can, but we will keep on the case.
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)
Q5. The existing UK controls on the movement of terrorist suspects lapse today, including in the case of suspect CD, of whom Mr Justice Owen said at his appeal last year that relocation was a “necessary and proportionate measure to protect the public from…an immediate and real risk of a terrorist-related attack.” Will the Prime Minister tell the House why his Government supported the relocation power at the court hearing last year, but have since legislated to remove it and to give suspect CD and others like him the freedom to come to London in the run-up to the Olympic games?
The Prime Minister
I think that most people across the House realise that the control order regime needed to be reformed, as it did not have public confidence, nor did it have the confidence of many people in the police and security services. We have reformed it, and we have worked with the police and security services. We have put in all the resources that they believe are necessary to make sure that our country is kept safe.
Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)
Q6. Following the renewable energy subsidy review, will the Prime Minister assure taxpayers that the Government will focus their support on technologies that are cost-effective and reliable, such as biomass, rather than inefficient, costly, large-scale onshore wind farms?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend will know that the consultation on the renewable obligation banding review has just closed. It proposed targeting only the most cost-effective onshore wind farms, recognising that that is now one of the mature and cheaper technologies. We should, as he says, increase support for an expansion in sustainable biomass generation, which is reliable and cost-effective, and will help us to meet our renewables target.
Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
On Friday, Holocaust memorial day commemorates the liberation of the concentration and extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. What can the Prime Minister do to ensure that all of our society understands the depravity of the era of Nazi evil and learns the lessons of it for the present?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Lady, who has a long record of supporting this cause, speaks for the whole House and the whole nation in raising it and stressing its importance. I met representatives of the Holocaust Educational Trust yesterday and I met a holocaust survivor, whose story was truly inspiring about what he had seen and gone through as a young boy—and then his coming to Britain and becoming an Olympic and Commonwealth contender. It was a fantastic story. We need to make sure that these stories are told in all our schools, right across the country. That is the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust, and it is work that I strongly support.
Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)
Q7. Is the Prime Minister aware that for the whole of Lancashire, average household income after tax is a little above £26,000? Yes, my constituents want a fair deal for those who deserve benefits, but they also want a fair deal for those who work and pay for benefits.
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend speaks for many people. We say that the proposal for a cap on benefits of £26,000 is fair. It allows people to receive £500 a day—[Interruption]—a week. His constituents, and many other constituents, ask themselves, “Is it right that my hard-earned taxes, when I am earning less than that, are going to support people on benefits?” I have to say how disappointing it was that, after the Labour party said that it would support a cap—the announcement was made on the BBC—it voted against it in the other place. What a complete act of hypocrisy!
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
Following today’s media reports, will the Prime Minister explain why ministerial advisers and senior civil servants continued to attend networking events with lobbyists who paid several thousand pounds to attend, despite the fact that the Cabinet Office deemed that to be a breach of the civil service code, and had previously issued a ban on attendance?
The Prime Minister
The point that I would make to the hon. Lady is that, unlike the position under the previous Government, there is now a proper system for declaring the interests of special advisers and Ministers. That used not to be the case: it is now the case.
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
Q8. My right hon. Friend will have noted that the Government’s proposed benefits cut excludes war widows, the disabled and those claiming working tax credits. Does he not agree that my constituents on the Lancashire wage to which my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) referred deserve to know that they have a Government who are on the side of families who do the right thing and support their local communities?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend speaks very powerfully about this issue, which is why a benefit cap is fair. It is also very important to recognise that we are excluding from that benefit cap those entitled to working tax credit, as well as households with someone receiving disability living allowance. As we have always said, there will be a hardship fund, a grace period and a way of helping those families to cope with the cap, and to make sure, where possible, that we actually get people into work. The real shame is that there are so many millions of children who live in households where nobody works—and indeed, that number doubled under the previous Government.
Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)
Q9. The Prime Minister has said that it would be “a personal betrayal if banks failed to increase lending to businesses”.Yet last week the Bank of England stated that businesses are still not getting the investment that they need from the banks. Have the banks betrayed the Prime Minister, or has the Prime Minister betrayed businesses?
The Prime Minister
What I have done is put in place the Merlin agreement, which actually led to an increase in bank lending last year. What we now have in place is a massive credit easing programme, which the Chancellor announced in the autumn statement, that will kick in this year and make sure that banks are doing what banks ought to do in a free enterprise economy, and lending to businesses large and small.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I am sure there will be families with children who may have difficulties with the new benefit regime. However, would the Prime Minister care to comment on the feelings of elderly couples who have spent their entire lives working for this country, paid into the state pension system, and are now existing on about £7,000 a year, rather than £26,000?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The fact is that if one looks at the figures today, there are still families in London receiving housing benefit worth more than £50,000 a year. Each one of those families is taking up the hard-earned taxes of many working people earning far less, who could not dream of living in such houses. The point that he makes about pensioners is right, and I am proud of the fact that the Government will be increasing the basic state pension by £5 a week, starting in April, because we believe in dignity and security for our pensioners in old age.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
Q10. What does the Prime Minister make of the National Audit Office’s slating of his flagship Work programme? It says that the Government have totally overestimated the number of people that it will put back to work. It is not so much a Work programme as a “doesn’t work” programme.
The Prime Minister
Instead of just reading the press release, the hon. Gentleman should read the NAO report, which praises the Government for introducing a scheme in such a short time. The basic point that the NAO is making is that the Work programme is not putting taxpayers’ money at risk but putting the providers at risk, and that is a different way of doing things. It is about payment by results, getting better performance and value for money—things that his Government never provided.
Chris Kelly (Dudley South) (Con)
Q11. As my hon. Friends have said earlier, many of my constituents, like theirs, work extremely hard for modest salaries. Given that many people think that the benefit cap should be set lower than £26,000, does my right hon. Friend agree that the Opposition are completely out of touch by voting to make it higher?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Let me remind the Leader of the Opposition what he said at the beginning of this year. On the “Today” programme, he said:
“I’m not against the cap.”
If he is not against the cap, why could he not get his Labour peers to vote for the cap in the House of Lords? What is he—weak, incompetent, or both?
Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)
Q12. On 14 December I asked the Prime Minister about cutting benefits for disabled children, and he replied:“First of all, we are not cutting benefits for disabled children.”—[Official Report, 14 December 2011; Vol. 537, c. 793.]I wonder whether since that time he has checked his facts and discovered that on 12 December, two days before I asked my question, his coalition Members in the Lords voted against the protection of benefits for disabled children under the new universal credit, resulting in a loss of £1,300. I will give the Prime Minister another go. How does this fit in with “We’re all in this together”?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Lady is wrong. The money going into universal credit for the most disabled children is not being cut. She is just plain wrong about that. But is it not interesting that all the questions that we get from all Opposition Members are always about calling for more spending? They have learned absolutely nothing about the mess they landed this country in.
Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
British Airways has announced that it has reached an agreement to take over British Midland International. Although this is being challenged under competition rules, what assurances can the Prime Minister give that the landing slots at Heathrow from regional airports such as Aberdeen will be protected if it is allowed to go ahead?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and I am sure that it is important to his constituents as well. I will look into the issue of landing slots—I know how important it is for regional airports—and get back to him.
Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)
Q13. Why does the Prime Minister want NHS hospitals to hand over up to half their beds to private patients?
The Prime Minister
That is not what the reforms do at all. The reforms ensure that there can be some private and voluntary sector activity going on within the NHS. Before they all—[Interruption.] Perhaps the Leader of the Opposition should quieten down for a second and listen to what his own shadow Health Secretary said. He said:
“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”—[Official Report, 15 May 2007; Vol. 460, c. 250WH.]
Again, that is what he said in government, but since going into opposition Labour Members have taken up a position of just supporting the producer interest, total irresponsibility and total short-termism. I stand by what you said in 2007; it is a pity you could not stick by it.
Mr Speaker
Of course, it is not my obligation to stick by any of these matters.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
The Prime Minister will be aware of the brutal murder last year in Germany of my constituent, Lee Heath. The murder trial is set to start in March and will last for a good couple of months. Will the Prime Minister ensure that the Government do everything possible to support Lee’s mother, Marie Heath, in dealing with the ever increasing financial costs that she faces in seeking justice for her son?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this case. First, may I offer my sincere condolences to Marie Heath and her family following the tragic death of her son Lee last year? I know what a distressing time this will be for them as they travel for the trial in Germany. The Foreign Office will do everything it can to support Marie and her family. I have to say that I have been quite impressed by what the Foreign Office does in cases like this. I think that it shows sympathy and understanding, and I will make sure that that is carried through in this case as well.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
Q14. Twenty-five per cent. of our constituents suffer from musculoskeletal diseases. The National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee believe that we could get better outcomes for those people at lower cost if a clinical director was appointed to co-ordinate things in the NHS. Will the Prime Minister agree to meet charities representing those people, with me, in the near future?
The Prime Minister
I will certainly look carefully at the case that the hon. Gentleman makes. One of the points of the NHS reforms that is perhaps not yet fully understood is the idea of having public health budgets properly ring-fenced, properly funded and with properly employed directors of public health in each area, which will help in many of these areas.
Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)
My constituents in Kingswood entirely agree with the Government’s proposed benefits cap. They believe that no one should earn more in benefits than hard-working families earn. Does the Prime Minister not agree that it is a damned disgrace—[Hon. Members: “Oh!”]—that the Labour party is opposing and trying to wreck this important measure?
Mr Speaker
Order. Moderation in the use of parliamentary language—and, indeed, the use of parliamentary language— is much to be preferred.
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. This is an important decision that the House of Commons has to make. We were told that the Labour party would support a cap on benefits—Labour Members have said that repeatedly—yet when the challenge comes they duck it and refuse to support the cap. [Interruption.] They will have another chance when the legislation comes back to this House—[Interruption.] It is no good the Leader of the Opposition shaking his head. His own peers voted against the cap in the Lords. People in this country will not understand why they are taking that position.
School Buildings (Runcorn)
(12 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
This petition comes about because the Government cancelled the Building Schools for the Future programme, from which my constituents in Halton would have significantly benefited in terms of their schools. One of the schools that lost out, which would have had a brand-new building as a result of Building Schools for the Future, was the Heath school in Runcorn. There are 266 petitioners, and the petition reads as follows:
The Petition of parents, staff and students at The Heath School and others in their community.
Declares that the petitioners are concerned about the poor state of the school's buildings and accessibility for disabled people, and the small size of the classrooms, when considering future school capital spending allocations.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons gives consideration to any motion expressing concern at poor built environment in some schools, and requests that the Leader of the House and the Back Bench Business Committee schedule a debate on school buildings and facilities, and school capital expenditure.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P000996]
Points of Order
(12 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Backbench Business Committee, at its meeting yesterday, decided to amend tomorrow’s business slightly to include a pre-EU Council topical debate at the beginning of its proceedings. Unfortunately, this means that we have had to postpone the presentation of a report by the Chair of the Public Administration Committee.
Mr Speaker, could you give me some advice? Given that the Backbench Business Committee is unable to make an emergency business statement to inform the House of this change of business at such short notice, how do I best go about doing so?
Mr Speaker
As I would have expected, the hon. Lady has provided her own salvation. The information is on the record and the House is grateful to the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee.
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. This morning the Government lost their appeal against a High Court ruling that the cuts to solar tariff payments are legally flawed. The Government have spent at least £66,000, cost social housing providers perhaps at least £1 million and created even more uncertainty, putting thousands of jobs at risk. Have you have received any indication at all from Ministers at the Department of Energy and Climate Change that they intend to come to the House and make a statement, explaining how they plan to clear up the mess that they have created?
Mr Speaker
The short answer is that I have received no such indication or communication from a DECC Minister, but I just have a sense—I do not know why; perhaps it is my nearly 15 years in the House and the fact that the right hon. Lady and I came into the House together—that she will pursue the matter at DECC questions tomorrow, probably like a terrier.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
On a separate point of order, Mr Speaker, but one that is related to the role of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. I am sure that my right hon. Friend would want to fulfil his function as Leader of the whole House, and not just to be a spokesman for the Government about Government business. Would you, Mr Speaker, have a word with my right hon. Friend to explore how a hiatus such as this might be avoided in future, so that the Leader of the House might carry out his function as Leader of the whole House?
Mr Speaker
Well, it is not for the Chair to intervene in this matter, and certainly not to pronounce on it now. The hon. Gentleman has put the ball into play, and I rather imagine that it will be returned, probably before long. Whether it is returned with interest, topspin or slice, I do not know, but I imagine that the ball will be returned.
I have regular and very constructive and convivial discussions both with the Leader of the House and—[Interruption]—no, not with alcohol—with the shadow Leader of the House, and I intend that those discussions will continue. I bear in mind the point that the hon. Gentleman has made.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Is it in order for the House to read the detailed contents of an important statement on charging heavy goods vehicles, including a direct quotation from the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), in selected newspapers before the statement is laid before the House? Do you, Mr Speaker, think that that tactic might have something to do with the fact that the statement itself shows that the Government are breaking the coalition agreement by proposing to increase charges on more than 28,000 British lorry drivers, a fact that was strangely absent from the briefing to the newspapers? What can be done about that?
Mr Speaker
It is, of course, perfectly in order for a written ministerial statement to be laid, and I gather that such a statement has been laid today. That is, of itself, a legitimate vehicle for informing the House of ministerial decisions and other matters. However, and this is a very important caveat, the contents of such statements should not be released—I emphasise, should not be released—under any circumstances that I can imagine to the media before being made available to Members.
I should just underline the very basic doctrine of ministerial responsibility to Parliament, because I know that it is sometimes said in such circumstances by a Minister that “the Minister did not do any such thing.” Ministers, I know, will accept that they are responsible for everything that is done in their Departments by officials and by special advisers. That is the situation, and this should not happen.
Statements of Taxation
(12 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the Chancellor of the Exchequer to issue annually to each payer of Income Tax and National Insurance a statement detailing the payments made in the most recent tax year, the estimated payments to be made in the following tax year and a breakdown of the areas of government spending on which the payments are to be spent; and for connected purposes.
What I propose is very simple: the Government should tell us how much we pay in tax and where it goes. They should do so as close as possible to the Chancellor’s Budget statement and at the end of the tax year. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs should provide to each person who pays income tax and national insurance a statement to that effect.
The statement would provide two sets of information. First, it would give an account of the direct taxes—income tax and national insurance—paid by the person in the tax year just gone, and an estimate of what will be taken from that taxpayer in the year ahead. In that way, each taxpayer may see how the Chancellor’s Budget and any previous financial statements have affected their net income. The second set of information provided by the statement would be a detailed description of how the person’s tax is spent in simple cash terms in pounds and pence.
If we take as an example somebody on average earnings of about £26,000 a year, the tax statement would explain that their total direct taxes come to about £6,000, of which a little over £2,000 goes on benefits and pensions, £1,000 on the NHS, about £830 on education and so on. Even in the space of one piece of paper, it is possible to give quite a precise level of detail to the taxpayer. In this instance, it would show that £69 goes on railways and £17 on immigration and border control.
I propose that the tax statements should carry two additional pieces of information. First, each person’s share of the national debt should be itemised, as should their share of any deficit or surplus in the tax year. With that, there would be an item for debt interest, which for our average earner would be £404 for last year. Secondly, a list of taxes not included on the statement should be given, such as value added tax, tobacco duties, council tax and capital gains tax. I propose that the Government provide a web-based ready reckoner that allows people to calculate an estimate of their contribution through such indirect taxes. Taken with their tax statement, that would furnish each taxpayer with a good account of how much money they surrender to Her Majesty’s Treasury and what Ministers do with that money on their behalf.
The operation of the new tax system would be straightforward. Almost all end-of-year tax information, whether in the form of P60s or tax returns, is now provided online. HMRC therefore already possesses the individual tax contributions for almost all taxpayers. I propose that the general ratio by which each individual figure is broken down be determined by the Office for Budget Responsibility, in collaboration with the Office for National Statistics. Both organisations should be charged with the independent task of generating the analysis on which each tax statement is based. Again, that need not be complicated. The data are already published by Government and I propose that local authorities should be required to submit to the OBR their annual budgets, so that it can make forecasts of total public spending on services with the same level of detail as it can with out-turn figures for the year past.
The generation and presentation of the tax statement would be no more complicated than for the individualised direct mail campaigns waged by our high street and supermarket stores. Private quotations supplied to me suggest a cost of about 25p per taxpayer should the statement be printed and posted. That would translate to a total cost of about £7.5 million. That figure could and should be substantially reduced by combining the tax statements with one of the many other letters that taxpayers receive from HMRC. I see no reason why the whole enterprise should not be sponsored and why advertising space should not be provided on the envelope to offset the cost. On the format of the tax statement, it is of paramount importance that it is written in clear, neutral and uncomplicated language so that it is comprehensible to all.
It is a measure of how confounded our democracy has become that this simple, easy and cheap idea may be seen as in any way radical. We would not for a moment think of paying a bill in a supermarket or of setting up a mobile phone direct debit if we did not receive an itemised receipt in exchange. Yet for tax, the largest outgoing for most people, we get nothing—no total account of how much we have paid and no detail of where it has gone.
The Government’s hard work to simplify the tax code and their plans for tax transparency are to be welcomed. We should be aware, however, of how far other countries have proceeded. In France, it has long been established that the Finance Minister writes to taxpayers to tell them the total figures on how their taxes are spent. The state of Iowa, in its Taxpayer Transparency Act, mandates the Government to permit taxpayers to receive an online receipt for their state contributions. In April last year, the Obama White House introduced a federal tax receipt, again online, which allows taxpayers to type in their various Medicare, federal income tax and social security contributions and to receive a personal receipt similar to that outlined in my Bill.
While I recognise the value of online calculators, there can be no substitute for something that lands on the doormat at the same time across the country and corresponds with our entire tax paid. It would, in a way, be a national water cooler moment. That we do not have that at the moment, and that we even find the concept surprising, tells us all we need to know about the growing distance that separates Government and people. We must be honest with ourselves. As Government spending has grown ever larger and more complicated, and when the balance of tax and borrowed pounds has moved from defence to the myriad arms of the welfare state, Government expenditure has become ever more opaque.
That has suited the political ends of many who have sat in this Chamber. Without intending it to be so, the political classes have perpetuated a subtle collective fraud on the people who pay the Government’s bills. We have taken taxpayers’ money and distributed it with no explanation of what that means to each individual taxpayer. We have talked in millions and billions, and now trillions—a language comprehensible only to economists and Treasury mandarins which very few taxpayers and, to be frank, very few of us can relate to, let alone understand. As a result, we have forced people to question not how their tax is actually spent but how they believe it has been spent. How many times have each of us been told on the doorstep that all our money goes to Europe, or Africa, or Trident? Armed with a tax statement, taxpayers would have a precise and accurate understanding of how their tax pounds are really spent.
By transparency we will achieve accountability. Let us imagine how voters could more easily engage in the important debates that we are having in this and in another place on welfare reform, on pensions and on reducing the deficit if they knew about the relative distribution of their taxes, and in a tangible form. Knowing that he pays something like £800, and rising, towards pensions, our average earner would have a firmer grasp of the arguments made in this place about how pension reform is so badly needed. This one piece of paper could make Parliament more responsive to voters’ demands while helping the Government better to explain the spending decisions they have chosen to make. Such an improvement in accountability could only strengthen our democracy because it would decrease the distance between taxpayers and their representatives, making real the results of a vote cast in a ballot box.
I therefore further suggest that the Office for Budget Responsibility be required to assess the major parties’ manifestos at election time, at the request of those parties, in order that it may produce dummy tax statements so that voters can see the difference that their vote might make. A similar role is performed by the Congressional Budget Office in the United States, and there is no reason why it cannot be so here. In so doing, we may throw a little light on what is, for most people, the most confusing and murky period in the electoral cycle.
My Bill makes the simple proposition that we should be told how our money is spent. It would cost very little but would have a radical effect on our democracy. It would help voters to hold us—their representatives—to account and, in so doing, would go some way towards repairing our fissured democracy at a time when we representatives of the people must make increasingly difficult decisions on the people’s behalf.
Chris Bryant
Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.
I rise to oppose the Bill proposed by the hon. Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer). He is a very charming Member of the House who has obviously made quite an impact since he arrived—although not quite so charming as to win last week’s debate in the Cambridge Union on whether the Tories have been unfairly demonised.
None the less, I say to the hon. Gentleman that there are far more important things that we should change about how expenditure is revealed to taxpayers, not least because we in this House do an extremely bad job of analysing expenditure. The Budget that we have every year is not really a budget, it is just a statement of changes to taxation. It is not a proper process whereby we start from scratch and examine every single piece of expenditure, which is what happens in every local authority in the land and in the United States of America, where there is a thorough budget process. I do not believe that there has been a vote on expenditure in this House since something like 1918. All that we do is work on the estimates, and nobody ever makes a close analysis of expenditure.
Although I am sympathetic to some of what the hon. Gentleman says about how we should explain things better to taxpayers, I believe that there are better ways to ensure that the expenditure that the House grants on behalf of the Crown is better explained to them.
