House of Commons

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

Monday 27 February 2012

The House met at half-past Two o’clock

Prayers

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

1. What steps he is taking to ensure that Sure Start children’s centres focus on the most disadvantaged families.

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

We published last year a new core purpose for children’s centres, which makes it clear that their core purpose is to improve outcomes for young children and their families, particularly for the most disadvantaged. Local authorities have statutory duties to provide sufficient children’s centres and to reduce inequalities. We are strengthening incentives to deliver the core purpose through revised statutory guidance, which we will publish shortly, through changes to Ofsted’s inspection framework and through payment by results. Children’s centres will also help families to access the new early education entitlement for disadvantaged two-year-olds.

[Tony Baldry]

Sure Start centres such as the Sunshine centre in Banbury do excellent work. What possibility is there of children’s centres’ budgets being ring-fenced within the early intervention grant to provide some security to the centres and to the communities for whom they work, or what possibility is there of children’s centres being given the same option as schools—to become the equivalent of an academy and to receive their funding directly from the Government?

[Sarah Teather]

We took a decision to ensure that the measure was carried out locally because of the importance in early intervention of joining services together. Children’s centres, health services and other aspects of local authority provision are best done locally, and it is right and proper that local authorities make the decision about organisation, strategic planning and commissioning.

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

The Minister knows that even good local authorities such as mine in Kirklees, because they are not being given the resource by central Government, are being forced to modify the offer of children’s Sure Start centres. Is she not aware that even the most benign Government Member, particularly the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) who just asked that question, wants to take us back to the old Poor Law days, when there was one centre for poor people and other centres for others? That is not the way to provide good child care.

[Sarah Teather]

I think that everybody throughout the House agrees on the importance of early intervention. I accept that there may be differences of opinion on how we deliver it, but Government Members believe that the best way to do so is to devolve decisions to the local level. I do not think that the most disadvantaged families in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency would be best served by me attempting to run everything from my office in Whitehall.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

20. I welcome the Minister’s announcements and comments on the issue, just as I welcome the extension of 15 hours of free education a week to the most disadvantaged two-year-olds, but will she tell us what more we must do to help parents access affordable child care? Under the previous Government the cost of child care rose by 50% and the number of childminders dropped by one third. We have to do better. What does she think?

[Sarah Teather]

I absolutely recognise the points that the hon. Lady makes. Child care is a very difficult pressure on many families’ budgets, and that is precisely why we have invested so much extra money in the area. Despite the tight financial climate because of the mess that the previous Government left us, we have nevertheless invested significant extra money in enabling two-year-olds to access free early education—20% of two-year-olds by 2013 and 40% by 2014.

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

The Department’s Sure Start and early intervention funding for the local authority area of the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) was cut by £30 per child this year. Islington, Knowsley and Tower Hamlets, however, three of the country’s most deprived boroughs, had cuts of £100 or more per child. Does the Minister believe that that is a good example of targeting resources for Sure Start and for early intervention at the most disadvantaged?

[Sarah Teather]

Decisions about the early intervention grant were made on the same formula as that used by the previous Government, so it is not really acceptable for the hon. Lady to claim that there are specific changes in particular constituencies, and suggesting that there is a political motivation is a little beneath her, actually.

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

2. What assessment he has made of the effects of the Government’s reclassification of vocational qualifications.

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

We expect that all schools will now offer courses that benefit students, rather than some offering courses that are designed to inflate the school’s league-table rankings.

[Mrs Glindon]

In North Tyneside, Churchill community college has been deemed by the Government to be one of the top 100 schools in terms of performance, and students taking vocational courses there find that they are provided with the exact skills that local employers want. Will the Secretary of State listen to education and industry professionals and take the opportunity of the curriculum review to strengthen the role of the vocational pathway in order to ensure that all young people are equipped for the demands of our economy?

[Michael Gove]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on having such a strong school—indeed, so many strong schools—in her constituency. It is vital that we ensure that children have the maximum number of opportunities to progress at the age of 16, either on to further study in colleges and universities or into the vocational pathways that may suit them. Professor Alison Wolf’s report provides a strong foundation on which to build for all students of all abilities and aptitudes.

[Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)]

The Government and the Department have acted to allay concerns on the equivalency of some qualifications for the purposes of performance statistics, but will the Secretary of State confirm that the coalition Government are committed to raising the status of vocational education and to recognising the achievements of schools, colleges, teachers and young people?

[Michael Gove]

Absolutely. I am uniquely fortunate in that I have in the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning a colleague who is passionate about that and who is on record in the latest issue of The House Magazine as having said that he has used the word “apprenticeship” in debates in this House more often than any other Member here. The reason he has done so and the reason we are so committed to increasing the number of apprenticeships—[Interruption.] He is a great Minister and he is part of a coalition Government who have presided over the fastest growth in quality apprenticeships under any Government in history.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that whether in vocational study, university courses or apprenticeships, the essential thing is that courses are relevant for future employment and, indeed, for future employers?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. One of the problems that we have had in the past is that some awarding bodies have offered qualifications that were deemed to be technical or vocational but in fact were not. We need to ensure that those qualifications, which are robust and respected, are increasingly popular and are used in our schools and colleges.

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

3. What steps his Department is taking to promote the teaching of emergency life support skills in schools.

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

Through non-statutory personal, social, health and economic education, at primary school pupils are taught about basic emergency procedures and where to get help; and at secondary school, about how to develop the skills to cope with emergency situations that require basic first aid procedures, including, at key stage 4, resuscitation techniques. As my hon. Friend knows, we are reviewing PSHE education to consider the core knowledge that young people should have, and we will publish proposals for public consultation later this year.

[Justin Tomlinson]

There has been significant support for the British Heart Foundation’s campaign for emergency life support skills to be included in the curriculum. Many people have called for it to be included in physical education, but what consideration has the Minister given to the merits of teaching it in biology?

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend raises a good point. This is something of a personal interest for him, and I pay tribute to him for raising it in this House and in his constituency, where only this week he launched a “Save a Life by Volunteers in Emergencies” scheme for pupils. Our aim, through the review of the national curriculum, is to ensure that the school science curriculum, including biology, is focused on teaching pupils core essential scientific knowledge and about scientific processes, so I do not think that it would necessarily be most appropriate in that context, but it is sensible and helpful for schools to want to teach it to their pupils, and Ofsted will pick up on it as well.

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

4. When he plans to make an announcement on the next round of bids for university technical colleges.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

5. What assessment he has made of the role of university technical colleges in bridging the skills gap.

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

University technical colleges provide a high-quality technical education. That is why they are a key part of our school reforms and why, in last year’s Budget, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor doubled the funding so that we can open at least 24 UTCs in this Parliament. We intend to make an announcement about the next tranche by the end of May.

[Hazel Blears]

The Secretary of State will be aware of the joint bid for a university technical college at MediaCityUK that is backed by the Lowry arts centre, the Aldridge Foundation, the city council and the university—by everybody in the city. The creative industries are vital for our economic growth. Will he therefore ensure that local young people in Greater Manchester and in Salford have the skills, through the university technical college, to take up the opportunities that will be coming over the next few years?

[Michael Gove]

The revival of Salford over the past few years is a model of how urban regeneration should be led, and the right hon. Lady has played a vital part in that. I have to be fair to all the bids, but undoubtedly this bid, given the heavyweight support that it enjoys, will be taken very seriously by the Department and by the Baker Dearing Educational Trust.

[Ian Swales]

The JCB university technical college is dismayed by the Secretary of State’s decision to devalue the OCR engineering diploma, which was developed by leading manufacturers such as JCB, Rolls-Royce and Toyota and leading universities such as Cambridge, Loughborough and Warwick. At a time when employers in Teesside and elsewhere are desperate for engineering skills, will he review that decision?

[Michael Gove]

First, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the role that he has played in ensuring that the steel industry returns to Redcar. Few people in the House have done more for engineering jobs than he has. It is right to affirm the importance of engineering in schools and colleges, but I believe that it should take its place alongside physics, chemistry and biology as a science subject of value. It is appropriate for those subjects to be judged on a level playing field.

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

Engineering and technology have some of the lowest levels of participation among women of all the professions. Given that university technical colleges are new institutions that have the opportunity to ensure that more girls take part in these subjects, will the Secretary of State set them the aim of ensuring that 50% of their entrants are girls?

[Michael Gove]

I am always wary of targets and quotas that have 50% at their heart. However, the broader point that the hon. Lady makes about the need for all of us to encourage more girls to contemplate a career in design, technology or engineering is very strong. She authored a report last year that was welcomed by the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, which made a series of recommendations that university technical colleges and, indeed, the whole school and college sector should take to heart.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

The Secretary of State for Education has won funding of more than £600 million for new free schools. If there are enough good UTC bids, such as the bid from Harlow hospital, Anglia Ruskin university and Harlow college, will he consider using some of that £600 million to boost the number of new UTCs?