My real complaint about the hon. Gentleman’s motion —it is the motion that we are debating today, not the Bill—is that it requests that
“leave be given to bring in a Bill”.
There are still 93 Bills on the Order Paper to be debated before Prorogation, and not a single one of those is scheduled for a day when the House will be sitting. Nor will his Bill be.
I simply say to hon. Members that there is a hypocrisy about how we do our legislating here. I am not saying that any individual Member is a hypocrite, simply that there is a hypocrisy about our pretending that we are actually advancing legislation. If Members want to wave the motion through, that is fine, but they need to be absolutely clear about the fact that if they had any real honesty in what they were doing, they would be calling on the Leader of the House to provide extra time to debate such Bills. Otherwise, this is nothing more than a political puff and a press release for the Daily Mail.
Kevin Brennan
Will you clarify for the House, Mr Speaker, what the position is with regard to voice and vote on ten-minute rule Bills?
Mr Speaker
The position is not materially different from the position that applies across the piece, which is that the working assumption is that the vote will follow the voice. I also emphasise to the hon. Gentleman that whether people choose to divide the House is a different matter from what they say by way of expressing opinion. There is no inconsistency there. I hope that that is agreeable to him. I did seek to explain this to the House last week, but I am happy to do so again. If he is still in interrogative mode he will no doubt come back to me, and I will very happily deal with the matter, but at this point I want to put the Question.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Ben Gummer, Nicholas Soames, Mr Richard Shepherd, Mr Graham Brady, Justin Tomlinson, Mr Robert Buckland, Karen Bradley, Mr Andrew Tyrie, Steve Baker, Margot James, Tracey Crouch and Kwasi Kwarteng present the Bill.
Ben Gummer accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 30 March, and to be printed (Bill 277).
EU Criminal Policy
(12 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is a very simple point of order on the documentation for this debate. Page 2 refers to the Chairman of the European Select Committee. There is no such Committee; it is the European Scrutiny Committee. I think it is an important distinction.
Mr Speaker
It is an important distinction, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for drawing it. I suspect that the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash), who chairs the Committee, will be even more grateful to him.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
I beg to move,
That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 14613/11, relating to a Commission Communication, Towards an EU Criminal Policy: Ensuring the effective implementation of EU policies through criminal law; agrees that the primary focus of EU criminal law should be tackling serious crime with a cross-border dimension; and further agrees that the general principles of subsidiarity, proportionality and necessity based on clear evidence must be respected when deciding whether to propose criminal sanctions to ensure the effective enforcement of EU policies.
I am glad of the opportunity to restate that the Government agree with the European Scrutiny Committee that the focus of European Union criminal law should be combating the most serious cross-border crimes. We also agree that in determining whether criminal law is required across the member states, it is critical that the general principles of subsidiarity, proportionality and necessity are respected.
The consequence of the Lisbon treaty coming into effect on 1 December 2009 is that the use of criminal law provisions is likely to increase, as they will be used to support the implementation of European Union policy in areas in which they have not been used before. However, the limits to that are not set in the communication that we are discussing, which is non-binding. Rather, they have a legal basis in the treaty, namely article 83. Paragraph 2 of that article limits the EU’s power, because it sets out that member states cannot be required to criminalise breaches of EU law unless the strict conditions in article 83 are met, and the United Kingdom opt-in will always apply. We have recently seen the first such proposal, on criminal sanctions for insider dealing and market manipulation.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
The fact that we now have a specific example of where there can be co-operation means that we can extend it to other areas such as human trafficking. Does the Minister agree that in the case of specific crimes that cross borders and on which there is agreement, such as human trafficking and terrorism, we need to co-operate better with our European partners?
Mr Blunt
I am grateful to the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, and of course the answer is yes. Our position on human trafficking and child sex crimes has been to have opt-in, so I can confirm his point.
It appears that in anticipation of the developments under the Lisbon treaty that I have described, the European Commission is seeking to develop some principles to be taken into consideration when the criminal law is used. The Government’s position is that we will approach legislative proposals on justice and home affairs on a case-by-case basis, with a view to maximising the country’s security and protecting civil liberties and the integrity of the criminal justice system. There is nothing in the document that we are debating, which is only a communication, that changes or challenges that fundamental position.
As the House may recall, some time before the Commission communication, in 2009, the European Council agreed conclusions on model provisions to guide its criminal law deliberations. The conclusions were adopted to prevent incoherent and inconsistent criminal provisions in EU legislation, and in anticipation of the changes that the Lisbon treaty would bring.
A number of the Council’s conclusions relating to the assessment of need for criminal law are satisfactorily reflected in the Commission’s communication, most notably the principle that the criminal law be used as a last resort. The adoption of legislation in accordance with the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality is referenced, as is the need to establish necessity.
There are some things that we welcome in the detail of the communication. For example, it acknowledges the UK’s opt-in rights and clearly states that the diversity of member states’ criminal law must be respected. The use of criminal law only when it is a necessary and proportionate response to combating particular conduct is an approach that we apply in our domestic criminal legislation. We are therefore glad that the Commission’s and the Council’s statements reflect those principles.
However, there are potential concerns. The Government believe that it is essential that the Commission propose only European criminal legislation that is necessary and proportionate. Ineffective implementation of a European Union policy should not, in itself, trigger consideration of the use of criminal law.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
Bearing in mind that much of what we are considering will be governed in due course by qualified majority vote, any insistence in this House will be subject to the vagaries of that system.
Mr Blunt
Of course, what we are considering is guided by the opt-in principles in the Lisbon treaty under the relevant protocol. The emergency brake, as a final reserve position, then underwrites everything. For example, if we opted in to something at the beginning of negotiations, found ourselves outvoted by a qualified majority vote and the Government then came to a view that what had emerged was unacceptable, the emergency brake would remain available to us to prevent that criminal legislation from applying to us.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
To make it absolutely clear, will the Minister confirm that the EU criminal policy outlined in the document would not apply to the UK in any way, shape or form unless or until the UK chose to opt in?
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
Does the Minister recognise, when considering an opt-in or when seeking to establish whether there is genuine necessity, the importance of engaging with the relevant Select Committee at an early stage? The Select Committees, with their specialist knowledge of subjects such as agriculture and fisheries or home affairs, have an opportunity of ascertaining whether necessity has been established.
Mr Blunt
As a Justice Minister, I would be extremely unwise not to acknowledge the merits and wisdom of the recommendation of the Chairman of the Justice Committee. My right hon. Friend makes the proper point that there is an expertise in the Select Committees that should be engaged, if possible. Much of the process sits with the European Scrutiny Committee, and we are today making recommendations that the House should consider matters. I shall, of course, leave the detail of process, and the way in which the House should do that, to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. However, I hear what my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) says, and I acknowledge the force of his point.
Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)
The explanatory memorandum on the European Union document acknowledges that responsibility for criminal law matters in Scotland and Northern Ireland rests with the respective Scottish Government and Northern Ireland Ministers. It then states:
“This EM has been cleared by officials in the Scottish Government and Northern Ireland.”
Will the Minister assure me that the Minister in Northern Ireland has been consulted on the matter and that he has had sight of the document before our discussions here?
Mr Blunt
I hope that I can return later to the hon. Gentleman’s intervention and give him a full answer.
As I said, there are some potential concerns about the detail of the principles. Ineffective implementation of a European Union policy should not in itself trigger consideration of the use of criminal law. We also agree with the European Scrutiny Committee that it is primarily for member states and their Governments to ensure that citizens can have confidence that they live in a Europe of freedom, security and justice. The European Union’s primary role should be driven by stopping serious cross-border crime.
The Government welcome the further caveats that the European Scrutiny Committee considers should be placed on the communication. The first relates to the European Union not seeking to harmonise extra-territorial provisions across member states. The Government believe that requiring member states to take extra-territorial jurisdiction must be considered on a case-by-case basis, having particular regard to the conduct to be tackled and its impact. We have accepted that it is appropriate to require member states to be able to prosecute their nationals who commit certain child sex crimes or human trafficking offences anywhere in the world. However, we have not accepted European Union rules on extra-territorial jurisdiction based on the nationality of the victim of crime.
The Government also agree with the Committee that we should be cautious about European Union criminal law that seeks to define aggravating and mitigating circumstances. We accepted some aggravating factors in the context of child sex offences or human trafficking. We consider those factors to form part of the agreed minimum sanctions, and, therefore, to be permissible.
The Government are unaware of the previous use of the term “Euro-crimes”, or, indeed, its origin. It is wholly misleading. I want to state clearly that no one will ever be prosecuted under a so-called Euro-crime. The European Union can set only the minimum elements of an offence. Each will have to be implemented in the domestic law of the member states. Hon. Members will understand why the Government view the term as singularly unhelpful. For European officials to use a shorthand internally to refer to crimes about which member states have agreed to establish minimum standards is one thing. For that term to find its way into official documents is another example of jargon that allows misrepresentation and misunderstanding.
Charlie Elphicke
I am listening carefully to the Minister. I am slightly puzzled. It seems as though there will be some minimum EU standard for, for example, illicit drug trafficking. However, do not we already have criminal laws in this country that apply to such matters? What would a European dimension add?
Mr Blunt
My hon. Friend is correct. However, when it is decided that the principles that we are considering merit the European Union’s taking action—as we have done with child sex offences and human trafficking—we will want to take the opportunity to opt in to EU legislation. That is why we will continue to make the judgment case by case. If it were decided, in the case to which my hon. Friend referred, that there was merit in acting at European Union level, we would doubtless do so. Of course, there could be cases where we felt that our standards were adequate but that our interests were being damaged in other parts of the European Union because drug trafficking was happening that affected our interests, and was not being properly policed. There are therefore circumstances, particularly with cross-border offences, in which there is merit in considering the matter.
The European Scrutiny Committee also asked for the Government’s view of the third sentence of the communication, which states that a
“EU Criminal Policy should have as an overall goal to foster citizens’ confidence in the fact that they live in a Europe of freedom, security and justice.”
The Committee took exception to that as being implausible and unwarranted because the European Union’s role is “helping” member states to stop crime. We agree and note that article 84 makes it clear that the European Union has only a supporting role in crime prevention. It cannot harmonise member states’ laws, except to the very limited extent in articles 82 and 83, which permit setting only minimum standards.
Our aim is to try to ensure that, when the European Union legislates on criminal law, there is convincing evidence that the offending activity constitutes serious and cross-border crime, and that there is consensus that the nature or impact requires common action. I therefore conclude by reiterating our view that it is essential that European Union criminal legislation is proposed only when necessary and proportionate.
It only remains for me to reply to the intervention of the hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea). Of course, the views of the devolved Administrations are taken into account in opt-in decisions that the United Kingdom then makes.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
It is a pleasure if not a luxury to have so much time on the Floor of the House to discuss a communication from the Commission to the European Parliament. It appears to have pride of place in Government business for the House this week.
Mr Speaker
Order. I very gently point out to the hon. Gentleman that no fewer than seven Back Benchers wish to speak in the debate. I feel certain that he will tailor his contribution accordingly.
Mr Slaughter
I started at a leisurely pace, Mr Speaker, and perhaps you anticipated that I would continue at such, but I take the hint. We have only an hour and a half, but I will not take that much time.
EU criminal policy is a significant topic and in other circumstances it could provoke lively and controversial debate, but I suspect it will not do so today for a variety of reasons. First, the document is only a communication—it opens the door to communication rather than decides its outcome. As the Minister has said, it is non-binding. Secondly, there are rightly so many caveats, conditionalities and reservations in the UK position on EU criminal policy that any controversial proposal could be effectively filtered at one stage or another.
The European Scrutiny Committee concedes that in supporting the Government’s cautious approach, and in appearing to take principal exception to the language of the document. I do not want to be drawn into a discussion of the linguistic inelegance of “Euro crimes” or whether the EU should have the temerity to express its wish to foster freedom, security and justice. Those are peripheral issues.
The third reason why I believe this is an uncontroversial proposal is that there has been—even on the Lisbon treaty and the criminal justice decisions flowing from it—broad consensus between the parties. That remains, and the Opposition do not intend to press the motion to a Division.
On the substance of the Commission document, we are pleased to note the emphasis that the Commission places on respecting the general principles of subsidiarity, necessity and proportionality in its memorandum. Those should be at the forefront of the Commission’s mind in deciding whether to propose criminal sanctions to ensure effective implementation of EU proposals. That was the intention of the Lisbon treaty and the exemptions that the previous Government negotiated.
The previous Government were clear at the time of the Lisbon treaty that EU co-operation on criminal justice and policing should not affect fundamental aspects of our criminal justice system. The extended opt-in arrangements that we secured at the time mean that we have complete choice on whether to participate in any justice and home affairs measure.
As each proposal for new EU JHA legislation comes forward, we urge the Minister to consider carefully whether it is in British interests to participate. From the “Report to Parliament on the Application Of Protocols 19 and 21”, which was released this week, we see that the Government have operated in exactly the way we envisaged when negotiating the opt-in. The document makes it clear that:
“Over the past year, the Government has taken 17 decisions on UK participation in EU JHA legislative proposals. In total the UK has opted in to nine proposals…including one decision to opt in to a measure post adoption…The Government…decided to not opt in to eight proposals.”
The Opposition do not always agree on individual proposals—we did not agree with the Government’s decision on the right to a criminal lawyer—but we agree on and indeed instigated that opt-in process.
In any event, and as the Minister has acknowledged, there is a recognition by the Commission that EU intervention in criminal justice is a sensitive matter, hence the emergency brake, the two-step approach and the fact that additional “Euro-crimes”—if I may use the shorthand—will be added only by unanimous decision. It is clear that that is a matter of last resort.
There is broad agreement on areas on which it is important to act on a European level. The Opposition support co-ordinated action to tackle organised crime and terrorism, and to provide greater protection for children and ensure the security of our borders. Such co-operation continues to be driven by the challenges we face today. Tackling crime, countering terrorism and securing our borders are not issues of mere domestic concern; they have an international dimension. We need to work with our allies in the EU to ensure that we achieve our objectives.
As the European Commission states in the document:
“In view of the cross-border dimension of many crimes, the adoption of EU criminal law measures can help ensure that criminals can neither hide behind borders nor abuse differences between national legal systems for criminal purposes.”
There are more contentious matters than this one, such as the European arrest warrant, which the House debated relatively recently. The Opposition hope that the incremental approach continues. A clear example of that—on insider trading, insider dealing and market abuse—is given in the bundle. The Government, in commissioning a report to look into that matter, are taking a sensible line. That is a good example of a matter on which legislation might assist the Government and the country, because we have taken steps when other European countries have not done so.
On that basis, I shall bring my remarks to a close to allow other Members to take part in the debate. I welcome the opportunity to debate these matters, but there is little controversy on the principle, even if controversy on individual decisions to opt in remains.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
We have just heard a breathtaking example of complacency from the Government—sorry, I mean the Opposition. I say that because, unfortunately, the manner in which this issue is being approached, and the reason why the European Scrutiny Committee thought this matter should be debated, is very simple. We have heard reservations expressed so far by the Minister and shadow Minister, but they do not take express account of the fact that once a communication has got going—particularly a communication under the aegis of the Lisbon treaty—we effectively open the door to considerable, radical proposals for the expansion of European criminal law.
I am glad the Minister made the comments he made and I endorse all of them. I am also glad he agrees with the Committee on a wide range of matters, particularly the nomenclature and the phrase “Euro-crimes”. However, this is a substantial issue. The document that was presented to us by the Commission concludes that
“the new legal framework introduced by the Lisbon treaty … considerably enhances the possibility to progress with the development of a coherent EU Criminal Policy which is based on considerations both of effective enforcement and”—
it claims—
“a solid protection of fundamental rights. This communication represents a first step in the Commission’s efforts to put in place a coherent and consistent EU Criminal Policy by setting out how the EU should use criminal law to ensure the effective implementation of EU policies.”
It could be no clearer than that. That is the intention, and believe me, it is the direction and the line of route.
Other hon. Members will no doubt deal with other matters arising from that, but as Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, I want to explain why we insisted that this matter should be debated. The Committee recommended the document for one simple reason: the communication outlines how a supranational organisation intends to pass criminal legislation that will have a direct impact on our citizens. This is indeed a sensitive area, as the enactment of criminal law is traditionally the domain of sovereign legislatures.
In the conclusion to our report, we noted the emphasis in the communication that the Commission places on respecting the general principles of subsidiarity, necessity based on clear evidence, proportionality, including the principle of ultima ratio—in other words, criminal law as a means of last resort—and the legal traditions of the EU member states when deciding whether to propose criminal sanctions to ensure the effective implementation of EU proposals. Those words are welcome, but we wait to see whether they are respected. Evidence to the contrary is abundant in relation to matters of this kind. That is because the manner in which it is proposed to move down the route of criminal law—albeit under the Lisbon treaty, which my party opposed tooth and nail during its enactment—relies heavily on the fact that there is a desire among many people in the European Union to have one country, which, by its very nature, means they would prefer to have one European criminal law policy. There is therefore a direct contradiction between the manner in which the proposals are being made and the words used. We argue that we should wait to see whether the suggestions that lie behind the Commission’s statements are respected.
We are gratified by the Government’s reaffirmation that any EU action in the field of criminal law will have to be justified on the basis of robust evidence, as well as demonstrating why lesser administrative penalties are not appropriate. The Committee intends to hold the establishment to strict account on that question. We also support the Government’s cautious approach to the Commission’s communication, but we add further caveats of our own. The European Union should not seek to harmonise the traditional rules on extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction in member states. The UK does not assert extraterritorial jurisdiction over those who are “habitually resident”—an expression that has found its way into EU criminal legislation—in this country. The EU should also refrain from defining “mitigating and aggravating circumstances” for the commission of crimes, which is best left to the discretion of the sentencing judge. Furthermore, the expression “Euro-crimes”, which is used in the communication for the 10 offences listed under article 83.1 of the treaty, is inappropriate and misleading. We ask the Government to do their utmost—in fact, we would go so far as to insist that they do this—to ensure that the term does not enter the EU’s lexicon. Indeed, I was extremely glad to hear what the Minister had to say about that.
The other point is that although there is the question of opt-ins and whether we are to accept the provisions, we have seen a torrent of opt-ins over the last few months, since this coalition Government came to power, and a significant number of Members of Parliament are deeply concerned about the tendency in that direction. Furthermore, in addition to the opt-ins, there is the emergency brake. We understand all that, but we have to have regard to that tendency, because of what can happen once the door is opened on that scale. In the light of what I said about what is in the mind of the Commission and others in the European Union, and about the tendency to move towards a policy of further integration, which would include criminal law, we should be not merely cautious, but extremely resistant towards any attempt to move further down that route.
Sir Alan Beith
When I was chairing the Justice Committee, I do not remember ever meeting anybody, in any justice committee in any member state, who believed that we should be working towards a single, harmonised criminal law that would replace the criminal law of member states across Europe. Is the hon. Gentleman not conjuring up a spectre?
Mr Cash
Certainly not. I am not conjuring up a spectre; I am talking about a tendency. In almost every area, the original proposals—from Maastricht, through to Nice, Amsterdam and Lisbon—have adopted a minimalist approach at the beginning, but then expanded, moving further and deeper into the areas of competence that have been acquired. I am not going to dispute what the right hon. Gentleman says about what he has heard; I am merely referring to what I have observed, which is also understood by many others, including the Government.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
The ambition of the European Commission is set out on page 18 of the documents. Its ambition is not a limited extension of criminal policy; it is to have
“an important tool to better fight crime”—
that is, any crime. It is not limited.
Mr Cash
I entirely agree. Furthermore, article 83.1 sets out the following areas of crime:
“terrorism, trafficking in human beings and sexual exploitation of women and children, illicit drug trafficking, illicit arms trafficking, money laundering, corruption, counterfeiting of means of payment, computer crime and organised crime.”
It continues:
“On the basis of developments in crime”—
the broader remit under which such an extension is proposed—
“the Council may adopt a decision identifying other areas of crime that meet the criteria specified in this paragraph.”
Although article 83.1 says that the Council
“shall act unanimously after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament,”
we are talking about a process of opening up and extending those areas of domestic control over criminal jurisdiction that are likely to be transferred to the European domain.
On a final note—and to reply to the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), the Chairman of the Liaison Committee—the Committee noted that the third sentence of the communication states:
“An EU Criminal Policy should have an overall goal to foster citizens’ confidence in the fact that they live in a Europe of freedom, security and justice”.
I ask the Minister to say whether he agrees with that statement. For our part, we in the Committee think it an example of dangerously ideological thinking. We are concerned that such thinking may inform future proposals from the Commission. Citizens look to their Governments to provide freedom, security and justice in their own states. To expect freedom, security and justice to flow in 27 European states under the auspices of supranational institutions may sound laudable, but in reality it is both implausible and unwarranted. We think that the Commission would have done itself a service by cutting out such a statement from a policy paper of such importance and limiting its ambitions to more practical objectives.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash). He and the other members of his Committee are quite right to have brought this matter before the House. Although I start from a different position on the European Union from him, I think it is vital that the House has every opportunity to discuss issues concerning Europe. I commend him on working hard to ensure that on Thursday afternoon there will be a debate before the European Council meets.
I thought that the hon. Gentleman was a little harsh on my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) when he accused him of being complacent. I have known my hon. Friend since he was 11-years-old —we were at school together. There are many ways to describe him, but “complacent” is not one of them. However, if I may digress for just one second, Mr Speaker, I used to try to avoid being in class with him, because our names were adjacent on the register, and when they were read out in quick succession—“Slaughter”, “Vaz”—it was usually my hon. Friend leading the cheers.
Anyway, back to the European Union and away from our school days. I was heartened by what the Minister said about this measure. It is important that we deal with such measures on a case-by-case basis, for the very reasons cited by my hon. Friend. The European arrest warrant, which began as a good idea, is now out of control, with hundreds of requests being made by certain EU countries—I am sure that when he gets to speak, the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) will make reference to that fact. That is something that we need to guard against, so a cautious approach to the extension of criminal policy is extremely important. We have our own criminal law, and that is how it must remain, but we need co-operation with our European partners in a number of areas. I do not accept that the list read out by the hon. Member for Stone is definitive. It is a good list for us to work on in regard to co-operation on those issues with our European partners, although not necessarily in regard to legislation. The Government should bear that in mind when they approach those issues.
Kelvin Hopkins
As my right hon. Friend will have heard, there is a difference of view between the Chair of the Justice Committee and the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee on whether this constitutes a degree of legislative creep towards an objective of unifying the legal systems in Europe. If one of them is right, we can be happy that there is no creep, but the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee seems to think there is a degree of legislative creep involved. Which one does my right hon. Friend agree with?
Keith Vaz
I agree with both of them, because they were each making different points. We must be fair to the Chair of the Justice Committee, who is also the Chair of the Liaison Committee, because he was disputing a point of debate, not a point of fact, as to whether he had met any chair of a justice committee in any other European country who agreed with the view of the hon. Member for Stone view that one criminal law was being sought for the whole of the European Union. I have attended quite a few meetings in the European Union, and I have certainly never heard anyone say that they wanted one criminal law for the whole EU.
Keith Vaz
That clarification is helpful, but as the commissioners are not here to defend themselves, I shall try to move the debate on.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned certain crimes that are of course not Euro-crimes: terrorism, trafficking in human beings, illicit drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption and computer crime. They go beyond the borders of the European Union, but it is important that we work with our European partners to try to combat those problems. There are times when we need to act quickly—in relation to the trafficking of human beings, for example. Our last report pointed out that at least 100,000 people were being trafficked around the European Union each year, including 5,000 in the United Kingdom, and that there did not appear to be a common European Union strategy to deal with that. We do not need a new criminal law that covers all the EU countries to deal with it; we need to ensure that our structures—Europol, Interpol and others—are able to service the needs of our criminal law. We should be able to prosecute those involved in human trafficking quite happily, without having regard to what is being said in other countries. Similarly, when Turkey eventually joins the European Union, it will have to deal with the problem of illegal drug trafficking. Almost 80% of the heroin that comes into Europe comes from Afghanistan via Turkey.
We can talk about co-operation, but we need to be very careful when we talk about extending criminal law. Our systems are completely different, and I do not think that anyone in the House would accept a proposition to harmonise our criminal justice systems. We should, however, proceed in the direction of co-operation.
I hope that the Minister will also examine the question of data. People can arrive in this country and undergo checks that do not reveal that they have committed criminal offences elsewhere in the EU. Dealing with that does not require legislation; it requires ministerial co-operation and co-operation between EU countries. So if someone who had committed a criminal offence in Poland, for example, came here and was involved in activities that required that information to be made available, that disclosure should be possible. Equally, that should also apply if someone who had committed an offence here went to another part of the EU.
I welcome the Government’s approach, but I urge the Minister to be cautious, because any extension would cause us great problems. However, it is important to push forward the co-operation that exists at EU level on the entire justice and home affairs agenda.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I support the motion, and I shall preface my remarks by saying that any free trade area needs an enforceable and effective system to secure compliance with the requirements put in place to create and maintain an open market. Europe also needs to keep pace with the international, cross-border nature of a great deal of crime, and with the ease of movement that criminals enjoy. Indeed, in combating crime, Europe should take advantage of its capacity for co-operation and combined effort in order to defeat criminals and criminal organisations. All our citizens, whatever their views on the European Union, would recognise the value of that.
We cannot ignore enforcement failures in various member countries, because they often harm the interests of British businesses, which can be put at a competitive disadvantage. British farmers and fishermen can also be adversely affected by inadequate enforcement in other countries. Obviously, the converse can also be true. It is usually unhelpful, however, to add new structures and layers of law, of the administration of justice and of prosecution authorities to the well-developed national systems that exist in most member countries. I therefore agree with the motion when it mentions subsidiarity and the need for robust evidence of necessity when EU measures are to be considered.
I do not entirely share the European Scrutiny Committee’s dislike of the idea of fostering citizens’ confidence in the fact that they live in a Europe of “freedom, security and justice”. It is an important feature of the European Union that membership of it commits member states to maintaining a range of important values including freedom, justice, security and human rights. The Committee calls this an example of ideological thinking. I thought that ideological thinking was making a comeback in the Conservative party, but perhaps it is still disapproved of. I remember that during my earlier political life ideology was frowned on by the Conservatives, but then Mrs Thatcher came along with an ideology of her own. That is a byway that I shall stray no further along, however. The principal responsibility for achieving these aims rests with the member states of the European Union.
The Minister said that we were about to embark on a complex opt-out—or opt-in—process, which is relevant to what we are discussing today. Under the Lisbon treaty, the Government could opt out of everything in the home affairs and justice area. They could also opt in to everything. The more likely outcome, however, is that they will seek a negotiated package, in which we opt in to those areas where it is genuinely beneficial for us to do so without complicating our system by opting in to areas that would be inappropriate for us. I hope that the Government will share with us their developed thinking on how that will be achieved, as a great deal of negotiation will be involved.
The Commissioners tend to proceed by launching a large number of proposals; they fire off a hail of bullets, very few of which reach their target. If the Select Committees of this House were to devote time and attention to every idea that appeared in a Commission paper, we simply would not be able to get on with our work on domestic policy issues. It is therefore important for Select Committees to be able to identify those elements that would benefit from careful Select Committee attention. This is true of home affairs and justice matters, and of others.
The European Scrutiny Committee carries out an important role. It does the valuable and not always very inviting work of examining the legality and proportionality of EU proposals. However, it is the Select Committees that relate to Departments that have experience and expertise in specific policy areas. It would be unreasonable to expect the European Scrutiny Committee to know enough in any given case about whether there was a necessity justification for something and whether it was a policy direction that would be appropriate in the United Kingdom. That is the kind of work that Select Committees are expected to do.
Mr Cash
I understand that there is obviously a complementarity between the European Scrutiny Committee and departmental Select Committees. It is important, however, to reaffirm the fact that we rarely recommend a communication for debate, but on this occasion, because of the nature and coherence of the proposals advocated by the Commission on criminal policy, we thought it was a good idea at least to give it a kick-start on the Floor of the House.
Sir Alan Beith
I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman and with the action he has taken on this matter, and I very much welcome the fact that the debate is taking place. It is certainly the view of the Liaison Committee that more attention needs to be given to developing European proposals that will, if we are not careful, only come to the House at too late a stage for us to have any significant influence on them. The work of the European Scrutiny Committee in all that is extremely valuable, but there are limits to what it can do.
In conclusion, let me remind Ministers of two things. First, we want to secure as much help as we can get for Select Committees from the UKRep staff in Brussels, who are extremely good when we go as visiting Committees in giving us advice on what is happening, what is being proposed and which of the Commission’s brainwaves is getting somewhere and which does not look likely to do so.
Keith Vaz
I fully support what the right hon. Gentleman is saying. I do not know about his Committee, but we find we are so busy that we simply do not have the time to cover European issues, and we rely heavily on the European Scrutiny Committee to alert us if anything is going wrong. One way in which we could be more involved would be if UKRep was more responsive to our work.
Sir Alan Beith
It is not so much about being responsive, because when we have asked representatives for help, they have given it. I am looking for a proactive approach. It would be very helpful if the Foreign Office gave the team in Brussels a clear indication that it would be helpful to alert Select Committees to proposals that looked like gaining traction, and would have important implications for the United Kingdom.
Secondly, of course, it is important that Ministers come to Select Committees before important Council meetings and afterwards, if it is necessary to secure a report back. The House too often finds that a set of complex documents that are extremely difficult to decipher comes before us in the General European Committees at a stage far beyond that at which it would be possible to influence or change it. We have relied unfairly on the members of the European Scrutiny Committee, whose work I again recognise as extremely important, and Select Committees have a job to do that is difficult to incorporate in a crowded work programme, so the more help we can get from Ministers and our officials to alert Select Committees to important issues that are coming up, the more effective we can be.
Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)
The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) said one very wise and pertinent thing. It was not the only wise and pertinent thing he said, but it was one that struck me, and that was that it is almost invariably the case that it is undesirable to introduce into a mature and well-developed legal system another layer of legislation that is already covered satisfactorily by domestic legislation.
I recall that in the 1990s I had practical experience of such an occasion, when the European Union introduced its own sanctions on Serbia. It introduced a directly applicable regulation in exactly the territory on which this country had already legislated under the United Nations Act 1946. I recall that the case in which I took part challenged the domestic legislative regime on the basis that it occupied territory in which the European Union had legislated and that the two regimes, minutely analysed, could not be seen to be compatible. Not only were they not compatible in their substance, but they were incompatible in the sense that it is well-established case law in the European Court of Justice that any legislative activity by the European Union must take precedence and primacy not only in the substance of its impact and effect but in its appearance. In other words, the legislative authority of any particular action in a member state, once the European Union has legislated, must be seen to emanate from the European Union. To that extent, it is an extremely intolerant legislative authority.
That means that one must examine extremely carefully—I see that the Secretary of State for Justice is doing so as regards the market abuse framework—whether the introduction of European Union law into a sphere that is already occupied by domestic legislation will cause such a complicated unintended consequence. I recall that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry at the time was poised with an order to lay before the House in case the Lord Chief Justice in the Court of Appeal accepted the arguments that I and others were advancing. He was ready to go that morning, because of the chaos that would have ensued had the domestic legislation been struck down as incompatible with the European Union’s legislative action.
It is extremely undesirable that that should happen and, having listened to the various balances that have been struck by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed, the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), who is so often proved, even after many years, to be right, I prefer the analysis of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone. The Commission has a cavernous maw into which legislation is sucked into a black hole along with our rights, prerogatives and spheres of sovereignty. I am strongly concerned about the consequences for this Government if they continue with their policy of opt-ins, as was observed by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed a few moments ago.
When a country opts in to a sphere of competence of the European Union, it does not opt in merely to a different wording or to some dilute or mild consequence of that kind. It opts in lock, stock and barrel to the hegemony of the European Union institutions, by which I mean the European Court of Justice, the Commission and the rest of it. That might attract complacent smiles on the Opposition Benches—and even on the Government Benches—but just think of what legislative territory is already included. Firearms control—which has not been mentioned so far, but which is covered by a series of European directives—organised crime, VAT, drug trafficking and money laundering are all covered by extensive directives and directly applicable regulations. There is not a Crown court in this country that is not, as we speak, preoccupied with such trials. If we opt in, we are opting in to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and enabling it to examine our procedures in our Crown courts and see whether they comply with the minimum rules that this policy will set down.
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)
I have listened to the hon. and learned Gentleman and I agree with everything he has said so far. Does he agree that the most iniquitous thing about all this continuing opting in and moving into an ever-closer European Union for this country is the fact that the British people have never given their permission for that to happen? Does he agree that that is what we should really be arguing for now?
Mr Cox
I do agree. The fundamental underlying principle that should exercise all Members of this House when it comes to criminal law powers being assumed by a supranational organisation is that what is or is not criminal, and what is or is not an action that puts an individual citizen of this nation beyond the pale of the criminal law, should be a matter for this House. It is to this House that citizens of this country entrust the moral judgments that underlie decisions about what should be criminalised and what should not. We are directly accountable to that citizenry, whereas the institutions of the European Union are not. That is why I have come to this debate to sound a note of caution and warning. That is also why, having listened to the different expressions of caution that have been so well made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed, who chairs the Select Committee on Justice, I prefer the analysis of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone.
There is no doubt but that a vast field is already occupied by the European Union, and if we see a panoply of institutional responsibility and jurisdiction introduced into the criminal law, we will be exposing our procedures, our rules of evidence and our very jury trial itself to challenge in the European Court of Justice as not complying with the minimum rules set down. That might not happen this year or the next, but the European Union thinks in terms not just of one decade, but of decades and decades; it proceeds slowly. That is why, like Cassandra, or like Balaam’s ass, my hon. Friend the Member for Stone so often stands in our way—or indeed, like the angel that prevented Balaam’s ass from going on, he beckons to us and indicates that we would do well to think very carefully before we simply approve policies of this kind without understanding that there is an underlying caution that we should always exercise.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
First, I commend the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), for coming to the House to debate this subject transparently and openly because it is one that demands scrutiny. I echo the warning in the excellent speech of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox), because today, as the Prime Minister leads efforts to scale back the overweening and often arbitrary role of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, we might well remind ourselves that prevention is better than cure.
The document before us has all the hallmarks of a massive and substantial power grab from Brussels in the area of EU criminal law. We might have ad hoc opt-outs, but the direction of travel has very serious implications for this country. The clear ambition in the document is for a pan-European code on what the Commission calls “Euro-crimes”, backed by EU penalties and jurisdiction. The document talks about giving
“full judicial control to the European Court of Justice”
in Luxembourg.
The aim is for a uniform European justice policy by any other name. One has only to look at the detail in the document, which seeks—I quote these words for the sake of accuracy, to show that this is not just scaremongering—
“approximation of definitions and sanction levels”
for serious crimes. It aims for “common minimum rules”, including common EU punishments. The document reeks of the Soviet style EU double-speak to which we have become accustomed. On one hand it accepts the national “diversity” of the traditions of justice across the continent, including our own, but in the same sentence it calls for “consistent and coherent” EU criminal law. Ultimately, that is a circle that cannot be squared.
What areas will the new Euro-crimes cover? It is one thing to call for direct practical co-operation between national authorities on counter-terrorism and serious crime, although we do not need more legislation in that regard, but the document would expand EU law into environmental crimes, employment offences, data protection, fisheries offences, traffic offences, financial market behaviour—I wonder who that is aimed at—and, of course, at the top of everyone’s list of priorities, protecting the euro.
Britain has opt-outs, but we are still affected by the massive increase in EU law in the field of justice and home affairs. With cross-party support, the House has unanimously called on the Government to renegotiate the European arrest warrant—the Chair of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), presciently predicted that I would raise this issue—because it is resulting in far too much rough justice for far too many innocent citizens. As we consider the ambitions for EU criminal law, I should like to know from the Minister where that issue is on the UK agenda and where it is on the EU agenda.
The UK has also opted in to the draft European investigation order, which would allow European investigators and prosecutors to direct UK police forces to pursue leads and collect evidence. That is a threat to the liberty of our citizens, and is the last thing that hard-pressed police forces need right now. What progress has been made on limiting the risk of abuse of such wide powers and on ensuring there are safeguards that comply with British standards of justice? On a more fundamental level, why is the EU expanding its competences before it has corrected the current defects?
This issue is a prelude to the decision to be taken by June 2014 on whether Britain should opt in or out, wholesale, of the pre-Lisbon justice and home affairs legislation. If this document is a taste of what is to come, it demonstrates all too well the magnitude of that decision. This is a fork in the road: it is time to decide whether Britain will retain our unique justice system and common-law tradition. This is one of the most serious constitutional challenges the House will face in this Parliament, and I am confident that Ministers will weigh the consequences of that decision very carefully and ensure that Parliament—consisting of the elected and accountable law-makers for this country—will have the opportunity to debate and vote on that crucial decision.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
It is a privilege, as ever, to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab). My concern is about this kind of extension of the whole European project. We see it creeping on further, out of taxation and all the other measures with which we are familiar, into the criminal sphere. I find this policy document highly objectionable in many areas. First, I find objectionable the statement that
“EU Criminal Policy should have as overall goal to foster citizens’ confidence in the fact that they live in a Europe of freedom, security and justice”
That is not the point of European criminal policy. Rather, it should be the criminal policy of each individual member state. The EU, by trying to say that its policy is somehow about these principles and that citizens look to it for the execution of those principles, is overstretching and overselling. It is also misreading the situation, given that it is so far removed from people and has done so little to instil confidence.
The document also says—this is more in line with where things should be—that
“the EU can tackle gaps and shortcomings wherever EU action adds value.”
I take a pragmatic position on this. I do not think that one should say, in a knee-jerk reaction, that the EU should have nothing to do with anything, or that we should embrace everything it says as messages and tablets from heaven written in stone that we should accept, honour and obey. We need to look at things on a case-by-case basis.
Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent argument. Within the bundle of documents before us is the draft insider dealing and market abuse regulation. That is an area in which I worked before entering the House. Does he agree that with cross-border activity such as market abuse, which in the 21st century can be committed anywhere in the world and have an effect on another territory, there is an argument that the EU has a role to play in setting out sanctions for such behaviour?
Charlie Elphicke
My hon. Friend helps me to move to my next point. The policy applies not just to market abuse. It also applies to
“terrorism, trafficking in human beings, sexual exploitation of women and children, illicit drug trafficking, illicit arms trafficking, money laundering, corruption, counterfeiting of means of payment, computer crime and organised crime.”
The list is packaged in the manner of “Do you like hospitals?” or “Do you eat food to live?”. It has been put together with breathtaking cynicism and in a way that would make even a push poller blush. We know what this is really about. It is about starting with something that everyone can accept so that they say, “Oh, yes, that’s a good idea,”. That puts the principle in place before things are moved forward. The document says, “We then want to move forward into other areas,” as my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton just said.
Let us look at the issue of market abuse. Why can we not have the market abuse rules in the criminal law of our own nation? Why do we need to have minimum standards across European law if we do not necessarily want to opt in? We are being told that there is no such thing as—
Charlie Elphicke
In a moment.
We are being told that it is a misdescription to talk about a Euro-crime, but on page 9 the document states, under the heading, “What is the possible content of EU minimum rules on criminal law?”:
“The definition of the offences…Regarding sanctions, EU criminal law can require Member States to take effective, proportionate…criminal sanctions for a specific conduct.”
So if we touch on the issue of definition of the offence, and add on criminal sanctions, there is a risk that what we are actually talking about is, in effect, or could be seen as, a form of Euro-crime. I hasten to add that I do not necessarily regard that as a bad idea.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
If we were to have this co-recognition of crimes and action, would it not make more sense to do it with New York rather than with Brussels, because there is much more international financial trading in New York and London than there is in Europe?
Nicky Morgan
I will be brief because I know that time is limited. My hon. Friend asks why we need to have rules in the UK if we already have rules across Europe. The point is that, as I understand it, the proposal would bring the rest of the EU’s rules on market abuse up to the standard that we already have in this country. New York already has those standards. This is an improvement, bringing the rest of Europe along with us.
Charlie Elphicke
The European Union is doing this anyway. The central issue is whether we opt in. This is really a shadow debate for the whole issue about opting in. The letter sent by the Home Secretary to some colleagues on 21 December 2011 talks about the whole issue of the opt-ins. There are 133 directives, regulations and so on where opting in could take place.
Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
My hon. Friend refers to the central issue. Is not the central issue that raised by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox)? If we are going to criminalise people in this country, or indeed in any other member state in the EU, by law, then those who have passed those laws need to be accountable to the citizens to whom they apply, and that is not the case in relation to the European Commission or the other EU institutions, which are not accountable, in any real sense at all, to the people of this country.
Charlie Elphicke
I completely agree with my hon. and learned Friend, and that is my central point too. It is not for the European Union to start defining crimes; it is for individual nation states to do so.
There are areas where we should consider opting in. For example, I intervened on the Minister and talked about the issue of drugs. Let us look at the measures in the list provided by the Home Secretary. On one side, it talks about co-operation between customs authorities and business organisations on combating drug trafficking. Good. That is what we should have—cross-border co-operation. As the representative of Dover, I know that that is really important and makes a difference. Another 1996 justice and home affairs measure that was proposed, concerns
“the exchange of information on the chemical profiling of drugs to facilitate improved cooperation between Member States in combating illicit drug trafficking.”
Good. Yes, we should do that.
However, the dividing line for me is the 1996 JHA measure No. 750, which concerns
“the approximation of the laws and practices of the Member States of the European Union to combat drug addiction and to prevent and combat illegal drug trafficking.”