[Michael Gove]

Thanks to the generosity of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and not to any negotiating skill on my behalf, there are sufficient resources in the Department for Education budget to support high quality university technical college submissions. It will be on the quality of the bids that a decision is made.

[Mr Speaker]

I call Rosie Cooper. Not here.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

7. What steps he has taken to reduce the amount of paperwork undertaken by teachers.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

10. What steps he has taken to reduce the amount of paperwork undertaken by teachers.

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

The Government are committed to reducing the amount of paperwork undertaken by teachers, heads and governors. We have removed the lengthy self-evaluation form and the financial management standard in schools; introduced a streamlined inspection framework; removed unnecessary duties and regulations in the Education Act 2011; cut the volume of guidance issued to schools by more than half; and made it clear that neither the Department nor Ofsted expects teachers to produce written lesson plans for every lesson. We are reviewing all requirements on schools so that they can focus on raising standards, rather than on unnecessary administrative tasks.

[Dr Coffey]

I thank my hon. Friend for updating the House on the progress that he is making on the amount of guidance. Will he reassure me that we no longer send teachers and governors thousands of pages of bureaucratic guidance, which at one point was equivalent to reading “War and Peace” from cover to cover three times over?

[Mr Gibb]

And significantly less interesting. My hon. Friend is right that we have swept away pages of guidance. We have reduced the admissions code from 160 pages to 50, the assessment guidance from 220 pages to 30, the attendance guidance from 220 pages to 30, and so on. We have reduced the health and safety guidance from 150 pages to eight, and have taken out important guidance on how to do a headcount, why a headcount is important and why schools should ensure that the school minibus is properly maintained.

[Nigel Mills]

Many teachers complain about the amount of time they have to spend completing lesson plans. Will the Minister confirm that neither he nor Ofsted require plans for every lesson?

[Mr Gibb]

I am happy to give my hon. Friend that assurance. Ofsted does not require written lesson plans for every lesson. Michael Wilshaw, Her Majesty’s chief inspector, has made that absolutely clear.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

One of the most demanding tasks that teachers do outside the classroom is marking books, which allows them to monitor the progress of pupils. The applications for free schools that I have seen have an average of 25 pupils per class. If we value teachers in all sections of our education system, should they not all be teaching classes of 25 pupils? If the Government are serious about reducing the work load of teachers, they should take that on board.

[Mr Gibb]

I would encourage schools that want to have smaller class sizes and more control over how they are run to adopt academy status.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

When the Secretary of State told the Select Committee on Education recently that teachers have to work only 32.5 hours per week, even if they work full time, did he really believe it or was he just trying to cause offence?

[Mr Gibb]

I am aware that many teachers do enormous amounts of unpaid overtime. That is a tribute to the professionalism of the teachers in our schools today. It is important that that overtime is not spent filling in voluminous forms or reading huge lever arch files of guidance.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

8. How many schools have applied to become an academy in (a) Worcester constituency, (b) Worcestershire and (c) England.

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

In the Worcester constituency, three secondary schools have applied for academy status, of which two have successfully converted. In Worcestershire, 25 schools have applied to become academies, of which 19 are open, and there is one sponsored academy open. Across England, there have been a total of 1,861 applications from mainstream funded schools to become academies, of which 1,243 are open, and there are 337 sponsored academies open.

[Mr Walker]

One application that has recently been approved is that of Bishop Perowne college in my constituency, with support from King’s school Worcester a leading local independent school, the university of Worcester, which specialises in teacher training, and a major local employer, Yamazaki Mazak Ltd. Will the Minister join me in welcoming that approach, and will he encourage more such innovative partnerships to bring public and private sector expertise together to offer the best to pupils at our academies?

[Mr Gibb]

I am delighted that Bishop Perowne college received its academy order in January to convert to academy status, and that as my hon. Friend says, it will do so with the support of King’s school, the university of Worcester and Yamazaki Mazak. I strongly encourage other public-private partnerships to come forward to support academy conversions and share their expertise in that important part of our school reform programme.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

Presumably, the Minister would expect local authorities to have some strategic view of what should happen to academies in their area. Next time he talks to Birmingham city council, and to councillors Les Lawrence and Mike Whitby, if he can find out what their strategy on academies is, I would be grateful if he passed it on to me.

[Mr Gibb]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has had very good meetings with councillors in Birmingham, and I hope that all local authorities will work constructively with the Department as we seek to tackle underperforming schools in the schools network.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

9. What his definition is of a sufficient youth service.

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

The Government will consult very shortly on revised statutory guidance on local authorities’ duty to secure, so far as is reasonably practicable, a sufficient offer of services for young people. It will propose that a sufficient local offer is one that results in positive feedback from young people on the adequacy and quality of local provision, and positive trends in data indicative of local young people’s well-being and personal and social development.

[Lilian Greenwood]

The Minister will be interested to know that late last year, I welcomed to Westminster a group of lads from the Muslim Community Organisation in Nottingham. They told me about their project and why it is important to them. They told me that they felt the Government did not like young people, because they had cut youth services, and they said that their project was under threat. Will the Minister tell Junaid, Awais, Hussam, Umar and their friends why cuts to youth services have been among the biggest in his Department?

[Tim Loughton]

I trust that the hon. Lady, wanting to give a fair representation of what the Government are doing, was very speedy in sending her constituents a copy of “Positive for Youth”, which was published just before Christmas. It is one of the most comprehensive documents bigging up young people produced by any Government ever, and she should be proud to disseminate it among her constituents, as I am mine.

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

I applaud the Minister on “Positive for Youth”, and last week I was at two voluntary sector youth clubs, Pembroke House and New Image, where there was fantastic talent waiting to be released into the adult community. Will he ensure that every youth club in England, statutory or non-statutory, has all the knowledge that it needs about apprenticeships, training, education and the national citizen service, so that every opportunity can be known by every youngster in every youth club in the country?

[Tim Loughton]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. I want a mixed provision of youth services up and down the country, whether in brand spanking new buildings such as the 63 myplace centres, a great investment by this Government, or in well established youth clubs, schools or other buildings. I want young people to have full knowledge about the availability of all those schemes—not just youth services but training opportunities, apprenticeships, the national citizen service and everything that they can do in our communities. “Positive for Youth” is a gateway for young people in this country to see that the Government value them. Our whole society should value them, and we want to do everything we can to ensure that they contribute to society in the future.

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

Speaking at the National Youth Agency conference last month, the Minister said:

“I know that many people are concerned that youth services have faced disproportionate cuts as councils look to tighten their belts…And, I’ll be honest, I’m concerned too…there is no excuse to neglect youth services, or to treat them as an easy area to make savings.”

However, as a recent parliamentary answer to me showed, many local authorities are making cuts of 30%, 40%, 50% or in some cases 70%, far in excess of the general reduction in local authority spending. What steps is he taking to put his fine words into practice?

[Tim Loughton]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for repeating my words, because they are absolutely right. That is why we issued that document—to send out a very clear message—and why we are revising the guidance, which we are consulting on in the next few weeks. She, like every local authority in the country and youth groups, will have the opportunity to have their say on what their local youth services should offer. That is all about young people having a voice and being able to gauge whether they are being treated seriously within their local authorities. This Government are giving them a voice that was not heard under the previous Labour Government.

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

11. What assessment his Department has made of the role of schools in preparing children and young people for entering the workplace.

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

Ofsted found that more than half the secondary schools inspected in 2010-11 were either outstanding or good in developing workplace and other skills to assist students’ future economic prospects. However, young people should also have access to high-quality and impartial information, advice and guidance. The new national careers service, which will be launched in April, will provide just that.

[Karl Turner]

Does the Minister agree that a diploma in engineering is an important qualification and an important skill for young people? Downgrading that important qualification is, in my view, damaging to foreign manufacturers such as Siemens, which is hopefully about to invest very heavily in offshore wind in my fantastic constituency.

[Mr Hayes]

The hon. Gentleman will be delighted to learn—I hope—that I plan to visit Hull on 19 April to meet local employers and interested parties. I am very happy to add him to the list of invitees. We will then take forward just the kind of agenda that he suggests.

[Mr Speaker]

If I had known that on Thursday night when I was in Hull I might have told my audience. I didn’t, so I couldn’t, but never mind.

[Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)]

Having done much work in career guidance and helping young people to enter work, I am now working with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to do real-life pilot schemes with real-life business advisers. Could I meet the Minister so that we can have the best cross-departmental support for that scheme?