When one considers the approximation of laws and the issue of codification and requiring member states to treat everything the same way, one is rapidly moving into the area of a common criminal law—Eurojust, the European arrest warrant, the Euro-investigator, Europol and Euro-crimes. If we are to take that route, my point is simply that we should engage the country as a whole and have a proper, open discussion about what is going on, not try to spin it.
There are some cases where a common criminal law may be appropriate, particularly in the cross-border context; in others, we might conclude that it is not the right way to proceed. But to draw up a cynical list of everything that everyone would agree are the most heinous crimes known to mankind, in order to get the principle and then to extend it later, is something that we have seen with the European Union time and again. It is the fundamentally wrong thing to do, and it would be the wrong thing for us to do in terms of the opt-in or opt-out debate. I believe that when we have that opt-in/opt-out debate over the next two years, we should ensure that we include the country as a whole and have a proper, national discussion.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
I am very glad that the European Scrutiny Committee recommended this European Commission document for debate because it shows, once again, the ambition of the European Union. We have heard before—it is in the treaty of Rome—the line about ever-closer union. We often hear from the great and the good in this country that we do not need to worry about what the document says because it is not happening yet; it is not so important; these good and great people are not necessarily talking about it yet. And then it creeps in and it happens.
The ambition of the Commission’s document is exceedingly great, and the policies that it has already adopted are important. We notice, in the package of papers before us, that in 2009 the European Commission announced, under the Swedish presidency, that it would have more broad provisions guiding the Council’s criminal law deliberations. So, for three years already, the Commission, the presidency and the Council of Ministers have been looking at what they should be doing with the criminal law provisions and how they should affect us. We in this country are indeed protected by our opt-ins, but we have to bear in mind that once we have opted in, we are subject to qualified majority vote. So it is a once-and-for-all decision—we say, “Yes, we are going into that,” but then the people of this country, as hon. Friends have said, have no further ability to change that law; it becomes a matter bound in to European Union competence.
Let us look, as some of my hon. Friends already have, at the ambition of the European Commission in this area, at what it thinks more common criminal law will do, and how broad it is in its definition of the criminal law. We hear from the Front-Bench spokesmen that common criminal law will be used in rare cases, for important crimes. That is not actually what the European Commission seems to say. Page 11 of the package of documents says:
“EU criminal law fosters the confidence of citizens in using their right to free movement and to buy goods or services from providers from other Member States through a more effective fight against crime and the adoption of minimum standards for procedural rights in criminal proceedings as well as for victims of crime.”
That sentence—that bullet point—from the European Commission covers an incredibly wide set of crimes. They could be anything to do with the free movement of people, or the provision of services throughout the European Union. It then provides for minimum standards of procedure. That affects all sorts of basic points of the criminal law in this country. Will the procedure allow for trial by jury? It does not establish that. Does the procedure outlaw double jeopardy, which we basically still protect our citizens—our subjects—against? It does not say that. It says that it is aiming for these
“minimum standards for procedural rights”
and the rights “for victims of crime.”
The European Commission goes on to say:
“Common rules strengthen mutual trust among the judiciaries and law enforcement authorities of the Member States. This facilitates the mutual recognition of judicial measures as national authorities feel more comfortable recognising decisions taken in another Member State if the definitions of the underlying criminal offences are compatible.”
That means that we have to align our laws with other member states in the European Union. There may not be an immediate proposal to do that, but it is what the European Commission has in its documentation, it is what it wishes to do, and we know from experience that what the European Commission starts out with often comes to be the case.
Who can forget that wonderful moment when Lady Thatcher stood at the Dispatch Box and there were three proposals from Mr Delors, and Margaret Thatcher said “No! No! No!”? Each one of those three has now become an established part of the European family that we know and love.
What is the time scale? That again is set out by the European Commission in its package of documents. Page 18 says that it has a
“vision for a coherent and consistent EU Criminal Policy”
by 2020. So the European Commission wants us, in eight years, to have established that uniformity.
As we have discussed, the proposal includes things that are open to wide interpretation, such as computer crimes. Even an alarm clock is now computer-controlled, so even if you were to steal an alarm clock—[Interruption.] Of course, you would not steal an alarm clock, Madam Deputy Speaker, but if some brigand were to do so, that might be deemed to be a computer crime. The description is therefore set wide, as it is for
“serious infringements of road transport rules”.
If someone were to park on a red route, at what point would it be a matter for the European Union?
The Commission has set out an extremely ambitious communication, which I am glad that the House is debating. It knows clearly its route of travel and where it wants to end up, which is, ultimately, a single European state. No British Government have ever been in favour of that, yet every British Government since 1972 have ceded more powers to the European Union to create a superstate. It is important to debate the proposal at an early stage of its formation so that the Government can be robust and aware of the problem, and so that they can refuse opt-ins that, step by step, lead to the ever-closer union that has been the EU’s policy since it was founded.
Mr Blunt
I shall try to respond to the contributions made in the debate, the tone of which has been reasonably consistent, certainly among my hon. Friends sitting behind me. I had rather hoped that the tone of my opening remarks had made it clear that the Government were in a similar place on the issue as the European Scrutiny Committee.
The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) gave us the benefit of seven minutes’ consensus during which he managed to avoid expressing an opinion on Euro- crimes and the use of language in the document, which the Government, like the European Scrutiny Committee, feel is unhelpful.
I was grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) for notifying me that he could not be in the Chamber for the conclusion of the debate, because he is chairing a Committee of the House. I quite understand why he cannot be here. I think it was a slip of the tongue on his part when he put “breathtaking complacency” and “Government” in the same sentence; I was grateful that he then corrected himself to make it clear that he was referring to the Opposition and the hon. Member for Hammersmith. My hon. Friend subsequently talked about the Government’s support for his Committee’s position and the tone of my remarks about Euro-crimes.
Much of the tone of my hon. Friend’s speech will have been familiar to hon. Members. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), the Chair of the Justice Committee, asked whether he was trying to conjure up a spectre. I sometimes think that it is not so much a spectre that is conjured up in European Union debates as a dementor, given that there is a chill in the air and hon. Members who receive a dementor’s kiss have the soul sucked out of them and find themselves hooked on this issue in a conceivably unhealthy way. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Stone has consistently and properly pointed out the possible ramifications of such communications from the European Union, and Conservative Members returned to that theme time and again. I therefore want to reinforce the fact that a solid defence of our position underpins the debate and that we are equipped with the scepticism that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone and other hon. Friends expressed.
The way in which the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, began his speech was evidence to support the truth of the Matthew Parris theory that Parliament is full of schoolboys and schoolgirls who were bullied during their time at school and then take extended revenge on their school mates. I will leave others to draw their own conclusions on where the “Slaughter, Vaz” quip to which he treated us puts the hon. Member for Hammersmith on the scale of bullies or the bullied.
The right hon. Member for Leicester East confirmed the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed that no one is calling for a comprehensive system of European criminal law, despite what can be adduced from the Commission’s communication. Given that the right hon. Member for Leicester East is a former Europe Minister, I might have anticipated that he would take the position that he did. On human trafficking, it is clear that the point is around the need to address structures and systems, but we have also opted into law in that area. I take his point about data and assure him that data protection is being considered in the coming days by the European Union and the Council of Europe.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed reminded us that we have a duty to keep up with cross-border crime and the development of new crime patterns. We have chosen to opt into various measures under the Lisbon framework, so that we keep pace on crime, as appropriate. He drew attention to what we face in 2014 with the 133 measures that were adopted pre-Lisbon. Of course, we will not make any premature decisions and we will consider carefully the practical implications of all the options. The Government are committed to holding a vote in both Houses before they make a formal decision. We will conduct further consultation on the arrangements for the vote, especially with the European Scrutiny Committee, the Justice Committee and the Committees of both Houses that consider home affairs. We will make a formal announcement on the process in due course. My hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) was also clear about the substance of the decision that we will face in 2014.
I listened carefully to the suggestion made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed about UKRep engaging with Select Committees to give them notice of any European Commission business coming down the track in which they might like to take an interest. One must tread carefully with such things, given the question of what is the prerogative of the Executive and what is that of Parliament. We would not want to get to a position at which it was seen that the Executive were seeking formally to engage parliamentary bodies on their behalf. His Committee’s role is to hold my Department to account, and it is for Parliament as a whole to hold the Government to account, so I will reflect on his suggestion and invite my ministerial colleagues in the Foreign Office to read his remarks and consider whether there could be a satisfactory way forward.
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) reminded us, in his usual stentorian tones, about the dangers of the intrusion by others into a mature legal system. Hon. Members will have noted his learned warning about the effect of opt-ins. He made it clear that he shared the general approach taken by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone and set out the underlying caution that we should always exercise on such matters. I hope that he understood from my opening remarks that that is precisely what we do. I believe the present arrangements enable us to do that, not least the oversight exercised by this House and the European Scrutiny Committee.
As well as making points about the 2014 decision, my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton reinforced the general remarks made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon and asked about our current position on the European arrest warrant. The EAW was the subject of a review by Sir Scott Baker, to which the Government will respond in due course.
In tone, the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) were similar to those of other hon. Friends, but I thought that the intervention made my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) made quite clear the case, which he acknowledged, that we need to take a case-by-case approach, as the Government have pledged to do. As the hon. Member for Dover, he commended the co-operation on drugs trafficking, but there is a basic problem with the proposition he advanced: either we will find measures, on a case-by-case basis, where it is appropriate and in the interests of the UK to co-operate at European Union level, and we will proceed on that basis as we do now; or he and others will present that to the House as a cynical list establishing the principle of where we should co-operate, in order to open up the possibility of our being compelled to co-operate on matters where we are not compelled to do so. In his presentation of the process, however, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) neglected to remind the House of the existence of the emergency brake. If all else fails—if we have opted in, taken part in the discussions and voted but have been outvoted on certain measures—and the matter is serious enough to constitute a fundamental assault on our criminal jurisdiction, we can exercise the emergency brake under the Lisbon provisions and thereby establish an opt-out.
I thank the House for this debate. It is clear that the Government and the European Scrutiny Committee are of the same view: we consider that European legislation in the field of criminal law should be contemplated only as the last resort and only where action at the European level is absolutely necessary. We also clearly agree that European Union criminal law proposals should have regard to the principles of subsidiarity, proportionality and, importantly, necessity based on clear evidence. Those principles are vital. The European Commission’s communication makes it clear that, although it seeks to develop a consistent approach to the use of criminal law, those principles continue to form part of the considerations even of the Commission—to echo the tone of some of the speeches made today.
The Government will continue to examine the content of European Union criminal law proposals and our participation in them on a case-by-case basis, entirely in line with the coalition agreement. In line with our commitments to Parliament, we shall also continue to engage with the European Scrutiny Committee on any EU criminal law proposals, as they come forward. I commend the motion to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 14613/11, relating to a Commission Communication, Towards an EU Criminal Policy: Ensuring the effective implementation of EU policies through criminal law; agrees that the primary focus of EU criminal law should be tackling serious crime with a cross-border dimension; and further agrees that the general principles of subsidiarity, proportionality and necessity based on clear evidence must be respected when deciding whether to propose criminal sanctions to ensure the effective enforcement of EU policies.
London Local Authorities Bill [Lords]
(12 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
16:45 - The House having divided: - Ayes: 276 / Noes: 10 - Question accordingly agreed to.
17:01 - The House divided: - Ayes: 16 / Noes: 159 - Question accordingly negatived.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 15, which is, leave out clause 5.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
With this, it will be convenient to consider amendments 16 to 20, 3 and 4.
Philip Davies
I begin by apologising on his behalf for the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), in whose name the amendments stand. He asked me specifically to apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), the Bill’s sponsor. I assure him that our hon. Friend has not lost interest in the Bill, but decided—questionably, I think—that it was more important for him to listen to the Prime Minister’s speech on reforming the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg than to be here for this debate. I am not sure that that was the correct decision, but I am sure that he will be able to justify it to the Bill’s sponsor at a later date.
As you will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch had begun to move the amendment when he was cut short the last time the Bill was debated in the House. I will not repeat the remarks he made then, but it might help the House if I recap his main points. The amendment would remove clause 5, which states:
“Section 94(1)(a) of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (street litter: supplementary provisions) shall apply in Greater London as though for ‘commercial or retail premises’ there were substituted ‘premises other than dwellings’”.
Thus, only in London, that provision would apply not just to premises such as retailers and takeaways, but to all premises that are not dwellings. The main thrust of my hon. Friend’s argument was that that related to people smoking outside buildings because of the smoking ban, and the resulting litter.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend believe that litter such as dropped cigarettes and chewing gum is covered by existing regulation and local authority powers?
Philip Davies
That is correct. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch touched on that in his speech—he omitted to mention other things that I shall discuss today—and expressed the view that the clause was a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) is right: there are plenty of other regulations that could apply.
Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)
To help my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main), the current regulations do not apply to public buildings. Retail and commercial buildings are covered, but public buildings are not, and the purpose of the provision is to extend coverage to them.
Philip Davies
I am sure we are all grateful for that clarification. The point I think my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans was making and I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch would have made were he here is that people who smoke outside a building and deposit their litter on the street are guilty of an offence under existing provisions, without the Bill coming into play, and can be prosecuted. He made the point that many places provide containers for smokers’ litter and that the problem, if it did exist, applied equally across the country and there was no justification for a London-only provision.
Mrs Main
The authorities in St Albans have always had the problem of not knowing exactly where the people who have dropped litter came from, but that is why they have always believed that, if they so chose, they could enforce litter regulations outside any premises. It is not necessary to see a person coming out of a premises. The local authority targeted the culprit—the person who dropped the litter—rather than the premises.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am sure she agrees that existing legislation is sufficient to tackle the problem.
My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch challenged my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green to justify the wide-ranging powers that clause 5 would give. He said that he saw a difference between takeaways, which sell products in packaging designed to be taken out of the shop and disposed of, and offices or buildings where smokers happen to congregate outside the front door to have a discussion over a cigarette. I am not entirely sure I agree. Just because a takeaway sells a burger and puts it in a wrapper for people to eat at their convenience does not mean that it should be held responsible if a customer drops the litter somewhere where they should not. I believe in individual responsibility, and the responsibility should lie with the individual who is doing the littering. That should apply equally to what happens outside a takeaway and to smoking outside an office, but my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch made that distinction.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend makes a good point. This part of the Bill—indeed, the whole Bill, although I will not be diverted on to that, Madam Deputy Speaker, but will stick to the amendment and clause 5—exists for the convenience of local authority officials. That is the thrust of the provisions.
Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is extremely unfair to local authorities in suggesting that the clause exists for the convenience of officials. In fact, it is designed to ensure the best use of public money. He will be aware that local authorities have experienced substantial reductions in their budgets, so is he happy that they would have to expend even more resources to enforce the legislation when the clause offers a perfectly appropriate alternative way of ensuring that there is not an accumulation of litter outside public buildings, and would benefit the local community? It seems a good use of public money, and—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I remind the House that interventions must be brief.
Philip Davies
I do not accept what the hon. Gentleman said. He may think that all this is for the benefit of council tax payers and local residents, but I do not agree. Businesses pay lots of money through rates and so on, and they expect a service in return. The Bill wants businesses to cough up for the council to provide services. At the end of the day, the council can say, “By the way, even though you have coughed up for services, we don’t want to provide you with any services. We’ll get you to pay extra on top for anything that you might ever want to use.” That is an unfair system. If the hon. Gentleman is advocating that we scrap the rates that businesses pay and hold them responsible for anything that goes on, I might have a bit of sympathy, but he is trying to have the best of both worlds.
It seems as if we are doing this for the benefit of council officials who do not want to spend time trying to identify the individual responsible because they file that under “Too difficult”. They want to make businesses generally be responsible for anything that goes on anywhere near their premises—in that way, they can crack the problem and do not have to do anything.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
I have been listening carefully to my hon. Friend. This is the first occasion on which I have debated the Bill, and I am puzzled on two counts. First, if the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) is right that there is a means of reducing the burden on local authorities, presumably, at the expense of businesses, why should that be the case? Secondly—and forgive me for mentioning this, Madam Deputy Speaker—why should such a measure apply in London when there is no such provision in the rest of the UK? The legislation cited by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) covers every other metropolis in England, so why should London receive special treatment?
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and gets neatly to the nub of the issue in the clause and the Bill. If this is such a big issue—the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) may even think that it is a big issue in his part of the world—the problem exists to the same extent across the country. If we are going to introduce measures to tackle it, regardless of whether it is a problem or not, the solution in the House is to introduce legislation that applies to every single local authority. If the problem is as the hon. Gentleman describes it—and perhaps he will try to square the circle—why should the measure apply only in London, but not in any other part of the country, including his own?
Chris Williamson
The hon. Gentleman is allowing the perfect to become the enemy of the good. If local authorities in other parts of the country wish to have that power, I have no objection to that. The Bill is a good step in the right direction, and goes some way towards ameliorating the impact of the huge reductions in Government funding for local authorities.
Philip Davies
That is very interesting. The thrust of the Bill and of the clause is to address problems unique to London. Apparently, that is why we need the Bill: because of the huge volume of tourists and visitors, local authorities need all those extra powers. The hon. Gentleman slightly let the cat out of the bag when he said that this is nothing to do with London, but the thin end of the wedge. This is a test case so that we can roll this out throughout the country. If that is the point, I suggest to the hon. Gentleman, and perhaps even the Bill’s sponsor, that he goes back to square one, starts from scratch, and if it is such a big issue, introduces a Bill, perhaps with Government support. We have yet to hear from the Minister whether he supports these matters applying only in London, or whether he thinks they should apply elsewhere. If the Minister thinks that they should apply in the rest of the country, I suggest that he scraps this legislation, votes it down and brings in legislation that applies everywhere.
Mrs Main
My hon. Friend makes a powerful argument. I am listening with increasing concern because this appears to be nothing about solving a particular problem to do with offences; it is about cutting costs for local authorities, in which case, as my hon. Friend argues, it should apply nationwide. It appears that the rationale behind the clause is nothing to do with offences at all, but to do with cost-cutting.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend might want to advance that argument, but I am not entirely clear whether the Bill is simply about cost-cutting. I know that that is what the hon. Member for Derby North would have us believe, but I think that it is slightly more sinister and that it is about the amount of powers to be given to local authorities and their officers.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Might the provision be not only cost-cutting, but cost-increasing? Some of the buildings that will be included are public buildings, so the charge will simply be taken from a local council to another public authority, but the local authority already has the means of street cleaning, whereas the public authority in a building may not.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Given that local authorities are playing not with their own money but with other people’s, they may not be so bothered if they were caught up in the regulations. It may be businesses that were more concerned and therefore dealing with the problem better themselves. My hon. Friend touches on a good point because no business will attract customers if the area around its shop is in a terrible state, full of litter. I suspect that this is a solution looking for a problem, because most businesses will want to ensure that the streets close by are free of litter. They are probably doing that already, so my hon. Friend may well be right. The measure may well end up applying only to other public buildings, and the local authority may find itself in some accounting exercise where it is passing invoices from one department to another, which makes everyone unhappy apart from the person who is supplying invoices for the local authority, and it will not benefit the council tax payer, but give them an extra cost. My hon. Friend may well be on to something there.
I was slightly sidetracked, particularly by the hon. Member for Derby North. I made the point that the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005 already took the law beyond the Environmental Protection Act, and I gave an example of that. But it does not stop there, because section 21 of the 2005 Act extended street litter notices to any vehicles that act as commercial or retail premises, which was another giant step of mission creep down this particular route. On street litter control notices, which is precisely what this clause deals with, the 2005 Act says:
“In section 93 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990…(street litter control notices), after subsection (3) insert—
‘(3A) A vehicle or stall or other moveable structure which is used for one or more commercial or retail activities while parked or set at a particular place on or verging a street is to be treated for the purpose of this section and section 94 below as if it were premises situated at that place having a frontage on that street in the place where it is parked or set.”
So we have already had an extension of the provisions that the hon. Gentleman seeks to extend further. The Act continues:
“(3B) In subsection (3A) above, ‘vehicle’ means any vehicle intended or adapted for use on roads.”
That may well be burger vans or ice cream vans. That has already been covered in that legislation. The Act continues:
“(3) in that section, for subsections (8) and (9) substitute—
‘(8) A person commits an offence if, without reasonable excuse, he fails to comply with a requirement imposed on him by a notice.
(9) A person guilty of an offence under subsection (8) above is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale.’”
Those are already the laws of the land. This is the law that applies throughout the country. Why on earth it should be extended just for London is beyond me.
Mr Gray
My hon. Friend was advancing a persuasive argument until his last point. That this duplicates existing legislation is a perfectly sound argument for not allowing it to be done. I am a strong supporter of the “polluter pays” principle, and surely there is some argument for saying that if the theatre or the burger bar is responsible, they should pay for clearing up the mess.
Philip Davies
I will agree with my hon. Friend on the first half of his point, but disagree with him on the second. If he follows the first half through to its logical conclusion he will disagree with himself on the second half. He said that he believes in the “polluter pays” principle, and that is a perfectly sound basis upon which to start. There may well be some exceptions, and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) will think of some. But in this case, the polluter is not the theatre. Just because the theatre issues a ticket to a customer does not mean that, when that ticket finds itself on a London street, it is the theatre that is the polluter. Surely my hon. Friend would accept that the polluter is the individual who dropped the litter, not the theatre. My hon. Friend is a very sound man, and I am sure that he believes as much as I do in individual responsibility. If so, he must accept that this is the responsibility of the individual, not the theatre.
Mr Gray
On reflection, I will disagree with myself and redisagree with the disagreement that I made against myself a moment ago, if my hon. Friend will forgive me for doing so. He is of course quite right. If the person who drops the litter is the person who pays the fine, as happens under the existing legislation without this clause, the polluter indeed pays. However, if the institution from which the polluter emerges pays, that is an entirely different principle under environmental law.
Philip Davies
I accept that. The point is that surely the problem would be worse. If individuals felt that they would not be held responsible for their actions but would get off scot-free, and that the theatre would take responsibility, we might end up with more litter, because individuals will feel free to throw it willy-nilly, knowing that they will not be pursued.
Mike Freer
My colleagues seem to be rather obsessed with the views of the Society of London Theatre and the Theatrical Management Association, but they have withdrawn their objections and petition. They did not object on this particular issue but on a different issue—and, as I say, their petition has been withdrawn.
Philip Davies
I am grateful for that update. They are obviously more easily impressed than I am with what my hon. Friend tells them. I am sure that his powers of persuasion worked wonders on them. I look forward to him speaking at length in this debate so that his powers of persuasion may work on me, and I may be able to withdraw my amendment.
Mrs Main
Is not the problem the fact that this would effectively carve up the streets in front of public buildings and ultimately make them responsible for the streets? Who can say whether a Mars bar wrapper—sorry, Mars!—lying on the street outside a theatre was dropped by someone going into the theatre having ejected it from their pocket, or someone coming out of the theatre having eaten it on the premises? The point is that the person who dropped the sweet wrapper is responsible for the litter, not the theatre, even though it is in front of the premises.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is right. She introduces a new aspect, because if we follow this through to the logical conclusion, it may not be the individual but the retailer who is responsible. And then perhaps we should go the whole hog and say that it is not the retailer who is responsible but Mars, because it put the product in a wrapper that could be dropped. My hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green may well be thinking about amending the Bill further so that retailers are not held responsible, but instead Mars would be held responsible for any Mars bar wrapper found anywhere on the streets of London, because it should not have produced a chocolate bar in a wrapper.
Mrs Main
I have to “fess up” and declare an interest: my husband worked for Mars for a long time, which is probably why the example sprang into my head. I in no way wish to imply that Mars bar wrappers—Snickers is also a Mars product—are more likely than other wrappers to end up on the floor.
Philip Davies
It was important for my hon. Friend to make that point, because otherwise she might have been in trouble tonight, and her endless supply of free Mars bars could have been at risk.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech about who is responsible for litter and its collection. Taking the principle that the polluter should pay, I trust that he will support the principle that the measures taken must punish those who drop litter in the first place.
Philip Davies
I do not want to get sidetracked—as I am sure you do not, Madam Deputy Speaker—but the whole thrust of my argument is that the legislation already in place is perfectly sufficient to allow that to happen. My hon. Friend says that the polluter should pay. That is all very well, but local authorities come to the Government, and to council tax payers, saying that they need all this money to do this and that, and to ensure that the streets are kept clean, and all that kind of business, but on the other hand they are surreptitiously trying to say that they will take all the money from the Government and from the council tax payer for fulfilling this obligation, but then, quietly on the side, they will then try to pass the responsibility on to someone else. If those local authorities want the funding for keeping the streets clean, they also have to take on the obligation to keep them clean. They cannot have one without the other.
Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)
I am listening to the debate with great interest. The Liverpool BID—the city centre business improvement district—includes around 650 businesses that have come together because they want to make the environment cleaner, above and beyond what is happening on the streets. They have taken it upon themselves to cover even bigger areas and are funding it. However, there have been possible links between increases in the amount of work they want to do and a potential reduction in business rates, because they think that that is work the council is not doing. They would also like to do competitive tendering with the council, thereby also reducing their business rates. If my hon. Friend is concerned about loss of money, this could be a sure way to lose money through the business sector.
Philip Davies
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. That sounds like a good initiative. In fact, I think that there are business improvement districts in London. I am not entirely sure if they work in exactly the same way as it does on Merseyside, but they are certainly there. It seems to me that my hon. Friend proposes a far better solution, if there is a problem, which could not only get the support of the local authority, because it would then not have to deal with the problem that it does not think is its responsibility, but local businesses, which I might add probably do a far better job clearing it up than the local authority, because they would feel that they are improving their local area and making a contribution, but are not, in effect, paying twice. My concern is that the Bill is trying to get them to pay twice, once for their rates and once for sorting the problem out.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I wonder whether that establishes a general principle that it is much better to get a free market solution whereby companies come together to make things better, rather than draconian sanctions being imposed from on high.
Philip Davies
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey) will welcome his support for her argument, because he is absolutely right.
We know what needs to be done, because we have plenty of recommendations and evidence that would eliminate the need for clause 5. In June 2006 Environmental Campaigns—ENCAMS—produced the report “What is the Situation with Cigarette-Related Litter in England?”, which set out some recommendations. We know from the sponsor of the Bill and the explanatory notes that clause 5 is intended to tackle above all else, but not exclusively, the new phenomenon of smoking outside, because of the ban on smoking in public places. On research and monitoring, ENCAMS recommended:
“An accessible, repeatable monitoring methodology could be developed to measure the quantity of cigarette butts in the environment, and therefore better understand the impact of interventions.”
One of the problems is that we appear to be going down the route of putting forward legislation without fully appreciating the nature and scale of the problem. On education and communication, ENCAMS recommends:
“The successful ENCAMS cigarette-related litter campaign could be repeated in the future, to build on the momentum it has generated. The learnings from the 2006 campaign should be built into the 2007 campaign”
and campaigns in future years, and:
“Additional communications campaigns could be developed to target specific stakeholder groups in areas where cigarette litter tends to accumulate.”
This is a far better solution and it would target where there is a problem—and cigarette litter tends to accumulate— rather than having a blanket policy that applies everywhere, whether or not there is problem.
On ashtrays and infrastructure, ENCAMS recommends
“ENCAMS existing list of ashtray suppliers could be further expanded and developed to include a description of the characteristics and price of ashtrays. This could be complemented by a set of best practice guidelines to provide advice on the type of ashtrays that are suitable in different contexts.”
On enforcement, it recommends
“Ways to increase enforcement levels could be investigated, such as further training programmes for enforcement officers and street wardens.”
It seems to me that the report was not blaming the non-dwellings. ENCAMS seems to be saying that it is the councils that need to raise their game.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I wonder whether it is not rather an unsatisfactory principle that something that was perfectly legal should be made illegal but then increasingly unpleasant, and draconian penalties are introduced for people who are doing something that used to be legal, having been forced to do it less comfortably. I simply do not think that is the right way to legislate.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is a tyranny over people who were once able to enjoy a particular way of life indoors who have been forced outside, through no fault of their own and no fault of the premises from which they have been kicked out. Most premises used to offer some kind of smoking room or a place where smokers could go. The legislation has forced them to put those people out on to the streets. It would be a rather perverse kick in the teeth for them, having been once inconvenienced, now to have to pick up the tab—excuse the pun—for a piece of Government legislation. My hon. Friend is right that it would be perverse to go down that, route based on the history of how this situation has come about.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
There is clearly a problem in how that relates to public houses, but as I remember from my time as chairman of a licensing authority, it is possible to deal with some of the current problems through the licensing system, through conditions on licences. For example, councils could look at their licensing policy. If this is such a great problem, and clearly people feel that it is, is my hon. Friend aware of any local authorities that have tried to address it through their licensing regime?
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and he knows far more about those matters than I do, so I certainly bow to his superior knowledge. Other local authorities will have to deal with these issues through licensing and other imaginative schemes that he will know from his time as a councillor in Hull, because the Bill applies only to London. So even if we pass this Bill, his local authority will still have to go down such routes, because the benefits, if they are benefits, of the legislation will not apply to it anyway.
Mrs Main
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and many local authorities, my own included, are working on the issue positively in order to encourage people to stop smoking, given that it has now become more inconvenient to do so, and in order to consider what provision, such as bins, they can make so that people dispose of litter sensibly. Local authorities are already helping with the strategy; they do not need new legislation on the littering aspect.
Philip Davies
I absolutely agree.
The ENCAMS report went on to discuss cleaning and stated:
“Efficient, cost effective cleaning equipment that targets cigarette butts would complement preventative measures, especially at the start of an education campaign. Furthermore, the fundamentals of streetscape design could be considered to discourage and prevent the impacts of littering, especially in those areas where cigarette litter accumulates.”
Most importantly, it concluded:
“Ultimately, the reduction in cigarette litter is likely to be more significant in England if the identified solutions are implemented in a targeted, coordinated fashion, with strong partnerships between stakeholders.”
ENCAMS’ conclusion seems to be compatible with the approach that my hon. Friends the Members for Wirral West and for North East Somerset advocate, and surely that is a far better route to go down than clause 5, which is officious and, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset said, might not even help with the problem but make it worse.
We have also had a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs report, after the ENCAMS report, on how local authorities can prevent cigarette litter, and DEFRA proposed seven similar guidelines, with
“advice about how to prevent and reduce cigarette litter based on international and local experience. They are:
“1) Ashtrays—choose the right ashtray to suit your context and needs; 2) Signage—provide clear, consistent anti-littering signage; 3) Cleansing—clean up littered cigarette ends; 4) Partnerships—work with local organisations; 5) Leadership—walk the talk and be a leader in your community; 6) Educate—change the cigarette littering behaviour of smokers; and 7) Enforcement—use the legislation and powers available where appropriate.”
Those points are similar to the ones that ENCAMS made, and, given that outside this place there seems to be a consensus developing on what should happen, I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will not go against that report by another Department, which proposed a solution very different from the line taken in clause 5.
Interestingly, in the DEFRA report, “Enforcement” was listed as the last thing to do. It was the last resort: once everything else has failed, enforcement should be the final path; it should not be leapt to as the first solution. Furthermore, the report says:
“Enforcement—use the legislation and powers available where appropriate.”
It suggested not that new powers of enforcement were needed, but that what should be used were the powers already available to local authorities, so I see little evidence from anywhere to suggest that clause 5 is required. That is why it should be deleted.
We do not need to look too far to find out how we can solve, without clause 5, the problems that the Bill’s promoters have—perhaps rightly—identified, because Braintree district council reduced cigarette litter by encouraging smokers to use portable ashtrays. A campaign was launched to raise awareness, and the council purchased 1,000 portable ashtrays. Media coverage was so successful that it had to order a further 400 ashtrays, and in addition the company supplying them found five local newsagents that agreed to sell the product. One shop in Braintree sold more than 200, and follow-up interviews with ashtray users showed that smokers continued to use them and welcomed a means of disposing of their cigarette butts responsibly. More importantly, cleansing staff noticed a general reduction in the number of cigarette butts on the streets.
My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset advocates a free market solution to the problem, so I hope he agrees that what happened in Braintree was a far better, and truly free market, solution to the problem that the Bill’s promoters have identified.
It is not just Braintree that has found ways of dealing with the problem, however. An interesting idea worked successfully in Australia, so my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green might wish to run it past all his local London authorities. In 2004 Toowoomba city council wanted to reduce smoking-related litter throughout the city, so it ran a small-scale campaign within the council to change the cigarette-littering behaviour of staff before trying to change the behaviour of the public, which in itself makes the interesting point that perhaps London Councils should start closer to home with its solutions to the problem, rather than by interfering with everybody else.
A clean-up was carried out around Toowoomba council buildings, and official and unofficial smoking areas were identified. The number of stubs was counted during the clean-up so that any reduction could be monitored as each measure was introduced. First, all employees were exposed to educational material—a process that continued throughout the campaign—and just that one measure alone reduced the number of littered stubs from 1,849 to 1,164. After one month, all employees who smoked were offered pocket ashtrays—similar to what happened in Braintree—and 150 were given out, producing a further reduction to 966 littered stubs. The following month wall-mounted ashtrays were installed in the smoking areas, and that saw the amount of littered stubs fall to 753—a 41% reduction in cigarette litter in total.
Following the success of the campaign, and with the knowledge that the council was leading the way, a city-wide public campaign to reduce cigarette litter in Toowoomba was carried out.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I wonder whether my hon. Friend would describe that initiative as “nudge” theory. That means getting people to do things by gently pushing them in the right direction, rather than through what we have been discussing—the heavy hand of the state crashing down.
Philip Davies
Absolutely. That is very much the case.
The point of these examples, and the lesson that we should learn from them, is that people can be helped to produce a solution themselves. It would be far better if the Bill were proposing measures that helped people to sort out the problem themselves, rather than introducing a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
Mrs Main
I am extremely interested to hear the Toowoomba and Braintree examples. Does my hon. Friend know whether the authorities in London have explored the idea of copying any of those examples before resorting to legislation? Is he aware of any pilot studies that have been carried out and evaluated which led them to the conclusion that the only way to solve this potential problem, which they perceive as a problem, is to encourage more regulation and legislation?
Philip Davies
I agree with my hon. Friend, who makes a good suggestion, and I am not aware of any local authorities in London having learned from those ideas or tried to apply them first. Perhaps the Bill’s sponsor can shed more light on that, but I certainly encourage them to use legislation as a last resort, because at the moment we are using it as a first resort, and there are plenty of examples of other measures working just as effectively, if not more so.
In addition, over the past couple of years Keep Britain Tidy has campaigned to change the public’s attitude and behaviour towards dropping cigarette litter. Last year, campaigns in June and September helped reduce cigarette litter by 33% and 23% respectively, so again, we have other measures. The reduction occurred without any new legislation and without the clause before us being inserted into legislation. All this proves beyond doubt that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is absolutely right to suggest that there is no need to extend street litter notices. That is why I very much support his amendment 15.
Amendment 16, which is where my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch was cut off in his prime, would delete clause 6, which is on the use of turnstiles at public toilets. This is the exciting provision—the one that we were all waiting for. Clause 6 states:
“Section 1 of the Public Lavatories (Turnstiles) Act 1963 (abolition of turnstiles) shall not apply in respect of a public lavatory or public sanitary convenience controlled or managed by a borough council.”
The effect of clause 6 is summarised in the explanatory notes:
“Clause 6 amends the application of the Public Lavatories (Turnstiles) Act 1963 in Greater London. Section 1(1) of that Act provides that every turnstile in any part of a public lavatory or public sanitary convenience controlled or managed by a local authority or in any entrance or exit of such lavatory or convenience had to be removed six months after the 1963 Act obtained Royal Assent. It also provided that no turnstile should be provided in the future. Clause 6 disapplies those provisions in Greater London.”
It is timely that we have just got on to this matter because my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), who has just arrived, has a particular interest in public lavatories. I do not want anyone to get the wrong idea. I hope that he will forgive me for couching it in those terms. What I am trying to say, in a rather ham-fisted way, is that he knows more about this subject than I do, not that he shows a particular interest in it. Anyway, I will leave it there.
Mrs Main
Flushed with success, one might say. I sat on the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government when it produced a report on the provision of public lavatories. One of the recommendations, as I am sure my hon. Friend is aware, was that the 1963 Act should not only be upheld, but that, according to all the information the Committee received, it should be extended wherever possible. We recommended that all private premises, such as train stations, be encouraged to remove their turnstiles at the earliest opportunity. Anything that goes contrary to the recommendations of the 2008 Select Committee report would be retrograde.
Philip Davies
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North, she is clearly far more of an expert on public toilets than I am. I have no idea why the Select Committee decided that that was the most pressing matter to inquire into and report on. Perhaps she can enlighten me.
Mrs Main
I am more than happy to enlighten my hon. Friend. We received numerous submissions of evidence from people with disabilities and from organisations such as Help the Aged. People felt that the lack of access to good, well-functioning toilets often curtailed people’s right to access fully all aspects of life. Many groups said that it was vital to improve accessibility to toilets because, even under the current regulations, they did not feel that it was good enough.
Philip Davies
That is very helpful. I do not know whether the local authorities concerned or the sponsor of the Bill have read the evidence sessions or conclusions of that inquiry. I do not know whether they have spoken about this Bill with the groups that felt so strongly in that inquiry. I suggest that they should have done so before they even thought about bringing forward clause 6.
The Public Lavatories (Turnstiles) Act 1963 prohibits the use of turnstiles
“in any part of a public lavatory…controlled or managed by a local authority”.
According to the Government’s strategic guide, that requirement was in response to public concern about the safety and access problems of turnstiles for the general public, specifically for people with disabilities, people with buggies and pushchairs, and pregnant women. It would be helpful if the Minister clarified whether the Government still believe in that Act or whether they feel that it should be repealed. If they believe that it should be in force, surely they believe that it should be in force in London just as in any other part of the country. I look forward to his clarification of the Government’s position.
As my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans said, the Communities and Local Government Committee took evidence on this matter in preparing its twelfth report of 2007-08. I feel slightly ashamed to talk about it in her presence, because she might put me right on a few things. As she said, the report was critical of the use of turnstiles by private providers of toilet facilities. Richard Chisnell said in evidence to the Committee:
“To see people queuing up with luggage, and families trying to get through a turnstile and put money in a coin-operated slot before catching a train is pitiful in Britain in the 21st century.”
Mike Freer
The Bill is not in direct contravention of that recommendation. “Turnstile” is a legalistic term. It does not specify the sort of turnstile that would have been used in 1963. If Members visit any tube station in London, they will see the automatic barriers to which my hon. Friend is referring. That is what is meant by a turnstile under the modern definition.
Philip Davies
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that clarification. What he says is all well and good, but how does he know exactly what kind of turnstile will be put in place by these local authorities? He may well envisage a modern system of access to a toilet, but some local authorities may use the repeal of these provisions to install something that neither he nor I think is appropriate.
Mike Freer
I understand my hon. Friend’s concern. The point is that since 1963, we have had the Disability Discrimination Acts and the Equality Acts, which prevent the use of the kind of turnstiles that he is worried about. Because of those Acts, the kind of automatic barriers that we see in tube stations will be what are used under the Bill.
Philip Davies
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that clarification, but he is not taking into account the evidence that was given to the Communities and Local Government Committee. It is not only people with disabilities who are a major worry in relation to clause 6, but people with buggies or pushchairs and people with a lot of luggage. There may well be other people who will be affected.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Another important point, besides whether there are turnstiles, is that far too often toilets are closed or left in a bad state by the local authority.
Philip Davies
That may well be true. Perhaps local authorities ought to sharpen up their act before they try to pass such legislation. The point is that these toilets will be closed to even more people if we have clause 6. If people have a lot of luggage or a big pushchair and cannot get through the turnstile, they will not be able to get in whether the toilet is open or closed. For some people, these toilets will be closed permanently.
Mrs Main
Having served on the Communities and Local Government Committee, I know that the report presents only a snapshot of what was said to us. In evidence, organisations such as the Changing Places consortium argued that nothing should be put in place to stop people having free, easy access to toilets. Some people have urge incontinence. The issue is not whether there is a bar in place, which can be sorted out fairly quickly. For some people, any obstacle will make it almost impossible to use public toilets. Whatever is envisaged by my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green, it cannot possibly open access to toilets, but must surely close it down in some way, shape or form.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Again, I bow to her superior knowledge from her time on the Select Committee. She has heard more evidence about this matter than I have. I am merely reading the report and giving a flavour of the recommendations.
When I worked for Asda, for a number of years I had the privilege and pleasure of being responsible for the facilities and services that we provided to our customers with disabilities. After car parking and the abuse of disabled car parking bays, the biggest issue that was raised by our customers with disabilities was the accessibility of the toilets. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green that we ignore at our peril the difficulties that people with different disabilities experience in accessing toilets. There is no one category of disability whereby we can have one kind of turnstile and people think, “Well, that’s fine, everybody can get through that.” We should appreciate that lots of people have different types of disability that make different types of equipment difficult for them. Instead of having turnstiles that will no doubt catch out people with one or another type of disability, we should be making toilets as accessible as possible for everybody so that their disability is not affected.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
Because the disability discrimination laws would apply, the problems of access that the hon. Gentleman is highlighting should not apply to turnstiles. Furthermore, the fact that these turnstiles allow for the mechanical collection of charges should mean that there will be more, not fewer, public toilets.
Philip Davies
We absolutely do not know that, and neither does the right hon. Gentleman. I will come to that later.