[Mr Hayes]

It is absolutely right that we should have that, and to understand that the business of providing information, advice and guidance is about giving people the wherewithal to know that the choices they make will affect their future prospects, how they will do so and how we can help. I am determined that such empirical, independent advice and guidance should be available to all. It is about redistributing advantage.

[Mr Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South) (Lab)]

But how are young children going to be motivated when, as in my constituency, youth unemployment has gone up by 88% in the past 12 months? Where will the jobs come from that schools can use to motivate young children?

[Mr Hayes]

It is partly about people recognising the opportunities that exist through the right kind of advice and guidance. Of course, the hon. Gentleman is right that economic growth is our key priority—he knows that that permeates all the Government do—but it is absolutely right that we equip people with the right skills on the basis of the right information to make the right choices about job opportunities.

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

Secondary schools, particularly comprehensives, have a critical role to play in fostering aspiration and getting young people ready for higher education and for work. Has my hon. Friend seen the recent report by the Fair Access to University Group, and does he believe that we can do more to help disadvantaged pupils into our top universities and therefore into our top professions?

[Mr Hayes]

Widening access to higher education and learning is at the heart of what I am trying to achieve, but that is not principally about admissions. It is about good advice and guidance; access points to learning; modes of learning; and prior attainment. Let us be clear about how we can widen access and not be hung up on admissions.

[Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)]

12. How many 16 to 18-year-olds started an apprenticeship last year.

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

Final data for the 2010-11 academic year show that there were 131,700 apprenticeship starts in England by young people aged under 19—the greatest number in modern history. That is an increase of 12.8% in a year and of 32.6% in two years. The whole House will acknowledge that achievement. We are feeding social mobility and nourishing social justice.

[Alok Sharma]

I thank the Minister for his huge personal commitment to making the Government’s apprenticeships policy a success—my constituency had more than 900 apprenticeship starts last year. What is his Department doing to make eligible businesses aware that up to 40,000 incentive payments of £1,500 each are available to employers if they take on young apprentices as part of the youth contract?

[Mr Hayes]

With the modesty for which my hon. Friend is known, he understated his own involvement in national apprenticeship week, when I understand he shadowed an apprentice working in a pre-school. He is right that we need to get more small and medium-sized enterprises involved, and to that end I am delighted that the Prime Minister announced during national apprenticeship week the extra support that we are providing. Every small business that takes on a young apprentice will get £1,500—something that the previous Government never attempted.

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

13. What discussions he has had with ministerial colleagues on responsibilities for early intervention.

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

The Government agree with the hon. Gentleman that early intervention is important to ensure that all children get the best start in life. Ministers have discussed early intervention—including his two reports—in a range of forums, including the Cabinet Social Justice Committee. The Government responded through “Families in the Foundation Years”, which was published last year. We intend to procure an early intervention foundation, as he recommended, through a fair and open competition.

[Mr Allen]

I thank the Minister for her consistent support for the creation of an early intervention foundation, which will take to scale evidence-based policies to help babies, children and young people. Will she update us on the tender process for an early intervention foundation and on where early intervention in general is in the psyche of the Government?

[Sarah Teather]

I am hugely grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s support, help and guidance on this issue. I absolutely agree that there is a moral as well as a financial case for investing in early intervention. It is a priority for the Government. He will be aware that I cannot say too much at the moment about the early intervention foundation, but we are working with other Departments to develop a specification for the foundation and are committed to ensuring that we get best value for money. My Department will issue a public notification shortly, in advance of an open and competitive procurement process.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

A challenge for early intervention can be that the beneficiaries are a self-selecting group, so what is my hon. Friend doing, working with local authorities and other Departments, to ensure that those who will benefit most from early intervention get it? Does this not stress again the importance of those decisions being made locally?

[Sarah Teather]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman on this point, which is one reason we are about to begin trials of payment by results with local authorities and children’s centres—to ensure that they are focusing on the families who most need early intervention. It is one of a range of areas where we are trying to focus much more on outcomes, rather than just inputs.

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

The Department for Education has just published an interesting report showing a clear link between poor parenting and antisocial behaviour in children. What is the Minister’s view on the report and its recommendations for more family support and early intervention, and does she not agree that the short-sighted reductions to the early intervention grant, particularly in deprived areas, run counter to her own Department’s findings?

[Sarah Teather]

As the hon. Lady might know, last summer we announced that we would trial a new offer of parenting classes for all parents in three specific areas. That will be an interesting exercise, and we shall see what happens and whether we can encourage more people to come forward and take part in parenting support. Of course, children’s centres offer this kind of targeted, highly intensive work for families in many situations, and schools can use the pupil premium to pay for that, should they choose to do so

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

The House will know that the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions have done an enormous amount of work raising awareness of the importance of early intervention. We should thank them for that. Does the Minister agree that all Ministers and Government Members should totally support the Government’s welfare reforms?

[Sarah Teather]

It is always nice to have friendly fire from one’s own side, isn’t it? I can absolutely assure the hon. Gentleman that I was delighted to see the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions introduce transitional arrangements to support children and families in difficult situations.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

14. When he plans to publish a report of his review of sex and relationship education.

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

We are considering sex and relationship education as part of our review of personal, social, health and economic education. We are currently analysing consultation responses received online and from stakeholder engagement meetings and the evidence from national and international research. We intend to announce proposals for public consultation on these findings in the summer term.

[John Glen]

I thank the Minister for that reply. Given the wide range of successful sex and relationship education programmes across the country, including the APAUSE—Added Power and Understanding in Sex Education—programme, will the Minister confirm that the Government are committed to preserving autonomy for individual schools in deciding which programmes they adopt?

[Tim Loughton]

It is of course this Government’s policy to make sure that we give schools more freedoms and more time within the curriculum to teach pupils in the ways they think most appropriate for maximising the effect, but we also want to see a change of emphasis, with a much stronger focus on respect for others in sex and relationship education, building young people’s capacity to say no to things they do not feel are right, and making sense of the portrayals of sex and relationships to which they are exposed through the media. I hope that innovative schools will do that in a way that best gets that message across to their pupils.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

But the most recent statistics show that one in four abortions in this country is to a teenager—a shocking statistic and surely something we must do more about by trying to cut the number of teenage pregnancies in the first place. All the evidence shows that where there is really good sex and relationship education—not just in some schools, but in every single school; not just for some children, but for every single child—we really have a chance of tackling teenage pregnancy. Will the Government not wake up to this and get on with it, and not agree with the hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen)?

[Tim Loughton]

I think we are all trying to achieve the same thing. The hon. Gentleman mentions a disastrous statistic, but the problem is not just abortions among teenagers: I have been particularly alarmed about the repeat abortions among teenagers, so we must get the message across clearly. I want all children in this country to have access to good quality sex and relationship education. The problem has been that the picture is very mixed. I want more experts from outside schools who have real skills communicating that message to as many children as possible.

[Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD)]

A survey of more than 1,000 parents for mumsnet last November found that nine out of 10 parents think there should be a statutory duty on all schools to deliver comprehensive sex and relationship education. I welcome what the Minister says about the importance of relationships, particularly given the worrying statistic showing high levels of abuse and sexual pressure in teenage relationships. Does he think that the relationship aspect should therefore be put on the same footing as the requirement for schools to deliver the facts about sex?

[Tim Loughton]

Again, my hon. Friend, who has great expertise in this area, makes some pertinent points. I do not want to pre-empt what the consultation will focus on, given the findings already received. Relationships are absolutely a really important part of this. We have heard a lot about the mechanics of sex; we need to hear much more about the ways sex is carried on through relationships—hopefully consensual. The teaching of sexual consent will be strengthened through the planned revision of PSHE guidance. As I say, relationships are a really important part of it.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

The Minister inadvertently and uncharacteristically failed to answer the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen). Will he confirm that the responsibility for SRE in the curriculum will remain with individual school governing bodies and parents and not be subject to ministerial fiat?

[Tim Loughton]

I will give my hon. Friend the same answer that I have just given to my hon. Friend the Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson)—I am not going to pre-empt what the consultation will come up with. When this matter was discussed as part of the then Children, Schools and Familes Bill before the last election, a major consideration of many Conservative Members was that the power of parents to withdraw their children from sex education should remain if they saw fit. I would hope that the quality of sex education would be such that parents would not withdraw their children because they wanted to ensure that they were well informed and confident to make the right choices.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

15. What recent assessment he has made of the breadth and content of the school curriculum; and if he will make a statement.