Mrs Main
The question of how much people are prepared to pay to use a public toilet facility was also covered in the report. In fact, the charge could never reflect the true cost of using public toilets. Any such surplus funding will not be available to fund new public toilets—that came out loud and clear. There will always be a cost to a local authority, and unless the charges were totally prohibitive they would never generate enough funding to generate new toilet facilities. That argument cannot be considered as part of the justification for this measure.
Philip Davies
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who displays her expertise once again. As regards not knowing how much people are prepared to spend to go to the toilet, I always thought we knew they were prepared to spend a penny, but perhaps that is somewhat out of date.
The right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) mentions the Disability Discrimination Act, which has been used as cover by my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green. Under that Act, the service provider is obliged to make reasonable adjustments, not to make everything wholly accessible to everybody. A local authority that is denying access to a person with a disability because their disability does not fit in with the equipment that is on display may well argue that it would be unreasonable for it to change its entry system because it would be disproportionately expensive in relation to the one person it helped—in other words, that it would be an unreasonable adjustment. My hon. Friend would be misguided if he put all his faith in the Disability Discrimination Act, because it does not do what he seems to think it does.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
If the Act allowed for turnstiles that everybody could get through, why should that not apply to the whole country? Why are we using a private Bill to repeal a public Act? Surely this is a rather dubious constitutional procedure.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If the problems that the Bill seeks to address exist, they cannot possibly be unique to London—they must apply equally around the country. I would go so far as to say that it is an abuse of private legislation for someone to try to tackle something that applies equally across the country by passing a piece of legislation that will apply to only their part of the world. The whole point of private business is to deal with problems that are unique to the place to which it applies.
Bob Blackman
Does not that fly in the face of my hon. Friend’s argument given that we, as a Government, are pursuing the agenda of localism? Localism is all about local choices and local decisions, and the people of London—London councils across the board—have taken the view that this is a power that they want. In addition, does he believe that it is right for local authorities to collect money through charges for the use of public toilets?
Philip Davies
I do not want to get sidetracked by charges in toilets, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I am sure that if I went down that route you would soon pick me up and tell me to keep on the straight and narrow. I am tempted by my hon. Friend’s deliberate attempt to get me into trouble by leading me out of order, but I will resist.
My hon. Friend appears to have given up on his former valiant defence of the reason for this measure and has now played what he believes to be the trump card of localism. Perhaps he thinks, “If all else fails, bring out the localism card.” I have two points to make about that. First, the purpose of Parliament is that we are here to defend the freedoms of people right across the country, and wherever we see those freedoms being infringed, it is our duty to try to do something about it.
Secondly, one could just about use the localism principle to sustain an argument that in Shipley, to pick a place at random, the local authority should be able to do what it wants with its public toilets because even though we have on our doorstep Saltaire, which is a world heritage site and a fine place that I advise all hon. Members to visit, the centre of Shipley does not have a great number of tourists. That is regrettable. If people wandered down from Saltaire, which is only a mile or two away, they could soon be a tourist in Shipley, but it does not tend to happen. In London, however, the exact reverse is the case. These regulations will not only apply to Londoners because London has the distinction of having a large number of visitors from every part of the country. When my constituents, who know that local authorities cannot put turnstiles in toilets in their local area, come and visit London for a weekend break or a week’s holiday, they should be able to expect that the law of the land that applies in their part of the world applies in London too. It would be completely bizarre if all those people travelling down to London for a weekend were caught unawares by such draconian legislation. How on earth could they be expected to know that London has a completely different regime on all these matters of basic freedoms from that which applies in other parts of the country?
Andrew Percy
This power is not about localism unless it is provided to all local authorities in England. If we do not do that, we end up doing what a lot of my constituents think happens down here because they feel that this place is all about London—or all about Scotland, because we are hearing a lot about independence—but not about the regions. I bet my bottom dollar that we would not have much chance of getting a North Lincolnshire or an East Yorkshire local authorities Bill through this place.
Philip Davies
If my hon. Friend did try to introduce such a Bill, I would probably be standing here speaking against it in the same way. I put that warning shot across his bows. However, he makes a good point. If we believe in localism, we should at least give every local authority a fair crack of the whip by allowing it to have the same privileges that my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green is seeking for London. Whichever way one looks at it, there seems to be no justification at all for saying that London can do something that nowhere else can. That appears to be grossly unfair.
Mrs Main
My hon. Friend is being extremely generous in giving way.
One of the important points that came out of the Communities and Local Government Committee report was that tourism, and therefore access to toilets, was vastly important in London, but that signage towards toilets and toilet cleanliness were often poor, that that needed addressing, and that many tourists did not have the right change to access turnstiles. People have trouble finding toilets because of poor signage, and then potentially have trouble getting into them if a fee has to be paid.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is right, and it has been a delight to have her in the debate this afternoon. She has been able to shine a light on the Committee’s report, which I must confess had escaped my attention until I started examining the Bill. I am ashamed to admit that I missed it, but because of her we have been able to enjoy the benefits of it.
It is not just the Communities and Local Government Committee that has looked into the matter. The Department for Communities and Local Government, the Minister’s own Department, produced a strategic guide called “Improving Public Access to Better Quality Toilets” in 2008. I know that it was produced under the previous regime, but I would be interested to know whether the Department still subscribes to its strategy on better-quality toilets.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful case, and I am sorry that I missed the opening part of it due to my commitments on the Committee corridor. Has he seen annex D to the DCLG report? It is about the community toilet scheme promoted by the London borough of Richmond upon Thames, which encourages businesses to allow members of the public to use their toilets while they are out and about.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is right. Clearly, he has been diligent, as always, in reading that report. He may well be sorry that he missed the opening part of the debate; we missed him, too. We are pleased that he has made it.
Mrs Main
My hon. Friend alluded to tourism. I do not know whether he is aware of the comments of Peter Hampson, who, at the time of the report that my hon. Friend mentioned was director of the British Resorts and Destinations Association—BRADA. He opined that the
“provision of toilets becomes absolutely fundamental…most journeys start and finish with people going to the loo.”
He observed that toilet provision was fundamental to any major tourist destination, and that it was crucial to get it right. The proposal is, as Thomas Crapper might have said, a bad way forward for our toilets. Facilities cannot be good if people have to pay every time. Some elderly people and people with young children need to use the toilet very frequently. The proposal must be a no-no for most cities.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is right. We all know how important toilet facilities are. When we go to a restaurant, we probably judge it as much on the provision, cleanliness and accessibility of the toilets as on the service or the quality of the food. I am as sure as my hon. Friend that Thomas Crapper would be turning in his grave if he thought that we were even contemplating the clause.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I must disagree with my hon. Friend —for the first time in his excellent speech—on the way he judges restaurants.
Philip Davies
I suspect that my hon. Friend visits far better quality restaurants than me. If I had his means, I am sure that I would, too. However, I have to go to establishments where sometimes you take a bit of a risk when going to the toilet.
Mrs Main
Not only restaurants pride themselves on their toilets. I was privileged to visit the Isle of Mull a few years ago. There is a little toilet block in the middle of nowhere, which two ladies tend beautifully. It has daffodils, other flowers and pictures, and they take pride in it. Many communities and restaurants take pride in their toilets, and I agree with my hon. Friend that that is a mark of a premises and a community.
Philip Davies
Despite the fact that my hon. Friend also probably goes to far better quality restaurants than I do, I am pleased that she agrees with me. However, I do not want to get sidetracked. I was in danger of that—my hon. Friends were leading me astray—but I must return to the matter in hand.
Swindon borough council conducted a report on environment and leisure in 2007. A councillor stated:
“We have been surprised by the strength of feeling in relation to this issue”—
that is, toilets. He went on:
“Our toilets are a matter of significant inconvenience in terms of location, accessibility and condition, which impacts upon public health, the image of the town and limits the quality of life for many people.”
It is important that we focus on the importance of such matters to local residents and to visitors. Given that London is such a centre for tourism, we ignore that at our peril.
The Department for Communities and Local Government report reiterated the need for easy access to toilet facilities for older members of the public. A 2005 survey by Changing Lives, nVision and Future Foundation showed that
“people aged over 55 and families with children are most inclined to take holidays and short breaks in this country. At the same time, these groups are more likely to place a higher value on being able to access a toilet.”
Given that most of those people who take a short break in this country are more than likely at some point to go to London, it would be perverse to allow the clause to apply to London alone.
The Department for Communities and Local Government report concluded:
“Being able to access a toilet is a fundamental need for any visitor. Tourists need more local information, more signposts. They cannot simply go home, into work, or their local pub to use the toilet. Tourists choose their destinations carefully, drawing on their previous impressions, talking to friends and family, looking up feedback on the internet. Sense of destination—the extent to which it has met a visitor’s needs and made a strong and positive impression—is therefore vital to secure repeat trade and sustainable economic development.”
Would it not be a shame if people’s experience of visiting London, which should be fantastic, was ruined by the simple problem of being unable to get into a toilet when they needed one because turnstiles had been erected?
We should also bear in mind that we have the Olympics this year in London, which has led to other sporting events, such as the world athletics championships. We are told that they are the great opportunity to showcase London and to boost the tourism industry in this country. We are told how important public toilets and their accessibility are to tourism, tourists and visitors. Would it not be bizarre, when we are spending all that money to attract more tourism to London, to do something that would adversely affect it?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The hon. Gentleman is obviously well briefed—he has certainly flushed out a lot of the subject that he wanted to flush out—but I am worried that he is beginning to pad out the debate on this measure. He may wish to speak to other measures, and it might help his good self to move on a little. I am sure that we have heard about turnstiles and the toilet break quite thoroughly, and a lot of hon. Members have managed to intervene.
Philip Davies
If you will allow me, Mr Deputy Speaker, I shall conclude on the issue of toilets by saying simply that the Guild of Registered Tourist Guides formed an inconvenience committee, which produced a report—[Interruption.] This is the final thing I want to say on toilets. The committee described what it considered to be the perfect public toilet. It said that the perfect public toilet should be “free”—that is perhaps not much to ask in a world-class city—
“with sufficient cubicles for men and women so that large groups can use them without lengthy queues…clean and well maintained…safe and well lit…appropriate access aids such as hand rails on stairs, plus separate facility Cot wheel chair users…hot and cold water and soap for hand washing…Hand drying with paper towels as well as the hot air machines…Attendant on duty…Litter bins for disposal of hand towels…Nappy changing room…Feminine hygiene provision…Information and health education…Early morning and evening opening hours…sitting area for people to wait…and…Machines offering various necessities”.
That is it. You will have heard, Mr Deputy Speaker, no mention of turnstiles in that description of the perfect British toilet. I therefore do not know why on earth we would want to introduce them.
Bob Blackman
I am almost tempted to say that people would choose to live in such a wonderful place as opposed to just using it for the purpose for which it is intended. Will my hon. Friend say who will pay for that wonderful service if it is free of charge for the general public?
Philip Davies
I do not want to go on further about public toilets, suffice it to say that I hope my comments have shown that such things should be the responsibility of local authorities.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
To go back to an amendment to which my hon. Friend spoke earlier, that could be a matter of free enterprise. Groups of concerned citizens could come together to improve the trade in their area and ensure that there are convenient public conveniences.
Philip Davies
That is right. My hon. Friend proposes a good solution, but however they are paid for, local businesses pay rates and expect services in return. Such facilities are important in attracting people to a location. The local authority will benefit from those just as much as local businesses.
Andrew Percy
It is not just businesses that pay rates and expect services; people pay their council tax to their local council for such provision. They see their council spending millions of pounds over a budget period on communications and other stuff, but they expect basic stuff such as public facilities to be provided for them to use for free. That is what most of the council tax payers my hon. Friend and I represent want.
Philip Davies
I suspect my hon. Friend is right. It is no good local authorities going to the Government or the council tax payer and saying, “We need ever increasing amounts of money to pay for this, that and the other, and one of those things should be toilets,” and then saying, “By the way, we’ve got all the money in from the Government and the council tax payer to provide toilets, but we do not want to provide them free of charge.”
Philip Davies
I really ought to press on and get to the other amendments. I do apologise to my hon. Friend.
I will deal with amendments 17 to 20, as they go together. Amendment 17 would delete subsection (1)(a) of clause 7, which deals with charges for permitting the use of objects, and so on, on the highway. Subsection (1)(a) refers to
“the cleansing of streets in which permitted activities take place so far as that cleansing is attributable to permitted activities”.
Basically, amendment 17 would prevent local authorities from being able to charge restaurants, theatres and so on for having to clean the streets outside such venues. Amendment 18 is a technical amendment, consequent on amendment 17, and would delete “and” in clause 7(1)(a).
Andrew Percy
In a previous incarnation, I was a licensing chairman. We were keen as a local authority to encourage businesses to use street furniture because we thought that it took away many of the problems that we were dealing with. It improved antisocial behaviour and saved us money on some of the problems we faced on the streets at the time. Street furniture was therefore something to be encouraged. Rather than charging businesses for it, we were keen for them to have it.
Philip Davies
I am sure that my hon. Friend is right. I am sure that there are lots of benefits for local authorities from businesses doing that. The point is that if having street furniture is so good for the local authority and the local residents, surely the council should be encouraging businesses to have it. However, clause 7 would only discourage businesses from putting their street furniture out on the high street, because the local authority will clobber them if they do so.
Mrs Main
In another incarnation, I was on the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government when it published a report on markets. The sense of place that my hon. Friend has described was actively encouraged in that report, because of that sense of the community meeting and coming together. Indeed, Leicester has overhauled its market, giving the community a greater sense of space and place by creating the sort of piazza feel that he has described. I cannot think that it would be helpful to incur additional charges for encouraging something that is for the benefit of the local community.
Philip Davies
I am sure that my hon. Friend is right; indeed, I recall attempts, whether successful or not, to try and develop a café culture in this country. It appears to me that clause 7 is designed to try and thwart such a café-style culture, and I do not really understand why we would want to do that.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I think that it is much worse than that; this is a fundamental attack on the rights of property. The explanatory notes state:
“Subsection (2) of section 115F provides that except where the council are the owners of the sub-soil beneath the part of the highway in relation to which the permission is granted, the charges may not exceed the standard amount”.
That is, the council may charge only reasonable costs. That means that a council would be able to charge someone for doing something on that person’s own land, which must be wrong.
Philip Davies
I commend my hon. Friend for being so eagle-eyed; I agree with him wholeheartedly on that point.
One of my problems with the Bill, and with this clause, is that they appear to intend to damage small businesses. We are in a terrible economic situation at the moment, and we know that small businesses are the engine of economic growth, so why on earth would the House want to pass measures that appear to have been designed to clobber small businesses? That is completely beyond me. These kinds of extra costs and bureaucracy are meat and drink to big businesses. I used to work for a large multinational company, and although these extra requirements were sometimes an irritation, we could afford to employ legions of people to deal with them. Many small businesses are struggling in the current climate, however, and they do not have the financial capability to deal with all the extra regulation and costs that the Bill seeks to impose on them. There seems to be a mindset that owning a small business is a licence to print money, that everyone who owns one has millions of pounds in the bank doing absolutely nothing, and that it is the job of a local authority to extract as much of that money as possible from them.
Mr Gray
My hon. Friend is speaking with great passion from his own libertarian standpoint, but I have to admit that, unless I have got this wrong, I shall have to divert from his stance. Is he seriously suggesting, for example, that cafés and pubs should be able to place their furniture on our high streets and throw litter on the ground in the sure and certain knowledge that the local authority would clear it up at its own cost? Surely the “polluter pays” principle should pertain in such circumstances. If a café has chairs and tables on the street, is it not reasonable to expect the proprietor, who is making a profit out of the enterprise, to take responsibility for clearing up the mess?
Philip Davies
I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) addressed that point. His local authority actively encouraged this kind of activity because it helped to keep the streets clean and tidy. The best thing I can say about the clause, which I am seeking to delete, is that it is a solution looking for a problem. My hon. Friend made it clear that there is not a problem, and that more businesses should be encouraged to make use of street furniture.
Andrew Percy
Powers already exist to deal with any problems with street furniture. This can be done through the planning system or the licensing system. It can also be done using environmental or antisocial behaviour legislation. The tools already exist to deal with people who are creating a problem but, generally, businesses are just trying to make a living and to do the best for their customers and their communities. If local authorities need to tackle any problems, they can do so using existing legislation.
Philip Davies
I absolutely agree. Plenty of legislation is available to local authorities if they feel so strongly about these matters. Surely it should be our principle that we use existing legislation first, before introducing any more.
Mr Nuttall
The answer lies in section 93 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, which relates to clause 5. I suspect that this formed part of my hon. Friend’s remarks before I arrived in the Chamber.
Philip Davies
Absolutely; I totally agree with my hon. Friend.
The proposals would also affect certain hard-pressed theatres, and the petitions from the Society of London Theatre and the Theatrical Management Association made it clear that their members were already making their own arrangements for the cleaning of pavements in their local areas, and that the basis for an additional charge had not been made clear. We seem to have the ridiculous situation in which businesses could potentially be charged three times for this work: once through the payment of their rates, for which they expect a service in return that they are not being given; a second time through paying to do it themselves, as the local authority is not doing it; and, now, for a third time, they could be faced with the proposed extra charge to deal with any ensuing problem. Businesses are in danger of being charged three times for the same service, which cannot be fair in any shape or form.
We must introduce some common sense into these rules. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green will make it clear which, if any, of the amendments he will accept.
Mrs Main
My hon. Friend is making a very powerful point. There is also the possibility, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) said, that areas of London will positively and actively encourage people to use the street space to ensure that the public realm is more attractive for tourism and so on, which will mean that the charges are waived, but, in theory, in other parts of that authority other people could be charged for exactly the same activity. Surely that is inequitable.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is right.
I want to bring my remarks to a close, because I am sure that other people have points that they want to raise. I said earlier that my hon. Friends the Members for Bury North and for St Albans knew far more about public toilets than I do, but let me end with the final two amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, amendments 3 and 4. We can cover them very quickly.
Amendment 3 leaves out lines 10 and 11 of the preamble on page one. It would delete:
“It is expedient that the range of premises in London in respect of which street litter control notices can be served should be extended”.
That is consequential to my amendment 15, which would delete clause 5. If the amendment were accepted, we would need to leave out those lines from the preamble. Amendment 4 also amends page 1 and the preamble and it leaves out lines 12 and 13, thereby deleting:
“It is expedient that London borough councils should be able to install turnstiles in public conveniences”.
As those who have been following the debate closely will know, amendment 16 seeks to strike out clause 6, which relates to imposing turnstiles in public toilets. The amendments are merely consequential so, on that note, I will allow others to let me know their thoughts on the amendments.
I hope that I have been able to make the case that the provisions as they stand are very un-British. It is our responsibility in this House to protect people’s freedoms and to improve the Bill by accepting the amendments.
Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)
I can give an assurance that I will not be speaking for nearly two hours on this subject; I am sure the House will be relieved to know that. However, I urge hon. Members to oppose the amendments proposed by the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). Let us recap: every single London borough is in favour of the Bill—
Chris Williamson
I shall come on to that point, but let us be clear that every London borough, of every political persuasion, favours the Bill. Surely it is not the role of this House to frustrate the will of the locally elected people who have come together and proposed what I consider to be a perfectly reasonable Bill, which I would have hoped could pass through the House without the objections and the—I believe—spurious arguments that have been put forward to suggest that it will lead somehow a diminution of British freedoms. It is complete nonsense to suggest such a thing.
Andrew Percy
If the hon. Gentleman thinks these provisions are so great, why does he not come to the House and propose a similar Bill to apply to Derby? Does he think they should apply to Derby, and if they should apply to Derby as well as to London, why is there not a Bill for the whole country?
Chris Williamson
Here we go again with another red herring from a Member who does not represent a London constituency. Let me address his question about where the London MPs are, because it is pretty significant that not one of the Members opposing the Bill is from London. We see the hon. Members for Shipley, for Christchurch (Mr Chope), for St Albans (Mrs Main) and for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg)—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. We cannot have five Members on their feet trying to intervene at once.
Chris Williamson
I shall give way to the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray).
Mr Gray
I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman, who poses an interesting constitutional conundrum: that because a group of local authorities is in favour of something—at least he believes that to be the case; I have not seen any evidence of it—this House should not have the right to consider that matter. Surely it is only reasonable that we, as the sovereign Parliament of the United Kingdom, should have the right to say whether we believe something to be correct and a good thing, even if every local authority is unanimously in favour it.
Chris Williamson
The hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly valid constitutional point, but I thought that his party was in favour of localism and wanted greater local determination on the ground. Indeed, the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) made that point earlier.
Mrs Main
The hon. Gentleman will have to excuse me, but I find it vaguely insulting to hear that my constituents in St Albans, 50% of whom travel into London, will have no concerns about things that may be imposed in London. He might be aware that under the previous Government, much to my chagrin, St Albans was designated as part of the north London arc for planning purposes. To say that I am not concerned about what happens in London is quite specious. We are concerned because many of our constituents will visit London and use the facilities.
Chris Williamson
I hope that the hon. Lady will forgive me, but I did not say she was not concerned about London. I merely pointed out that it was rather significant that every MP who has stood up today to oppose this Bill represents a seat that is not in London. I find that an extraordinary thing for Members from outside London to do, given that every London borough favours the Bill, and it has already undergone considerable scrutiny in this House and the other place. It was scrutinised by a Select Committee, to which the hon. Member for St Albans has referred, and there was a three-hour debate on Second Reading. For goodness’ sake, how much more scrutiny does it require?
Philip Davies
That is what we are doing at the moment: scrutinising the Bill. The hon. Gentleman seems to be implying that the Bill relates only to London citizens and residents, but it does not; it applies to anyone who comes to visit London. I do not know what people in Derby do, but people in Shipley certainly come to visit London; many of them do, and I suspect that people from Derby do as well. The Bill will apply as much to his constituents as to anyone who lives in London.
Chris Williamson
That is a fair comment, but in our system of local government, people in London elect the councils to represent them and to take care of boroughs’ interests. I repeat that every one of those boroughs has come together in support of the Bill, which has already received considerable scrutiny. Also, many of the provisions in the original Bill have been amended or removed. Indeed, the Bill has been weakened by the removal of some measures—for example, on houses in multiple occupation and on food safety—again on the specious ground that they somehow diminished British freedoms. That argument is complete nonsense; nevertheless, the House has had its say, Members’ views have been considered and various amendments have been agreed to. Therefore, in view of the scrutiny to which the Bill has already been subjected and the fact that it has already been considerably modified, I hoped that we could proceed with greater speed today and agree the remaining provisions of the Bill, which is still worth supporting.
Mrs Main
Before the hon. Gentleman moves away from the fact that not a single London MP has spoken against the Bill, I note the absolute paucity of Members on the Opposition Benches, and the fact that not one London Member from the Labour party is standing up to defend the Bill.
Chris Williamson
If the hon. Lady studies the record, she will see that Members from London on both sides of the Chamber have spoken in previous debates—when, as I have said, the Bill received considerable scrutiny—and made their views well known. So I think that is a fairly unreasonable point to raise.
Andrew Percy
I want to probe the shadow Minister further on the issue of MPs who do not represent London not being allowed to vote on the Bill.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I think I have heard enough from both sides. We ought to be discussing the amendments rather than that sort of detail, and I am sure the shadow Minister wishes to deal with them.
Chris Williamson
Thank you for that guidance, Mr Deputy Speaker. I was aiming to get to the substance of the Bill, but have been deflected somewhat by interventions from Conservative Members. However, I did not say that Members from outside London should not be allowed to vote on the Bill at all; nothing could be further from my mind.
I shall move on to the specifics of the amendments on street litter notices. A perfectly reasonable proposition is being advanced. I think the hon. Member for Shipley was labouring under a misapprehension, because powers already exist for orders to apply to commercial and retail premises, with the agreement of the Secretary of State. The Bill simply seeks to extend those designations, with the permission of the Secretary of State, to public buildings such as educational establishments and hospitals.
The hon. Gentleman spent a long time talking about smoking litter. As a result of the smoking ban there are now undoubtedly considerable quantities of smoking debris, and it is right and proper that local authorities should have another tool in the locker, as it were, with which to address that very real problem. It does impact on the street scene and the visual amenity of an area. I have pointed out that local authorities are already under considerable strain, given the cuts that have been made to their funding, and if they are to fulfil their obligations to their constituents—and to people from Shipley and Christchurch and every other corner of the United Kingdom who visit London—it is incumbent on those local authorities to find ways of ensuring that the street scene is not despoiled by every sort of litter—particularly smoking litter, which creates a real problem. It would be a significant step in the right direction in improving the street scene and helping local authorities to find other ways of ensuring that they can provide the adequate services that local people in their respective boroughs elect them to provide.
Mr Gray
I thank the hon. Gentleman who is being very generous and is advancing a cogent and interesting argument, but I have two problems. First, he used the expression “another tool in the locker” with regard to these provisions. That is precisely one of the arguments that we are advancing against them: there is already a tool in the locker—the Environmental Protection Act 1990. Why should we require another tool in the locker to achieve something that can be achieved by existing legislation?
Secondly, while I am on my feet, will the hon. Gentleman clarify for us the degree to which the provisions would apply to the parliamentary estate, and the Government estate down Whitehall?
Chris Williamson
I accept that other provisions are available, but they do not necessarily go far enough, and they leave local authorities in a difficult position because of the inadequate resources at their disposal. I repeat that hon. Members should support alternative ways in which authorities can deal with such problems.
Mrs Main
The hon. Gentleman sums up my worries about the measure. Legislation already exists under which a person who drops litter—even a cigarette butt—can be prosecuted or held to account. I am worried that the Bill might introduce a lazy way forward under which a charge regarding cigarette litter would relate to the building that it is in front of, instead of there being a system of wardens or enforcement officers targeting the people who drop the litter. I worry that the Bill shifts responsibility from the individual culprit to a building, and that is a cost-cutting measure if ever I heard one, in so far as only one person is employed to prosecute the owner of a building or a business, and we will not be chasing the people who drop litter.
Chris Williamson
With the greatest respect, the hon. Lady is not living in the real world. If only the avenues that she advocates were available for local authorities, it would be incredibly costly for them to deliver the improvements that the additional measure in the Bill could achieve. She talks about cost-cutting measures, but local authorities are being forced to make significant reductions to their budgets, so it is unreasonable to say that they should not be given this additional tool to help them to fulfil their obligations. We should bear in mind the fact that such a provision already exists for commercial and retail premises. The measure in the Bill would help to ensure that streets were kept clean and tidy, and then the resources that are used to deal with that problem at present could be deployed elsewhere to ensure that the whole street scene was clean and tidy for everyone’s enjoyment—local residents and visitors from St Albans and elsewhere.
Mr Knight
The hon. Gentleman has said three times that some local authorities are short of resources, so he is touching on Conservative Members’ concern. Does he share my worry that authorities that are short of resources might use the enhanced penalty charge regime under the Bill to raise the money that they are short of?
Chris Williamson
Her Majesty’s Opposition are genuine localists. We trust local government and those who are elected to serve their communities to do the right thing and not to abuse powers. Hon. Members should remember that the Secretary of State’s approval will be needed if the powers are to be exercised, so there are sufficient checks and balances in place.
It is incumbent on hon. Members to trust the elected councillors in the London boroughs to use the powers at their disposal responsibly. There is no evidence to suggest that London boroughs behave irresponsibly, and it is unreasonable of those Conservative Members who oppose the Bill to suggest otherwise.
Let me move on to turnstiles—
Chris Williamson
If I may, I will pass on that question. Perhaps the sponsor of the Bill will clarify the situation.
Mike Freer
I understand that the Palace of Westminster, as a royal palace, would be exempt, but that because Whitehall Government buildings are public buildings, they would be expected to keep their perimeters clean and tidy.
Chris Williamson
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for providing that clarification in response to his hon. Friend’s question.
Philip Davies
The hon. Gentleman is disparaging my comments, but has he read the Select Committee report to which I referred? I remind him that the inquiry was conducted at a time when the Committee’s Chairman was a Labour Member, as were the majority of its members. Is he disparaging not only what I said, but what that Labour-dominated Committee put in its report?
Chris Williamson
To be fair, the hon. Gentleman himself said that he had not read the report. Indeed, he said that until the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) pointed it out today, he had not been aware of its existence. It is a little rich of him to say that he is relying on the report’s recommendations today, when he was not previously aware of its existence.
Philip Davies
We cannot allow that to stand. The hon. Gentleman clearly was not listening. I said that I was not aware of the report at the time, but had become aware of it only when I started to look at the Bill. I made it clear that I had read the report; in fact, I quoted extensively from it in my speech. How on earth he can conclude that I had not heard of it until today is beyond me.
Chris Williamson
I am grateful for that clarification. I may have misheard, but I thought the hon. Gentleman told his hon. Friend the Member for St Albans that it was only as a result of her intervention today that he had become aware of the Select Committee report.
Chris Williamson
I have given way quite a lot already, so if the hon. Lady will bear with me, I will try to make a little progress.
To sum up, for the reasons I have outlined, there is a strong case in favour of the provisions on turnstiles in public toilets. I therefore hope that hon. Members will give the provisions their support.
Mr Gray
The hon. Gentleman is making a thoughtful speech. On the question of public lavatories—I find it difficult to use the word “toilet” myself; I prefer “lavatory”; interestingly, the heading of the clause refers to “toilets”, but the body of the clause uses “lavatory”—does he not agree that the provision will lead to regressive taxation? There is no question but that we all want public lavatories to be readily available; the question is how we pay for that. Does the local authority pay for it as a responsibility under council tax or should it be the users who pay? If the cost were £1, £2 or £5, that would be a regressive tax. I do not mind paying that for a lovely, splendid, gleaming public lavatory, but what about the poor young family on benefits with five children? What will they do?
Chris Williamson
I can give the hon. Gentleman the benefit of anecdotal evidence that I have gleaned in speaking to young families, elderly people and disabled people about the retention of public toilets. Of course we would all love to have access to free facilities, but if there is a choice between losing the facility altogether and introducing a modest charge, 100% of the people I spoke to were prepared to pay the charge. As for the charge being prohibitive, we have to trust locally elected representatives to do the right thing. If local people think that their local councils have done the wrong thing, they have the perfect remedy at the ballot box, and can vote them out accordingly.
There are adequate safeguards and there is support for the measure. Yes, in an ideal world, if we could provide facilities across the piece free of charge, I would certainly sign up to that, but in the real world local authorities are under increasing pressure, even before elections, so it is not unreasonable to give them the opportunity to raise finance to maintain those facilities in good order and stop them closing down. All too many public conveniences across the country have closed because of the lack of resources available to the local authority.
Finally, clause 7 refers to “the use of objects” on the public highway. Again, the Bill makes a perfectly reasonable proposal to give local authorities the ability to levy a charge. At the end of the day, businesses using the public highway should not be able to use it to gain an income as a matter of course or right—it should be seen as a privilege. If street furniture is put out in that way, it often adds to the costs that fall on the local authority. Bearing in mind the fact that those businesses gain an additional profit as a result of being given the privilege of putting street furniture on the public highway, it is not unreasonable that local authorities should be empowered to levy a small charge to help pay for the additional costs incurred by the local authority as a direct consequence of that street furniture being put on the public highway. The alternative is to say that the council tax payer should pick up the tab, which would be completely unreasonable.
I am surprised that some Government Members—I am pleased that this does not apply to all of them—have suggested that the taxpayer should subsidise businesses in that way. That is the wrong thing to do, and a bad principle. On that basis, I support clause 7 and oppose the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Shipley.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I now have to announce the result of the deferred Division on the motion relating to the mayoral referendum for Birmingham. The Ayes were 303 and the Noes were 203, so the Question was agreed to.
I also have to announce the result of the deferred Division on the motion relating to the mayoral referendum for Bradford. The Ayes were 304 and the Noes were 202, so the Question was agreed to.
[The Division lists are published at the end of today’s debates.]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)
May I briefly pull together the chains of this debate and address the topics that have been raised? I should say, as a matter of principle, that this is a private Bill. Any local authority, like many other institutions, private and public, is entitled to bring private legislation before the House. It is equally the entitlement of all Members in this House to scrutinise such legislation.
The Government, historically, have taken a neutral stance towards private legislation, and we do so again, as I said when the Bill was debated previously. I simply observe that all the matters that are the subject of this debate are legitimate areas of concern to local authorities. The appropriate stance is not one upon which the Government would seek to impose a blanket or one-size-fits-all view of policy. It is right generally to favour local discretion, but none of that impinges on the right of the House to scrutinise particular pieces of private legislation brought before it.
I merely observe that in relation to smoking-related litter it is, as a matter of policy, the Government’s view that the “polluter pays” principle should generally be advanced. In relation to turnstiles in public toilets, it is of course to be noted, as has been observed, that all public conveniences are now subject to the equalities legislation, which requires accessibility of services to disabled people, and I hope, therefore, that my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), who speaks on behalf of the promoters of the Bill, will be able to reassure hon. Members who have raised points that anything done, were the House to pass the Bill, would not impinge on that. Clearly, it is important that any kind of turnstile, however described or constructed, is consistent with such legislation.
Philip Davies
I accept that my hon. Friend wants to remain neutral on this because it is private business, but surely he cannot remain neutral on something such as toilets, and whether there should be turnstiles, given that it was his Department in 2008 that produced a strategic guide, “Improving Public Access to Better Quality Toilets”. Do the Government still stand by the strategic guide that they issued in 2008? If so, they cannot support clause 6.
Robert Neill
The guidance was produced by the previous Government. It is not the policy of this Government to seek to impose minute controls over the manner in which public lavatories are provided in this country. Nor is there a particularly left or right, in political terms, means of providing public lavatories. I restate what I said: there is a duty upon all local authorities to make provision of such facilities. It is desirable that they do so, and the guidance sets out useful means of achieving that. Equally, the technology in question is not a matter for the Government. We seek to ensure that the technology achieves the broad policy objectives of making proportionate and appropriate facilities available, and that any technology employed is consistent with legislation governing issues such as equalities. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green will be able to address that.
In relation to clause 7 and the placing of objects on the highway, the Department for Transport has already said that it does not object to the clause, provided that there are checks in place to ensure that any costs recovered are reasonable. I hope that my hon. Friend will address that. I simply observe that many hon. Members have spoken and I join them in saying that many people find the development of a café culture in this country to be desirable and enjoyable. One would not wish to see that prejudiced, but that is not say that the area is not a matter of legitimate concern for local authorities. The whole purpose is to achieve a proper balance and equilibrium in this matter, and to ensure, particularly in the current climate, that any charging regime is used with care and discretion so that—this is the Government’s general view—any charging is not disproportionate or excessive, and does not place undue burdens on business so as to get in the way of the desire that I am sure all would share to encourage growth and enterprise, particularly in the leisure and small business sector. Having stated the Government’s position, without further ado, I am content to leave the House to weigh up those matters.
Mrs Main
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) on his forensic evaluation of the measure and rise to support his amendments. I have listened with growing concern about the lack of justification for the use of a sledgehammer to crack this particular nut. I am amazed that the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson), who tried to defend the proposal, could not answer some of the significant questions he was asked. I have heard of no pilot study showing an attempt to deter bad behaviour, such as the dropping of cigarette butts, and facilitate good behaviour, such as the provision of ashtrays and similar street furniture. Let us be realistic. It is only a relatively short time since the previous Government put in place new regulations that led to more smoking outside, but local authorities have not had time to catch up with the fact that people are dropping cigarette butts because there is a lack of places to put them. Many local authorities have recognised that.
I do not think that we need new legislation to burden businesses with additional costs. We should be encouraging local authorities to work with local people to ensure sensible, reasonable and proportionate behaviour, but this is not a sensible, reasonable or proportionate proposal. Businesses might suddenly have an additional charge placed upon them so that they have to clean up a stray cigarette butt that someone has casually thrown out of a car window. It should be the polluter who pays. I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Minister said that the Government’s position is that the polluter should pay. This proposal is not that the polluter should pay, but that the poor sap who ends up with litter in front of his door should pay, which I think is outrageous.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley said, big businesses can often swallow such charges. They shrug and say, “Yet another piece of legislation placed on our shoulders, but we’ll cope.” That is not the case for small businesses. Smaller businesses often have smaller premises and are shut at night, and in the morning they might find a whole raft of cigarette butts to clean up because they are down an alleyway or in a smaller part of town. Many of the smaller businesses in St Albans are down small, historic streets and suffer from antisocial behaviour, such as people urinating at night or dropping cigarette butts. I do not believe that those businesses, many of which take pride in their premises and already clean up in the morning, should have to pay a financial penalty for something that is in no way their fault.
I know that other hon. Members want to speak on the matter, but I do not think that any justification has been given today for creating more legislation. I am a natural conservative and believe that we should be chopping regulations. I thought that we had a pledge that for every bit of new legislation that came in we would throw out another, but this is another regulation on the businesses, particularly small businesses, that we are supposed to be supporting. There is no getting away from it: this has to be a money-generating scheme for local authorities.
Mr Gray
I am listening carefully to my hon. Friend, as I did to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). With regard to the “polluter pays” principle, she is right to say when a cigarette is casually dropped by a passerby, it is clearly impossible for that polluter to be charged. None the less, is there not some merit in the principle that the vicarious polluter should pay? In other words, there could be a café on the pavement or a cheap McDonald’s food takeaway outlet, and even though it may not be McDonald’s itself that has dropped a piece of litter on the pavement, it would be reasonable to presume that it had made a profit from providing the hamburger to the person who dropped the litter. It is therefore not unreasonable that it should be asked to pay for clearing it up.
Mrs Main
My hon. Friend makes a valuable point, and I never thought that I would be speaking up to defend McDonald’s, but that is exactly what happens in St Albans already. McDonald’s, Sainsbury’s with its carrier bags, and other big companies recognise the issue, work with the local council and help towards paying up. Sainsbury’s recognises that, if one of its carrier bags has drifted up against a fence 100 yards away from its supermarket, it will still help the local authority to clear it up—and is willing to do so. It is the poor small businesses that cannot carry the can. With huge businesses such as McDonald’s, people say, “That’s their packet, thrown away 100 yards or so from the restaurant,” but that is recognised, so often it will help local authorities to clear up and to contribute towards schemes that do so.
The clause will, however, penalise small businesses. What about them? If we were to have, as one of my hon. Friends proposed, separate legislation for branded litter, we might find it easier to enforce, but that is not what the clause is about—unless we are going to chase Marlboro and ask it to pay. The person who drops the litter should ultimately be responsible, and if that means better council surveillance and the recognition that it has to clean those areas more, so be it. Small businesses should not have to pick up the tab.
Mr Gray
I used a slightly bad example in my previous intervention by citing a big business and talking about McDonald’s; my point was the vicarious polluter pays. Let us imagine that a small business, such as a café, is set up on the streets of St Albans, and around its tables there is an increase in litter. Surely the reasonable presumption is that its customers have produced it and, therefore, that the café will have written into the cost of creating the cup of tea and sticky bun a cost to cover clearing up the litter.
Mrs Main
My hon. Friend makes a valuable point, but I—and others in the debate have made this point—am not aware of any business that would want to serve its customers in a pigsty. Most cafés and small businesses take great pride in what happens outside their premises, but the Bill deals with litter that has been dropped and, in particular, with cigarette butts, not with the tomato on the floor which has come out of someone’s BLT from their local shop.
Philip Davies
Do we not return to the point that, if this is an issue, it is an issue throughout the country? On that basis, therefore, the House should propose legislation that applies everywhere in the country. The issue does not apply only to London, so it is completely unnecessary and undesirable to introduce such legislation for London only.
Mrs Main
My hon. Friend makes the point that this is private business and it nominates only London, but the point I am trying to make, which he made eloquently earlier, is that the clause is a sledgehammer to crack a nut. It is not necessary, and there is plenty of regulation.
Chris Williamson
The hon. Lady contradicts her own argument, because she says that businesses would not want to serve food and drink in a pigsty, implying that they already keep such areas clean and tidy. So I do not understand her objection to the clause.
Mrs Main
My objection to the clause relates, in particular, to smaller premises. We have talked a great deal about cigarette butts, but the clause deals with litter that has been deposited on those premises not necessarily by the businesses themselves—and they will be charged. This point has been made umpteen times: most responsible businesses keep their premises clean anyway; we have enforcement officers from the council who go around and can speak to businesses that are not operating in such a fashion; and current legislation and levers can be employed to tackle the issue.
Philip Davies
On my hon. Friend’s exchange with our hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray), will she bear in mind that such provisions already apply to commercial and retail premises? The Bill, however, seeks to extend them to any premise other than a dwelling. McDonald’s and others are already covered by the law. This Bill will extend that provision to other organisations totally unrelated to selling the things that my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire talked about.
Mrs Main
I thank my hon. Friend, because this debate has been going for some time, and he did make that point quite cogently at the beginning.
Principally, when we have argued about the amendment, we have addressed cigarette butts and the fact that outside premises such as an estate agent or an office, which does not serve food and drink or use wrappers, those butts will be considered litter and, therefore, be directly attributed to those premises.
Mrs Main
I shall not give way; I wish to expand my point.
My point is that small businesses that see a pile of littered cigarette butts outside but do not have smokers on their premises will be held directly responsible for clearing up those butts because they have been dropped outside their front door. That, to me, is as unfair as when poor St Albans residents find that things have been thrown into their gardens by loutish people walking home at night. It is not reasonable that a business will have to pay for this in addition to what it already pays the local council to keep its streets and premises clean.
Chris Williamson
The truth is that local authorities can already apply this provision to retail and commercial properties, as the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said. The proposal will extend it to public buildings. If the hon. Lady objects to the powers that are currently available to local authorities to insist on commercial and retail premises tidying litter away, she should put forward an alternative piece of legislation to repeal those powers.