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

The Government are currently reviewing the national curriculum to make sure it is as rigorous as the curricula used in the most successful education jurisdictions in the world. We are, as part of that work, considering which subjects should be included in the national curriculum and the content of what is taught in those subjects. However, we are clear that, whatever the outcome of the review, all schools should teach a broad and balanced curriculum.

[Hugh Bayley]

It was at the end of 2010 that I wrote to the Minister of State to urge on him the importance of teaching foreign languages at key stage 2 in primary schools. What have the Government done since then to encourage foreign language teaching to primary school children, and when does he think that the national curriculum authority will make a decision on the matter?

[Mr Gibb]

Those issues are being addressed in the review, and we will report on decisions as and when they are made. The introduction of the English baccalaureate, however, has done more to encourage the take-up of modern foreign languages in secondary schools than any decision since 2004, when the hon. Gentleman’s party was in government and decided to remove the compulsory element of modern foreign languages. As a consequence of that decision, numbers plummeted.

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

Is it not the case that all our leading competitors, including Germany and Canada, insist that pupils learn history and modern foreign languages until the age of 16? Will the Government take that into consideration in the curriculum review?

[Mr Gibb]

The expert panel report which we published towards the end of last year recommended more compulsion until pupils reached the age of 16, and we are considering that. However, as I said to the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley), the English baccalaureate has done more to increase the take-up of modern foreign languages and, indeed, history than any other single measure undertaken by the Government.

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

16. What recent progress he has made on his plans for capital investment in schools.

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

For the current spending review period, we have a total capital budget of £17.1 billion. In December I announced capital for 2012-13, including £11 million for schools in Cornwall to provide new places and repair buildings.

[George Eustice]

Camborne Science and International Academy, which the Secretary of State will recall visiting last summer, has applied for permission to build some new science laboratories under the priority schools building programme. That will cost a fraction of the amount that was originally required under the Building Schools for the Future programme. Does my right hon. Friend agree that when schools have sharpened their pencils and identified savings in that way, they should be given some credit when their applications are assessed?

[Michael Gove]

That is a very deft case, very well put by my hon. Friend. I am well aware that, for a variety of reasons, a number of schools in Cornwall have missed out on the allocation of capital in the past. One of the things that I have learnt in this job is that sometimes when we publish lists of school buildings it is important to wait a wee while just to make sure that they are right.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

Two outstanding schools in my constituency, The Bankfield and The Heath, are waiting for a decision on their capital bid applications, but an application has also been made for funds for a free school. Does the Secretary of State think that capital bids for existing schools that are in desperate need of cash should be given priority, or that a free school should be given priority?

[Michael Gove]

It is the judgment of Solomon, is it not? We must ensure that decaying fabric is repaired, but we must also provide high-quality school places. It is not enough simply to invest in existing schools which may or may not be providing high-quality education; it is also critical that we provide a gateway for people who are going to raise the quality of state education through innovative new ways of helping children to do better.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

17. What steps he has taken to offer guidance to the parents, pupils, governors and teachers of (a) Wilbarston Church of England primary school in Kettering constituency and (b) other schools in England on becoming an academy.

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

Although Wilbarston Church of England primary school may be interested in becoming an academy, as of Friday no formal application had been received. If and when such an application is made, the Department will provide the school with a named contact to help it through the process. That applies to all schools in England which apply to become academies.

[Mr Hollobone]

Mrs Andrea Cruse, the head teacher of Wilbarston primary school, and Mr Lawrence Dale, the chair of the governors, have requested me to ask the following supplementary question: “What advantages are there for a small, successful primary school which has always enjoyed a productive and beneficial relationship with the local authority in severing those ties to become an academy?”

[Mr Gibb]

There is no need for the severing of any ties with local authorities, and that school is free to continue its good relationship with its local authority. The key advantage of becoming an academy is the professional autonomy that comes with academy status, which is valued by heads and teachers alike. They are free to innovate, and they have control over the element of their budget that is currently spent on their behalf by the local authority.

[Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)]

18. How many additional children will become eligible for the pupil premium in (a) St Austell and Newquay constituency and (b) Cornwall in the next financial year.

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

Our latest estimate, based on the numbers in the January 2011 census, is that 2,970 children will be eligible for the main deprivation and service premium in the St Austell and Newquay constituency, and that 16,050 will be eligible in Cornwall. We will not know how many pupils will be eligible for the pupil premium next year until the number of eligible pupils from the January 2012 school census is confirmed in June.

[Stephen Gilbert]

Representatives of the Newquay association of primary heads, to whom I spoke on Friday, tell me that the pupil premium is making a real difference on the front line, but they are finding it difficult to access the additional support for children in care. How could that process be made swifter?

[Sarah Teather]

It is extremely clear that the local authority must pass down to the school the money for every child eligible for the pupil premium, regardless of whether that child is at a mainstream school or an academy. I am happy to investigate specific cases where there are difficulties, and I invite my hon. Friend to write to me with any details.

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

19. What support his Department offers to schools that wish to seek academy status.

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

The Government will help every school that wishes to become an academy, because evidence shows that children do better when schools have the freedom to make their own decisions. The Department has published on its website comprehensive information and guidance on becoming an academy. All schools that apply to become an academy are provided with a named contact within the Department to support them through the conversion process. Schools are also able to apply for a grant to support them with the costs of conversion.

[Paul Goggins]

I am grateful for that reply, and I am pleased to be able to tell the Minister that two schools in my constituency have become academies, and they are doing well. However, should not the decision on whether to seek academy status be left entirely to the school and its local community rather than those schools being pressed and bullied, which is becoming far too frequent, particularly in relation to primary schools?

[Mr Gibb]

There is no bullying going on and schools are free to adopt academy status, but the Secretary of State and I are clear that we cannot allow schools that have underperformed year after year to continue to do so. That is why we are engaged in a process of working co-operatively with local authorities to convert underperforming schools—particularly the 200 worst performing primary schools—and to bring in an experienced academy sponsor to ensure that the children, who are often in the most disadvantaged parts of the country, have a proper education at long last.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

The Darwen Aldridge Community Academy is a school in my constituency that has already achieved academy status. It recently applied to set up a studio school through the same foundation. Will the Minister update the House on when we will have a decision on the first round of bidding for studio schools, and how many applications there have been?

[Mr Gibb]

No numbers have yet been announced, but we will announce figures in due course. I wish that project every success. We need a school system that is diverse and that offers a range of educational opportunities to address all children’s interests and abilities.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

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

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

Last week I issued some direction on how we can encourage local authorities to prioritise the concerns of children in care who need to be adopted; today my hon. Friend the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning has issued a written ministerial statement on raising the quality of apprenticeships; and later this week we will be saying more about how we can help children in the weakest primary schools to aspire to a stronger education.

[Mr Burrowes]

On the subject of apprenticeships, may I thank the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning for his support of apprenticeship standards in his recent visit to my constituency? Could that enthusiasm be extended to support the expansion of the Department’s Let’s stick Together pilot programme, which recognises the value in respect of outcomes of mums and dads sticking together?

[Michael Gove]

I know that the Minister of State enjoyed his visit to Enfield, Southgate and was impressed by the quality of apprenticeships being offered to young people there. I also know that my hon. Friend has been a principal campaigner for supporting the family, and the voluntary organisation he mentions is just one of a number that we need to support in the valuable work they do in helping parents to do right by their children.

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

Has the Secretary of State had an opportunity to read the Daycare Trust’s child care costs survey published today? The trust concludes that extending free early education to 2-year-olds is a step in the right direction, but that cuts to tax credit support and local child care services are two steps backwards. We know that in many areas breakfast clubs have been cut and children’s centres closed. As a matter of urgency will the Secretary of State conduct an audit of child care places across England?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that issue. I have not yet had a chance to read the report, but I look forward to doing so. May I take this opportunity to thank the Daycare Trust for the work it has done? It is important that we recognise that the additional investment that has been secured in extra places for disadvantaged 2-year-olds—championed by the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), and delivered by the Deputy Prime Minister—has done a great deal, but there are issues that we all need to address to ensure that regulation does not increase the cost of child care and, in particular, that the very poorest have access to the highest quality child care.

[Stephen Twigg]

The Daycare Trust says that cuts to tax credits are forcing families out of work and into poverty. According to The Times this morning’s, the Secretary of State is one of three senior Conservatives who have plotted to scrap the child poverty measure. Might this be another example of the “friendly fire” to which the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), referred? Instead of trying to move the goalposts by changing the measure of child poverty, is it not time to change course?

[Michael Gove]

I have often been tempted to move the goalposts, as a Queens Park Rangers fan, but I realise that the situation is more serious than that. The hon. Gentleman rightly raises the importance of making sure that we tackle child poverty. Following on from the work done by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) and the recent work done by the Government’s adviser on social mobility, Alan Milburn, I believe that the really important thing to do is ensure that when we target child poverty we recognise not only an income measure but access to quality services. That is why it is so important that we make sure that more child care places are available and that those places have people of high quality and good qualifications supporting children to do better.

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

T2. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the announcement that further education colleges are to be reclassified as private rather than public bodies demonstrates the genuine progress that the Government have made to free colleges from unnecessary central control?

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

Yes, and I have a letter here confirming what my hon. Friend said: the Government have achieved what we set out to do, which was to free further education and sixth-form colleges from unnecessary intervention. The Office for National Statistics decision provides a resounding confirmation of our success in that regard. We are seeing colleges that are trusted, free, ambitious and, at last, treated as grown up.

[Mr Speaker]

We are all deeply grateful to the Minister of State.

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

T7. May I welcome today’s decision by the Secretary of State to allocate £2.7 million to English Heritage to encourage schoolchildren to access local history sites, which is often the best way of helping young people to understand history? Does he now regret the Government’s decision to slash English Heritage’s funding by one third and the absurd decision to leave Stoke-on-Trent, the birthplace of the industrial revolution, off the list of pathfinder sites?

[Michael Gove]

Funding for English Heritage is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport. I have never known him to make a wrong decision in his life, so I cannot imagine that he has done anything other than find the funding that English Heritage requires in order to do its superb job even better. As for Stoke, I have a confession to make. The hon. Gentleman invited me to the potteries and I welshed on the deal. I would love to come to Stoke, because I am a huge fan of that city and its contribution to our industrial heritage, and of the way in which he has championed its role as a model both of how we can improve education and of urban regeneration.

[Mr Speaker]

I think that the Secretary of State meant “reneged” rather than “welshed”.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

T4. Does the Minister agree that the National Audit Office report’s conclusion that supporting apprenticeships, such as through the excellent Beartown apprenticeship scheme in my constituency, which partners schools, local businesses, the chamber of commerce and Plus Dane, can generate a return of £18 for every £1 invested? Does that not confirm the Government’s wisdom of putting apprenticeships at the heart of vocational learning?

[Mr Hayes]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for highlighting that fact. As she says, the NAO report, which I have with me, is absolutely clear: for every £1 we spend on apprenticeships, we get a return of £18. Can you think of any aspect of Government policy that represents better value for money than that, Mr Speaker?

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

T8. To be topical, just a moment ago the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), rightly pointed out the importance of the English baccalaureate in encouraging young people at secondary school to learn modern languages. In order to gain the baccalaureate, young people also have to do well in maths, science and a humanities subject—history or geography. Why not also include religious education as a possible subject here?

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

There has been a large written campaign about religious education and I should make the point that we regard RE as a very important part of the curriculum, as it provides a rigorous subject. However, its study is compulsory until 16 and we were concerned that if we had included it as part of the humanities element, weaker schools would have dropped history or geography and focused only on RE. We want a broad and balanced curriculum taught in our schools, including not only a humanities subject, such as history and geography, but RE.

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

T3. The National Audit Office’s conclusions about apprenticeships are very welcome indeed, but can the Minister assure the House that young people who live in truly rural areas are also benefiting from the scheme?

[Mr Hayes]

My own constituency is one of those truly rural areas—true in every respect—that have benefited. In my constituency, the figure is 86%, in Banbury 33%, in Suffolk Coastal 56% and in Mid Norfolk 59%—across rural Britain, apprenticeships are growing.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State and the whole House will recognise the deprivation in Newham, Tower Hamlets, Haringey and Hackney. Why, then, has the Secretary of State decided to give more money in his pupil premium to Oxfordshire, Surrey and Devon?

[Michael Gove]

We have not. The pupil premium goes to every child eligible for free school meals and is allocated precisely according to need.

[Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (Con)]

T5. During a recent visit to a primary school in Clacton, the head teacher raised with me her concerns about Department for Education guidelines issued in March 2005 on the administration of non-prescription drugs by teachers to those in their care. The guidelines appear to rule out, for example, giving a paracetamol to a child in need of a paracetamol. Is that really the case? It does not seem very common sense or very big society.

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point and I must pay tribute to the trade unions, who have been raising, in a similar tone to my hon. Friend, their perplexity that some of the rules and regulations about the administration of medicines are simply too bureaucratic.

May I also thank you, Mr Speaker, for correcting my vocab earlier? I would hate to be thought guilty of Cymryphobia, especially as someone married to a Welsh girl.

[Mr Speaker]

We are very grateful to the Secretary of State for that, for his knowledge and, indeed, for his pronunciation.

[Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Lab)]

Rochdale will get a real-terms increase of less than 1% in its early intervention grant in the next financial year, despite being 25th in the indices of deprivation. Surrey Heath, home to the Secretary of State, is the third least deprived area in the country, yet the local authority is getting a real-terms increase of 7.2%, the biggest of all local authorities. Will the Secretary of State explain to Rochdale people why that is the case when that funding is supposed to tackle deprivation?

[Michael Gove]

It is a fair point, but we are using the formula for allocating money designed by the Government so enthusiastically supported by the hon. Gentleman over 13 years.

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

T6. Will the Minister join me in welcoming the strong partnership working between MidKent college, based in my constituency, and the university of Greenwich, BAE Systems and the Royal Engineers to bring a university technical college to Medway?

[Michael Gove]

That sounds like a model of the type of collaboration between local government, industry and schools that we would like to promote and that we are happy to see flourishing under the coalition Government.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Warm words and policy documents—and even Latin—are useless if they are not backed by action. Does the Minister consider that local authorities that have cut youth services completely are providing a sufficient service and, more important, what is he going to do about it?

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

If the hon. Lady had been listening, she would know that I have said exactly what we are doing about it. We are issuing a consultation in the next two weeks based on the findings that we have had back from youth services, youth workers and voluntary youth organisations. What matters—as I made clear, and as I hope she will agree—is what young people are saying and their experiences. We are giving them the power and the voice to be able to assess and audit their local youth offer, wherever it comes from, and that is a really important development.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

T9. The Secretary of State will remember his visit to the wonderful Wellington academy, of which I am a governor. The Wellington academy is not eligible for the Teach First scheme, but we are very interested in setting up our own version of it. What advice could he give us?

[Michael Gove]

I was tempted to say, “Come up and see me sometime.” My hon. Friend and I should meet, because Teach First is expanding and it is expanding nationwide. We have tripled the funding for that admirable charity and the organisation received plaudits from all three major parties in their election manifestos. We want to ensure that schools that serve very challenging areas, as that academy does, benefit from the superb work done by the organisation.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

Students who have taken the English baccalaureate and been successful do not understand why they cannot have some acknowledgment of that success in the form of a certificate. The Department for Education website states:

“We are not currently issuing certificates. We are examining possible arrangements for issuing certificates and will confirm decisions in due course.”

Can the Secretary of State tell me when that decision is likely to be made, because students in Stockport would welcome the opportunity to have a certificate?

[Michael Gove]

I am very grateful for the hon. Lady’s support for the English baccalaureate. We are talking to schools about how we can best recognise those students who succeed in the baccalaureate and generally.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

Given the importance of the UK science base to our innovation economy, does the Minister agree that we need to do all we can to support basic science learning in the curriculum and to inspire our young scientists through industry? Will he join me in welcoming the Sir Isaac Newton maths and science free school in Norfolk and my campaign for a Norfolk science day to bring industrial researchers together with our teachers?

[Michael Gove]

Yes, I have to say that Miss Rachel de Souza, the head teacher of the Ormiston Victory academy, who I understand is behind this initiative, is a visionary school leader. I absolutely agree that we need to do more to recognise how we can encourage mathematical and scientific learning among young people. The model of the 16-to-18 maths free schools, with which Ormiston Victory academy is engaging, is one of many ways of encouraging that helpful trend.

[Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)]

In respect of the report of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) on early intervention, do the Government accept that progress in education and the putting into place of their plan in response could be undermined if there are not sufficient assessments in the health service? Can we look forward to greater integration?

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

Making sure that services join together properly is absolutely key to getting early intervention right. That is precisely why we are rolling out 4,200 extra health visitors and making sure that they work very closely with Sure Start children’s centres. That is really critical. Similarly, the work we are doing on reforming the early years foundation stage, making sure there is more information available to parents, and the check at two and a half-years will really help with all the points the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned.

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

I welcome the reforms to reduce the amount of paperwork that teachers have to complete, but may I ask the Secretary of State to focus particularly on newly qualified teachers? The amount of paperwork they have to complete in that first year is putting good entrants off joining this important profession.