Mrs Main
The hon. Gentleman is trying to lead me down corridors. He has not come forward with a single type of premises that would not be covered reasonably under the legislation that we already have. That is the nub of the matter. We are introducing something that is totally superfluous and unnecessary. There is plenty of legislation for local authorities to use. I support my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley on the amendment because it is sensible, reasonable and proportionate.
I am sorry to say that I want to return to the issue of toilets. It was abundantly clear from the hon. Gentleman’s weak argument that he had not read the Communities and Local Government Committee report. He certainly had not read all the supporting information that was brought to the Committee.
Philip Davies
I hope that my hon. Friend is talking about the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson).
Mrs Main
I am. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley was obviously well versed in the report.
If the hon. Member for Derby North had read the report and the supporting evidence that was given to the Committee, he would have seen that charging was dealt with in the report. It was deemed to be a matter for the local authority. If he had read the evidence, he would have known that one can never charge enough to make toilets pay. What people are prepared to pay—whether it is 10p, 20p or 50p—does not cover the cost of running any public toilet. The report left charging to the discretion of the local authority, but it expressly said that we should do away with all turnstiles, even turnstiles in stations. The report dealt with that dilemma.
Although the Committee received representations from many groups representing people with disabilities, those with urge incontinence, the aged and people on low incomes saying that charging for toilets was unreasonable when people already pay car parking charges when they go into city and town centres, the report accepted that to impose a regulation that said that toilets must be free would be unreasonable for many local authorities. It did not accept that there was a need for turnstiles.
Fundamentally, we have to believe the 2008 report because it is the biggest listening exercise that we have on people visiting public conveniences and it specifically looks at London. This proposal is contrary to all the evidence that was received at that time. It was accepted that charging was acceptable, but it was not accepted that turnstiles were acceptable. This proposal brings the two together. If people wish to charge for the use of London toilets, so be it. I might not think that it is a good idea and other people might not think that it is a good idea, but I am realistic enough to accept that the taxpayer might have to claw back some of the cost of the provision for tourists and all the people who come into towns and cities. However, some turnstiles were abandoned under the 1963 Act and the 2008 report stated that all turnstiles should be abandoned. That is the most recent thing that we have and it was produced by a Committee that had a Labour Chair, Phyllis Starkey, and was dominated by Labour Members.
To introduce turnstiles in whatever shape or form—not necessarily the little winding things that we walk through—would be a retrograde step. The Committee did not specify a type of turnstile; we said no to all turnstiles. I therefore suggest that the hon. Member for Derby North has not read the evidence of the people who came to the Committee and said that they found the toilets in London appalling.
Philip Davies
Just to make it clear that I have read the report, I have a copy of it here. Will my hon. Friend make it clear that the report was agreed by the Committee unanimously? There was no division along party lines. People across the parties agreed with the report unanimously.
Mrs Main
I thank my hon. Friend for reminding me of that. In fact, one might ask why we did a report on public toilets. [Interruption.] Yes, we were desperate. I seem to remember that it was because it had been highlighted to us that the state of the toilets in London was a problem. We heard every joke under the sun: “flushed with success”, “a penny for our thoughts”, and so on. However, it was amazing—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I think I can be tempted to put the Question because we have been debating this group of amendments for more than two hours. In fact, it has probably been more than three hours, if I remember rightly, given the debate that was started by Mr Chope last time. I therefore think that we should test the will of the House.
Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.
The House proceeded to a Division.
Mr Deputy Speaker
I ask the Serjeant at Arms to investigate the delay in the No Lobby because there seems to be a blockage.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I ask the Serjeant at Arms to investigate the delay in the Aye Lobby.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
With this it will be convenient to take amendments 23, 24, 41, 25 to 28, 42, P1, 29, 30, 43 to 45, 31, 46, 47, 32, 48, 49, P2, 33, 60, 51 to 55, 34, 56 to 58 and P40.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, I have tabled a number of amendments and have also put my name to a number of others. I would like, if I may, to start by outlining why they have been proposed. The simple reason is that the Bill as drafted is extraordinarily illiberal and seeks to extend the powers of the state into the nooks and crannies of people’s lives as they carry out otherwise lawful activities that would be banned by the Bill, unless the amendments are passed.
I remind hon. Members of what was said in the Conservative party manifesto about protecting civil liberties. We said:
“Labour have subjected Britain’s historic freedoms to unprecedented attack. They have trampled on liberties…giving public bodies extraordinary powers to intervene in the way we live our lives.
The impact of this has been profound and far-reaching. Trust has been replaced by suspicion.”
The amendments I have tabled with many of my hon. Friends aim to restore that trust and to ensure that what is done is proportionate and that civil liberties are maintained. You will not be surprised to know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that some of those civil liberties go as far back as the Magna Carta and they are being undermined by the clauses that we are discussing.
Under the clauses, unidentified officers of councils who might or might not show identification may confiscate things from people, directly contrary to the Magna Carta, which states:
“No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed, or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed…except by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land.”
This is not the law of the land, it is the law of some minor council official—some minor bod—going around and confiscating people’s goods without having the proper authority to do so, a proper process by which to do it or a legitimacy that would give people confidence in the laws we are passing in this Parliament.
Philip Davies
I agree with my hon. Friend wholeheartedly. During a previous discussion on this Bill, he proposed that those council officials should wear bowler hats. If they identified themselves with a bowler hat, would he be happy for them to take on these powers?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point, because I specify in amendment 60, which has been selected, that these officers of the council should be in uniform when they carry out their duties. I have left it to the discretion of the council to determine what those uniforms should be.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Absolutely right. I thought it might not be a bad idea if they had the relevant council’s coat of arms.
Mrs Main
Does my hon. Friend have any suggestions as to how this would be promoted, because my constituents, should they come down to London, might not be aware of the purpose of these people in bowler hats or other uniforms and might not be aware of their powers in the regulations.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am very sympathetic to what my hon. Friend says, and I add that many of my amendments take chunks out of the Bill. Therefore, visitors from St Albans, North East Somerset and all over the country—from Leeds, indeed, where the shadow Minister is from—
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Derby—I am so sorry. Those visitors would not be caught out by all sorts of strange people. [Interruption.] I do know where Shipley is.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
Has the hon. Gentleman or any of his colleagues who oppose this legislation had discussions with the Mayor of London about whether he thinks the Bill should be supported or blocked?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am very grateful for that intervention. The Mayor of London is a man whom I admire enormously and whose writ I should think runs across the whole of London and probably should run across the world. However, he stood down from this Parliament and it therefore is not fitting that his views should be authoritative. In this instance, I do not happen to know what they are.
Philip Davies
I certainly do not know what they are, but perhaps my hon. Friend ought to listen to the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) because no doubt he has just come from a meeting with the Mayor of London. He certainly was not here when we debated the first group of amendments, but he seems to think that this is very important.
Mike Gapes
I was watching the proceedings from my office, and I could not believe that any Member of Parliament who had the best interests of London at heart could possibly oppose the proposals, which are supported by Labour members, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in local government all over London, as well as by the Greater London Authority. It is only neanderthals and people who have no idea of what is in the interests of our capital city who oppose the Bill.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Now we see the true face of socialist authoritarianism coming into the House. Those people do not bother with debating in this Chamber. No, they sit watching television in their eyries above and then they condescend to come down and they deign in all their fine glory to say to us that we from Somerset, from Hertfordshire and from other great counties across the country should not have a say in the legislation that affects the law of the land. This is the type of authoritarianism and nanny-stateism that we have come to expect from the socialist.
Let me refer to clause 20(2), which we propose to pull out of the Bill because it is a singularly nasty measure. What it says, Mr Speaker, although I am sure I do not need to remind you, is that if somebody wishes to sell their car throughout all the boroughs of Greater London, advertises it on the internet and then puts it outside their house, they will be committing an offence.
Mike Freer
I hate to correct my hon. Friend because I so enjoy his perorations in the Chamber but he is incorrect. It is not intended that a householder selling their own vehicle outside their own house should be captured by the measure. It is only vehicle traders who in the course of a business sell vehicles on a residential street, using the internet, who will be caught—not residential households.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
That may not be what is intended, but it is, unfortunately, what is said and it is what is described in the notes written by the promoters of this Bill in relation to part 4 on licensing.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your guidance. Is it appropriate parliamentary language for a Member of Parliament to call other hon. Members neanderthals, particularly when they have not even been anywhere near the debate or participated or engaged in it? Do you think that that is a somewhat judgmental statement?
Mr Speaker
Well, I think if we are going to have a prohibition on judgmentalism, we are setting ourselves rather than exacting test. What I would say to the hon. Lady is twofold. First, I am not aware, though it is not relevant to the appropriateness of her point of order, who the target of this intended abuse was—although I could try to speculate about it—but secondly, if the target of the intended abuse is at least one Member that I can think of, I rather imagine that far from complaining about it, he will take it as the greatest possible compliment that has ever been paid to him.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think many hon. Members would consider being called neanderthals remarkably modern.
Mr Speaker
I note the hon. Gentleman’s value judgment, and indeed his sense of humour. If there are no further points of order, we come now to the petition.
North Sea Oil and Gas
(12 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
That the draft City of Birmingham (Mayoral Referendum) Order 2012, which was laid before this House on 5 December, be approved.
The House divided: - Ayes: 303 / Noes: 203 - Question accordingly agreed to.
That the draft City of Bradford (Mayoral Referendum) Order 2012, which was laid before this House on 5 December, be approved.
The House divided: - Ayes: 304 / Noes: 202 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing this short Adjournment debate on North sea oil and gas taxation. It is a very serious and important matter. It is not one with which I have previously been concerned, but I think the Economic Secretary should know that I was invited to a briefing the other day, given by the oil industry, on the impact of taxation changes in the North sea and it excited my interest. I had always been aware of what a very substantial business it was but had no idea of how very important it is to the United Kingdom economy on the scale of employment and other matters, and I thought it right to bring the matter to the attention of the House. I am therefore, as I said, very grateful to you, Sir, for allowing the debate.
The United Kingdom is indeed fortunate to be endowed with significant resources of oil and gas. Over the years, hundreds of millions of pounds of hard-earned, always risky and sometimes very courageous investment and endeavour have allowed the nation to realise these resources, and for the British people to enjoy the substantial benefits of employment, sophisticated and high-level skills at all levels of the skill chain, tax revenues and balance of payments, and to develop a leading position in the global oil and gas supply chain—all of which has stood this country in good stead down the recent years.
Figures for 2011 show that around £16 billion was spent by the oil and gas industry on exploration, development and operations. This included £8 billion in new capital investment, an increase of 25% over 2010. I know that the Economic Secretary will agree that in anyone’s terms these are massive numbers, and thus once again make the oil and gas sector the single largest investor of all the industrial sectors in the United Kingdom.
The positive benefits of this remarkable industry are not confined to Scotland. They extend throughout the United Kingdom, supporting employment for more than 400,000 people, and those jobs are widely distributed throughout the whole country. Unsurprisingly, of course, a substantial proportion—45% in fact—are in Scotland, but that means that 55% of the jobs, which is the majority, directly benefit employment throughout the rest of the UK.
The taxes forecast to be raised from the industry in 2011-12 include some £6 billion in income tax, national insurance contributions and corporation tax paid by the supply chain companies, with an additional £11 billion from taxes on production itself. That amounts to 25% of all the corporation tax received by the Exchequer. The production of indigenous oil and gas improved the balance of payments by £35 billion in 2011, thus halving the trade deficit, and the supply chain added another £5 billion to £6 billion with exports of oilfield goods and services. Incidentally, that aspect of the industry is doing extremely well here and overseas, and it is flying the flag for Britain effectively.
At a time when Britain above all else needs growth and the energetic encouragement of inward investment, I regret to have to say to the Economic Secretary that all is not well in this crucial sector that is so important to our economy. Production declined by 17% from 2010 to 2011, which was the biggest fall seen by the industry in the past 40 years. As a result, future tax receipts will decrease rapidly without new investment. Receipts for 2011-12 have already suffered a £2.3 billion downgrade due to lower than expected production.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I understand that the reduction in North sea oil production is due to many factors, but one of them is maintenance. There have been many maintenance programmes over the past 12 months. Is the fact that production is down, because maintenance is up, one reason why taxation is down?
Nicholas Soames
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. I am sure that it is germane, but the decrease that I am highlighting is, in my judgment, due to the taxation regime.
The United Kingdom already imports around 10% of its oil and almost 40% of its gas, and such imports will increase rapidly without the benefit of new investment. The Government’s decision in March 2011 to increase tax rates on the industry, which increased the top tax rate to 81% and the corporation tax rate to 62%, is inevitably and regrettably having a chilling effect on the leading indicators of investment.
While total capital investment this year has increased to about £8 billion from £6 billion in 2010, that was largely due to development momentum from previous years. Worryingly, just nine new fields accounted for 40% of the total capital invested and all the development projects were well advanced prior to the tax increase.
The signs of lower investment in the future are already apparent. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary will see from the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s latest energy trends analysis a significant impact on drilling activity, with exploration wells down 50% in 2011.
It is from that exploration drilling that the future large capital investments will flow. The March 2011 tax increase reduced the value of future projects by 25% overnight. My hon. Friend knows that the future development of the North sea depends in large part on clever, technical solutions at the very forefront of what is manageable for marginally economic fields, but the increase in the tax rate has rendered many of those future fields uneconomic to develop. That serious matter for the country must be addressed.
I gather from the estimates of Oil & Gas UK, the industry’s trade body, that investment of at least £12 billion in more than 1 billion barrels of oil and gas resource will not occur without some stimulus. That is 60,000 jobs that will not be created and a loss of a benefit of £15 billion to £20 billion to the budget deficit as a result of the tax increase.
Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD)
I remind the House of my entries in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests to do with the oil and gas industry. I intervene to reinforce the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the industry’s importance not only to the north-east of Scotland, but to the whole of the United Kingdom. I thank him very much for bringing the spotlight to bear and bringing the message south that it is the whole United Kingdom that would benefit from tax reform.
Nicholas Soames
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, whose championship and knowledge of the industry are well known. He emphasises the important point that this is a United Kingdom industry, relevant to the whole country, and therefore even more important than might otherwise be the case.
Oil & Gas UK estimates that a further 1.7 billion barrels of the UK’s oil and gas resource would be recovered if the uncertainty about decommissioning reliefs—a very difficult subject—was resolved.
In an industry with highly mobile capital, investment will flow to other, more attractive destinations. We must not let that happen. Further repeated change in the taxation regime of this vital UK industry is causing great uncertainty in the boardrooms of both the international and the home-grown companies involved in all sectors of the industry. That inevitably has a further unhelpful impact on inward investment, at a time when we should be doing all we can to attract that investment, as well as the jobs, the tax receipts and the balance of payments benefits that come with it. I am sure the Economic Secretary agrees that doing that is even more important given the Government’s genuine determination to generate greater growth in the economy, without which many of the difficult problems we face cannot be dealt with.
I am aware that discussions are ongoing between the Treasury, the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the industry to try to find ways to stimulate investment, and I welcome that. I ask the Economic Secretary to confirm that she understands—I know she does—the serious impact on inward investment being caused by the tax increase and other adverse changes in taxation, and the damage to the future tax base and future tax receipts. Further, will she confirm that the Treasury will give serious and detailed consideration to measures to protect future investment through extensions to tax allowances and giving certainty on decommissioning reliefs, and see to it that those measures are enacted or headlined in the Budget, to the greater advantage of the British economy in the years to come?
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Miss Chloe Smith)
I am extremely pleased to have the opportunity to discuss this subject in the House at perhaps greater length than I did when my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) asked me on Tuesday for an update on the ongoing work. I thank him, and, of course, my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) for calling for this evening’s debate, and for their contributions to it.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct: the oil and gas sector makes a huge contribution to the UK economy. He is right to draw out the statistics as he has done this evening. I concur that UK oil and gas provide about two thirds of the UK’s primary energy needs, and even as we move into a less carbon-intensive future, they are set to remain a vital part of our energy system for years to come. The Government recognise the crucial role the sector plays in driving jobs and growth. Together, oil and gas contribute about 2% of the country’s GDP, and the industry supports about 350,000 jobs directly and indirectly across the UK, as well as another 100,000 in exporting goods and services. Of course, as my right hon. Friend said, it is also source of skills, expertise and technology. Finally, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine said, oil and gas are a UK-wide concern. Indeed, that has an impact close to my constituency around the coast of Norfolk, where there is a North sea gas industry.
It is vital that we do what we can to maximise the economic recovery of our indigenous hydrocarbon reserves. It is for that reason that the Government remain committed to encouraging investment and innovation in the North sea. We recognise that tax plays an important role in helping us to achieve those objectives. The Government’s aim is therefore to shape a tax regime for the North sea that encourages exploration, development and production while ensuring a fair return for the UK taxpayer.
That is not always an easy balance to strike, and at times it can require us to make difficult decisions, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex has referred. Everyone who listened to the Budget 2011 will understand that. In the Budget the Government sought to soften the impact of record pump prices for car fuel on households and businesses by abolishing the fuel duty escalator and replacing it with a fair fuel stabiliser. We also cut fuel duty by 1p a litre on Budget day. Since then, we took steps in the autumn statement further to ease the burden on motorists to ensure that there will be only one retail prices index increase in fuel duty in 2013. All told, that means that the Government will ease the burden on motorists by approximately £2.5 billion in 2012-13. At a time when businesses and families across the country are coping with extremely difficult economic circumstances it is right that we should support them as best we can through these tough times, including looking at measures that affect the cost of living such as fuel pricing.
Given the economic situation and the state of the public finances, that support must be funded. In the Budget, at a time of exceptionally high oil prices, the Government felt that it was fair that the oil and gas industry should make an additional contribution through an increase in the supplementary charge. Indeed, that increase was voted on in the House.
At the time of the Budget the Government made it clear that although they accepted that some marginal projects might be affected, they did not expect a significant impact on investment or production over the forecast period. To answer the points that my right hon. Friend raised about receipts, investment and the state of the industry, our assessment of the impact on production was supported by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility. Moreover, while the oil price remains well over $100 a barrel, the fair fuel stabiliser means that taxes on oil and gas production will reduce if the oil price falls below a certain threshold.
Indeed, there have been announcements of further significant investment in the basin over the past few months. For example, BP has said that with its partners it will invest almost £10 billion in North sea oil and gas over the next five years. That investment will provide an extra 3,000 jobs across the oil and gas supply chain. 2012 could be a prosperous year for the North sea. We expect a substantial increase in offshore field approvals over last year’s figure, and many other discoveries are being worked up for the years ahead.
None the less, I recognise that those tax changes have not been welcomed by the sector. I understand that, and I acknowledge the recent news suggesting that there were lower levels of exploration and drilling than expected last year. I believe a range of factors contributed to that, and tax is only one part of what my right hon. Friend will accept is a complex situation for businesses seeking to operate in and around the basin.
Tonight’s debate gives me an opportunity to tell the House a little more about the way in which we have engaged closely with the industry since the Budget last year to ensure that we fully understand its views on a range of fiscal issues related to investment. Only last week, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine noted, I chaired the first meeting of a new oil and gas industry fiscal forum. It was attended by the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) and representatives from more than 15 companies across the sector. We had an extremely productive discussion covering the points that my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex has noted, including decommissioning and field allowances. I believe that the fiscal forum will continue to provide a structured basis for further dialogue between industry and Government on oil and gas tax issues.
We hope this will complement the excellent work already being taken forward by the industry and Government task force, known as PILOT. This group seeks to contribute to the long-term future of the UK continental shelf through initiatives focusing on reducing costs, eliminating barriers and maximising the effectiveness of resources.
In addition to these wider discussions, the Government have been engaging closely with industry to consider changes to specific elements of the tax regime that could unlock additional investment in the basin. For example, in line with our commitment at last year’s Budget, we have been working closely with industry with a view to making a further announcement on greater long-term certainty about decommissioning tax relief at Budget 2012. We have also been considering the case for improved or new types of field allowance to act as a further incentive to investment in marginal fields.
Hon. Members here today following the debate will know the range of detail encompassed in the representations made to me and my colleagues by industry, and they will be aware of the number of different proposals put forward under those headings of decommissioning tax relief and field allowances. Following such detailed discussions with industry, we have already increased the rate of the ring-fence expenditure supplement from 6% to 10%, which helps to ensure that existing field allowances work more effectively and equitably.
I am very encouraged by the positive engagement that we have had with industry on these issues. I believe that this sort of constructive dialogue can only be helpful as the UK continental shelf matures and the tax regime has to evolve accordingly. We remain committed to supporting the sector in realising its ambition of fully maximising the growth and jobs potential from our oil and gas industry. Ultimately it is in everyone’s interest that we foster a regime that continues to promote investment and harness our mineral wealth effectively, while also ensuring a fair return for the UK taxpayer from this valuable national resource.
Once again, I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for having brought this debate here tonight and for giving me a short opportunity to expand on some of the valuable work that we have been endeavouring to undertake to support the industry and meet the aims that I know he shares.
Question put and agreed to.