[Michael Gove]

That is a typically acute point from my hon. Friend. We are seeking to reform initial teacher training at the moment to make sure that there is more practical, hands-on experience of the classroom and that we reward high-flying graduates who want to enter the noblest of professions.

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

Could the Minister tell the House how many civil servants at the Department for Education are working on the introduction of free schools?

[Michael Gove]

About 100. I popped into the Department on Saturday to see them as many had chosen, voluntarily, to work over the weekend. It is often the case in newspapers and elsewhere that criticism is directed towards public servants and public service, but the fact that people chose, of their own free will to come in and work to ensure that new schools could be established in areas of deprivation was for me an inspiration. It made me proud of the fact that I am the Secretary of State in a Department that has so many brilliant people working for it.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

The number of apprentices in the north-east has gone up from 18,000 to 34,000 in my area. I added one when I became the first MP to employ an apprentice in my Hexham office. What more can the Minister responsible for apprenticeships do to encourage others, including MPs, to take on apprentices?

[Mr Hayes]

The answer is simple: we must evangelise the case for apprenticeships with all our might and power. It is about numbers but it is about standards too. I draw my hon. Friend’s attention to our actions to raise standards, get small businesses involved and let people know that all this is good for apprentices, good for businesses and good for Britain.

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have been contacted by one of my constituents who adopted a child from care. She faces losing the only support she gets from the state—her child benefit. Given that the Secretary of State wants more people to adopt children from care and that they often have many needs that are ongoing for X number of years, will he put aside more money to support such children and their families in the years ahead?

[Michael Gove]

That is a very good point. One thing we are looking at is how we can improve support for parents who do the right thing and adopt. We are looking at a range of ways of doing that. We are also looking at ways in which everything from the schools admissions system to the training of social workers can help to support those parents who are doing such a fantastic job by adopting children.

[Mr Don Foster (Bath) (LD)]

I have previously raised concerns about the way in which creativity and culture are being squeezed out of our schools. Tomorrow, in an attempt to resolve that problem, the Henley report into cultural education will be published. Will it get the Department’s full support and the funding needed for its implementation?

[Michael Gove]

I do not want to upstage the curtain call tomorrow at the Royal Opera House for the Henley report, and our response to it is being launched. However, with your permission, Mr Speaker, may I just say that Darren Henley has produced a fantastic report? The leadership shown by the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), has been fantastic. The leadership shown by the Arts Council England, English Heritage and a variety of other groups that are interested in enriching the cultural life of the nation has also been wonderful. I am looking forward to the launch of the report, and I know that the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster) has played a significant part behind the scenes in making it so good.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

rose—

[Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Time is against us, but I want to call someone who has not asked a question. I have a choice of two. I know the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) will forgive me on this occasion. I call Jessica Lee.

[Jessica Lee]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Will my right hon. Friend congratulate all those at Long Eaton school in Erewash on the recent opening of the Malcolm Parry observatory? It is exactly the sort of innovative project that will encourage budding scientists of the future, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend would like to give his seal of approval.

[Michael Gove]

Not only would I like to give my seal of approval, but I hope to visit Long Eaton before too long.

Petition

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

Fiona O'Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)

- Hansard - - Excerpts

I am delighted to have the opportunity to present this petition on UK aid on behalf of my constituents. The signatures were gathered mainly through local churches, and I particularly wish to thank Rev. Robin Hill from Longniddry and Gladsmuir parish churches for his support.

The petition states:

The Petition of citizens of the United Kingdom,

Declares that while around the world UK aid has already made an enormous difference in helping people lift themselves out of poverty, we must not stop now.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to enshrine in law their commitment to spending 0.7% of national income on aid by 2013.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.

[P001009]

Points of Order

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

15:35

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

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You might have seen in the past few weeks exchanges between the Prime Minister and me regarding the need for a stalking law. I chaired a parliamentary inquiry in which all parties were represented and whose membership was drawn from both Houses of Parliament. The report, which is evidence-based and has some firm conclusions, was available in the Vote Office until last week, when the authorities said the copies should be taken down and no longer offered to Members of Parliament. How can I ensure the widest possible readership of this very important document? I want it to be read from Tydweiliog to Twickenham—I think it is vital that everyone reads it. Where can I display it for that purpose?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order and for notice of it. As I know he, as an experienced Member, will readily understand, the reports of all-party parliamentary groups are not official papers of the House. The Vote Office stocks only official papers and, very occasionally, other documents directly relevant to a debate on the Order Paper.

The right hon. Gentleman says that he wishes to make his report more widely known. May I politely suggest that he has just very effectively started to achieve his objective? If he wishes to e-mail the said document to all Members, I suspect that there will be an eager audience, and for my part I will be at or close to the head of the queue.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Will you look again at the decision by the House of Commons Commission to charge people for going up Clock Tower to see Big Ben, which would cost a family of four up to £60? Are there not other ways of saving money, such as not publishing Hansard and other publications daily, but instead publishing them online? Will you please look at this again, so that we ensure that we are a Parliament for the many, not the few?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order and for his courtesy in giving me notice of it. I am bound to say at the outset that this is not a point of order about proceedings of the House; nevertheless, he has raised the point in good faith and it warrants a response.

It would of course be unthinkable to charge members of the public for access to the proceedings of the House and its Committees, or to meet their Members of Parliament. However, Clock Tower tours are special tours, allowing access to an area of the Palace that, realistically, cannot be open to all. The charges agreed by the House of Commons Commission are set at a level that will cover the costs—I emphasise: cover the costs—of providing the tours. No profit will be made. I hope that that reassures the hon. Gentleman, but if he wishes to pursue the matter further my advice to him is that he should in the first instance take it up with the Chair of the Finance and Services Committee.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You will be aware that on 12 January this House passed unanimously a motion relating to pub companies that called for the Government to commission a review of self-regulation of the pub industry in autumn this year, to be conducted by an independent body approved by the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee. In a response to a written question, I have been informed by the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), that the Government propose to ignore the will of the House. Is it in order for the Government to vote in favour of something and then act in entirely the opposite way? What is the point in having votable Back-Bench motions if the Government are going to agree to one thing in debate and do the polar opposite afterwards?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order, and for giving me notice of it. The question of taking action in these circumstances, consequent upon a debate and vote, is a matter for the Government; it is not a matter for the Chair. There are, however, other courses open to the hon. Gentleman, and I know that those at the Table in front of me and in the Table Office will be ready to advise him. Indeed, unless my eyes deceive me, he has already availed himself of that course of action. I hope that he will persevere with that approach, and I feel sure that if he is not satisfied I will hear from him again.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you for that endorsement. I do not know whether you still read The Daily Telegraph, but page 4 of today’s edition states:

“Theresa May, the Home Secretary, will announce new rules this week meaning migrants working in the UK must earn at least £35,000 a year if they want to stay longer than five years.”

If that is the case, it represents a significant change in public policy that we would all expect to have been announced to this House first, rather than to the national newspapers. That is bad enough, but I understand from two journalists that the Home Office is preparing a briefing session on this policy for journalists tomorrow, which will be embargoed until Wednesday morning so that it can appear in the Wednesday newspapers and be discussed on the Wednesday morning television programmes, before the House of Commons has an opportunity to question Ministers. Will you investigate this matter, Mr Speaker, and ensure that Ministers at the Home Office are not shy and careless about coming to the House and that they come here first? We should know about these matters before the newspapers do.

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I read a variety of newspapers, but I have not read the story to which he refers. Embargoed press briefings are not a new phenomenon, although they do carry considerable dangers. The Government are well aware of my view, which I have reiterated on innumerable occasions, that major policy announcements should not be made public before they have been reported to this House by way of a statement or, conceivably, by other means. I will reflect on what the hon. Gentleman has said about what might be planned for tomorrow, and I suggest that all those potentially engaged in the activity to which he has referred should reflect very carefully upon it between now and then. I hope that that is clear and helpful.

Estimates Day

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[4th Allotted Day]

Vote on Account 2012-13

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

Olympics and Paralympics (Funding)

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Relevant Documents: The oral evidence taken by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on 14 and 21 December 2010, HC 689-i and -ii, 17 May 2011, HC 689-iii, 15 November 2011, HC 689-iv, and 24 January 2012, HC 689-v.]

Motion made, and Question proposed,

That, for the year ending with 31 March 2013, for expenditure by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport—

(1) resources, not exceeding £2,705,167,000, be authorised, on account, for use for current purposes as set out in HC 1756,

(2) resources, not exceeding £390,871,000, be authorised, on account, for use for capital purposes as so set out, and

(3) a sum, not exceeding £2,660,065,000, be granted to Her Majesty to be issued by the Treasury out of the Consolidated Fund, on account, and applied for expenditure on the use of resources authorised by Parliament.—(Mr Dunne.)

15:43

[Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for this opportunity to debate the funding of the Olympics and Paralympics, although I hope that you will be generous in allowing us to examine the wider benefits that will flow from the funding of the Olympics.

It is now nearly seven years since the day on which it was declared that London would be the host city for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games, and I suspect that almost everyone will remember where they were and their reaction when the news was announced. It was undoubtedly fantastic news for Britain, and it was rightly celebrated, but I think that quite a lot of us also thought, “Oh dear, what do we do next?” One of the things that the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, which I chair, decided to do was to hold regular sessions to monitor and scrutinise the work being done to prepare for the greatest sporting event that this country has held. Over the past seven years we have held annual sessions with the chairmen and chief executives of the Olympic Delivery Authority and the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games and with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport—first the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell) and now my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Mr Hunt).

It is worth observing at this point that one of the striking things about the policy towards and preparation for the Olympics is that not only did London’s bid enjoy cross-party support from the start, but in all the time since it was announced as the host city, despite occasional, small differences across the Chamber, which were inevitable, in the main both parties have worked well together. Certainly, I believe that my party did what it could to support the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood when she was Secretary of State, and since then she has worked with us to ensure that the preparations go ahead smoothly and are not marred by partisanship or political point scoring. We have now—[Interruption.] I am reminded by a cough that that applies not just to the two main parties. I pay tribute to the support and work throughout the entire seven-year period of the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster), who has been a stalwart on behalf of the Liberal Democrats.

We are now only 151 days away from the start of the games, so it seems an opportune moment to debate the progress that has been made and how close we now are and to focus, in particular, on what we hope to achieve by hosting them. Inevitably, attention initially focused very much on questions of funding and how we would afford to pay for the games. Indeed, there was some anxiety about whether we could finish the work in time for the games—something that has caused concern for previous host cities.

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

One of the concerns, if not of many Members of the House, then of many people outside it, is that very little attention seems to have been paid at the beginning to how much this would all cost. Various figures were bandied around at that juncture, and £2.5 billion was suggested as the cost of the overall package. I accept that it is good that we have the games and that there is unity across the House about that, but it is equally important that there is an open debate on funding and other related issues, particularly the question of whether there will be the legacy we all hope for in that part of east London, which we will not have a definite answer to for at least another decade. One of the concerns at the outset—of course, that was a very different economic time—was that there was very little scrutiny of the whole funding issue.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Notwithstanding the fact that the hon. Gentleman speaks for two cities, as opposed to a smaller area, a degree of economy when intervening from now on would be appreciated.

[Mr Whittingdale]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I do not want to disagree with him, but although he may well be right that perhaps insufficient attention was paid to funding outside in the wider world, I can assure him that the Select Committee paid close attention to it. I will deal with that in more detail, as it is the prime focus of the debate.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The previous Select Committee, on which I served, spent a great deal of time trying to examine the finances and on one specific issue: transport in London. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that many people in London will be extremely irate if the special lanes that are set aside for International Olympic Committee and Olympic traffic are used by Ministers and others seeking to have an easier time of it in a very difficult city and that it would be best if people avoided such conflicts of interest?

[Mr Whittingdale]

I agree that transport is going to be one of the great challenges, and it is one to which I shall refer and about which, I suspect, other Members will want to talk. I agree also that the reserved lanes have the potential to cause a great deal of irritation to people sitting stationary in traffic jams next door to them. I am sure that it is something my hon. Friend the Minister for Sport and the Olympics, too, is keenly aware of, and he may wish to speak about it when he responds later.

[Mark Field]

On that related point, sensibly most people recognise that there are huge security issues around the Olympic games that mean that Heads of State and Ministers will need to be looked after. The bigger concern that I have, unlike the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), is that a whole lot of flunkeys, hangers-on, junior people with the International Olympic Committee and sponsors are going to get that VIP treatment, when there is no necessity for the security to which I refer.

[Mr Whittingdale]

My hon. Friend brings up the other issue that is causing some anxiety, security, which I am sure we will discuss as well. To a certain extent, the IOC rules, which have proven to be quite challenging in several different aspects throughout our preparation for the games, dictate some of the issues, but again I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will want to discuss that.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

The Public Accounts Committee examined all the finances. People do not mind so much the cost or the special lanes; the thing that really irritates them—what they are fed up with and I am fed up with—is that we applied for tickets but none of us got any bloody tickets! They are all going to the flunkeys and corporate people, so what is the Minister going to do about that?

[Mr Whittingdale]

The third issue, besides transport and security, that I was going to and, indeed, still intend to come on to, is ticketing, which I understand has caused some irritation as well. In that particular regard, however, LOCOG was in an appallingly difficult situation, which I shall come to in greater detail in due course. It was going to be criticised almost whichever way it played the situation.

[Mark Field]

Without wishing to pre-empt a fourth issue, which may come up as well, I just want to say briefly on security that we all recognise that events within 24 hours of our winning the bid in July 2005 meant that the security situation was going to be very different. Although I have, and have long had, concerns about the burgeoning funds for the Olympic games, I recognise equally that we are in a different security position, which therefore inevitably has a cost implication well beyond that which we anticipated back in July 2005.

[Mr Whittingdale]

One of the extraordinary things about how much has been achieved in preparation is that the world is different in quite a number of ways from that of 2005. My hon. Friend is entirely right that the security picture has changed enormously and, I am afraid, for the worse, so it has required much more attention, but the other big change is the economic climate, and many funding issues have been influenced by the fact that the Olympic facilities have had to be built in the teeth of a severe global recession. That has also proved very difficult. One thing that we discovered in talking to previous organisers of Olympic games was that several could not have done so had their work coincided with a recession as deep as the one that we have experienced.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Whittingdale]

I give way to my colleague, the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee.

[Keith Vaz]

I commend the work of the hon. Gentleman’s Committee over several years. He knows that 10,000 athletes will be guarded by 40,000 police officers and security agents, but during his deliberations was he satisfied that the 23,000 private security agents who are going to be involved had been properly trained to deal with the situation?

[Mr Whittingdale]

My understanding was that 23,000 was the figure for the number of security personnel, of whom a substantial proportion will be from the armed forces, but the Minister may be able to explain.

[The Minister for Sport and the Olympics (Hugh Robertson)]

I shall clear that one up straight away: 23,700 is the total man-guarding number. That comes from four sources: one is an additional commitment from the military here—from our own armed forces—of about 7,500; there is a contribution from the private sector, from G4S; there is a contribution from volunteers; and, finally, there is a contribution from a scheme called Bridging the Gap. That solution—let me give the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) complete assurance on this issue—was felt to be much less risky than looking for the entire balance from the private sector, and that was one of the key drivers behind the announcement that we made in December.

[Mr Whittingdale]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for putting the precise position on the record. However, I am sure that we will come on to debate security at great length, and I want to say a little more about the cost of the games and how it is to be met, which is the area that we focused on to begin with.

The candidature file that was submitted to the IOC originally stated that the cost of staging the games would be £1.5 billion, and once inflation was taken into account that figure increased to an estimated £2 billion. That has largely remained unchanged. The current budget for staging the games is £2.16 billion, 36% of which will come from the IOC, 18% from sponsorship, 20% from ticket sales and 12% from official suppliers. The budget has just about been raised in its entirety, and there is left within it a contingency of £93 million, with risks identified of £88 million. The headroom left in the budget is pretty small; indeed, it was described by the chief executive of LOCOG as being very “finely balanced”. Nevertheless, the Government have so far indicated that they hope that the cost will come in within that figure—understandably, since they will have to fill the gap should it overshoot.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

How much will be spent on the two opening ceremonies and two closing ceremonies, and how many billions of people around the world does the hon. Gentleman estimate will watch them on television?

[Mr Whittingdale]

We examined the Secretary of State on the fact that the Government have doubled the budget for the opening ceremony. That has been subject to some criticism, because these are not easy times and a substantial amount of money—£80 million, I believe—is being put in. Nevertheless, as the hon. Gentleman rightly observes, the occasion will probably achieve almost the greatest global television audience ever recorded, and all those people will be looking at London. This is a huge opportunity for us, and I therefore think it right that we should put on a pretty good show.

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

It is also important to recognise the contribution of partnership organisations. In Medway, the Olympic training centre for two countries cost £11 million, and its funding process will be supported by the university of Kent, the council and Sport England.

[Mr Whittingdale]

My hon. Friend makes a good point in indicating the benefits to his area. One of the challenges, which we have spent some time considering, is how the benefits of our hosting the games can be felt outside London, as the whole country should gain from it. His example of what is happening in Medway is a good illustration of that.

[Mr Don Foster (Bath) (LD)]

Returning to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell), does the Chairman of the Select Committee agree that spending roughly £80 million on a total of four major events—two opening and two closing ceremonies—will be seen by 4 billion people around the world as good value for money? Is he aware that Martin Sorrell has said that were we to pay for that sort of advertising, it would cost £5 billion?

[Mr Whittingdale]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. As I said, although perhaps not as eloquently as he did, that is my view as well. This is a unique opportunity. The alternative—that we put on a poor show that was watched around the entire world—would be so damaging that it is right that we invest in it and make sure that we get it right. I am confident that, under the leadership of Danny Boyle, that is exactly what we will achieve. As I said, the budget for the staging of the games will be tight, but I hope that it can be achieved without cost to the taxpayer. Our initial hopes proved to be rather less accurate as regards the cost of building the facilities. The original candidature file put the cost of preparing for the games at £3.4 billion, of which £2.375 billion was to be spent by the Olympic Delivery Authority. In March 2007, the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood came to the House and said that the public sector funding package would actually be £9.325 billion.

[Tessa Jowell (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman will also recall that when I came to the House in May 2005, before we went to Singapore, I made it clear that in the event of our winning the games, a complete review of the budget would have to be undertaken because of a number of uncertainties, such as the VAT status, the degree of contamination at the site and the extent of our regeneration ambitions. We made that review between 2005 and 2007. The budget as I published it in 2007 remains the budget.

[Mr Whittingdale]

Indeed it does. I was not seeking to criticise the right hon. Lady, but merely making an observation. She is right that one of the two main reasons given for the increase was that, rather surprisingly, VAT had been left out of the original calculation and there was some uncertainty over that.

[Tessa Jowell]

May I just deal with that point, which is tediously technical? When we compiled the budget, the status of the delivery organisation had not been settled. The definition of status could have placed the delivery authority on one side or the other of liability for VAT. If it had been, in effect, a local authority, it would not have been liable for VAT. It was judged not to be a proxy body for a local authority and was therefore liable for VAT. That was not clear until, having won the bid, we were able to nail down the role and function of the delivery authority.

[Mr Speaker]

We are now clear.

[Mr Whittingdale]

I recall having that debate with the right hon. Lady in the Select Committee at the time.

The other element that increased the budget dramatically was the inclusion of the programme contingency. The Select Committee spent some time examining that, because we discovered that the £2.7 billion programme contingency came on top of the contingencies that were built into each of the individual projects. That resulted in an overall contingency within the £9.3 billion budget of £3.5 billion. We observed that that was extraordinarily large. As it happens, it will almost all be spent.

To some extent, the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood was correct in setting, right at the start, the budget with a substantial contingency, which we all hoped would not be spent, rather than having to come back and increase the budget each time. There is no doubt that there would have been far more adverse publicity if the budget had gone up every single year. The then Government decided—I do not criticise them for this—to set a substantial budget with a large contingency right at the beginning, with the expectation, I imagine, that there was no possibility that it could be overrun. As it is, it will be pretty close, but I hope that the budget will be met.

[Hugh Robertson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Although it is not for me to defend the previous Government, it is worth balancing what he says by saying that the money that was expected to come from the private sector for the athletes’ village and the broadcast and media centre was not forthcoming because of the financial situation. Despite the fact that everything he says is correct, it should be balanced by the fact that the Government are already in receipt of money for the sale of the athletes’ village and will, I hope, in due course be in receipt of money for the broadcast and media centre.

[Mr Whittingdale]

My hon. Friend anticipates me. I was going to say that the clear reason why the contingency has been spent to a far greater extent than we had originally hoped was that the private sector contribution to the athletes’ village and the media centre simply failed to materialise and had to be met from the public purse. Recouping some of that money through future sales is still an issue of some interest to us, and I hope that the Minister might be in a position to say more about it.

There was always a degree of controversy about the extent to which the financing of the facilities would have to be met out of national lottery funding, and the impact that that would have on the lottery’s ability to fund projects in the rest of the country. We were always very clear that if the lottery was to meet a substantial part of the bill for hosting the Olympics, it would inevitably be less able to fund a lot of worthwhile projects elsewhere, and that some causes would therefore not get the funding that they otherwise deserved. For that reason, we expressed the hope that should the contingency not be fully spent, it could be given back to the national lottery. As it transpires, that will not be possible.

I still very much hope that even though the National Audit Office has expressed concern, the funding package will prove just about sufficient to meet all the costs. I am sure the Minister will want to say a few words about that if he is fortunate enough to catch your eye, Mr Speaker. I believe it is fair to say that it will be very tight. The NAO’s last estimate identified a residual risk of something between £127 million and £999 million, with the most likely risk being £318 million, to be met out of the remaining contingency of £354 million. That would leave 0.39% of the budget unspent, so I am afraid the national lottery will not get much from that source.

The Committee identified that future receipts from land sales could be used to compensate the national lottery, and the Government included such a provision in the funding agreement. That is still intended, I hope, to raise £675 million. Perfectly understandably, the Minister is reluctant to give a firm guarantee about that, given the uncertainty about the price of land, but I hope he shares my hope that that can be achieved.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the House should not regularly follow the precedent of sequestering money from the national lottery, since it is not general taxation, and that the lottery should be independent of the House? Does he therefore agree that it is important that the lottery is recompensed as much as possible for the funds that it put into the project?

[Mr Whittingdale]

Yes, I basically do agree with my hon. Friend, but the financing of the Olympics seemed to me a legitimate use of lottery funding, because it is a sporting event and that was one of the four good causes that the lottery was originally established to fund.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the area of east London that the money in question is helping to regenerate was in desperate need, and that if we had not had the Olympics, the regeneration of that area may have taken decades more? Does he agree that the economic development of an area that was quite blighted is a wider and possibly more important issue than reimbursing the lottery?

[Mr Whittingdale]

I completely accept the hon. Lady’s point. Indeed, that was one of the principal motivations for making the bid in the first place, and the Olympics will plainly have a dramatic effect on the area. A number of members of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee visited the Olympic park in January, and it is absolutely extraordinary. The sporting facilities are world class, and I hope that they will have a lasting benefit and bring up the whole area in the way that she describes.

[Mr Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South) (Lab)]

As the then Sports Minister, I was able to go to Beijing, and one thing that concerned me was whether London could compare with what went on there. Having visited them, I know that the aquatics centre and velodrome are fantastic facilities. Indeed, I would go as far as to say that they are perhaps better than those in Beijing, so I believe that we have got value for money for the investment that was put in.

[Mr Whittingdale]

I do not know whether Beijing has ever published a final figure of the amount that it spent, but I think it is safe to say that it was rather greater than the amount that we will spend. That makes the hon. Gentleman’s point even stronger. I agree with him that some of the facilities that we saw when we went to the park are just as good as, if not better than, anything in Beijing. I heard the figure of £20 billion rumoured as the cost of the Beijing games, but I do not know whether that is entirely accurate.

[Mark Field]

While we are still talking about funding, I should like to endorse what the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) said. It would be a missed opportunity if, in an effort to reimburse the national lottery fund, we were to lose moneys that would otherwise go to regeneration. That is their raison d’être in that part of London for the next 10 years.

May I say to the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) that the independence of the lottery has long since been lost? The Big Lottery Fund, which was introduced under the previous Government, means that lottery funding goes, to a large extent, outside those main causes. It is also true that we put a significant amount of money into the millennium fund in advance of 2000. In many ways, that head was transferred into Olympic funding.

[Mr Whittingdale]

Indeed, although I would hope that one achievement of my hon. Friend the Minister will be restoring the lottery to its original purpose and putting the proceeds to the original good causes rather than to some of the causes that my hon. Friend rightly identifies.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is being very generous with his time. Surely he recognises the unhappiness that exists in places such as Perthshire and poor places such as inner-city Glasgow at the diversion of lottery funding and at the siphoning off of money from grass-roots sports organisations and good causes. This was probably not the best day for the national lottery or the best way to pay for the Olympics.

Mr Whittingdale: I believe that about 20% of the budget is coming from the lottery, which is a reasonably small amount. I also believe that that is a legitimate use. It is not fair to say that Scotland will receive no benefit—there will be benefits around the country. We can also look forward to the Commonwealth games, which I hope will be beneficial to Scotland in due course.

[Rehman Chishti]

rose—

[Mr Foster]

rose—

[Mr Whittingdale]

I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) and then to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bath, but I probably should make progress at some point.

[Rehman Chishti]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way to me a second time. Does he agree that the initial costs could prove in the long term to be a saving to the state, because the sports legacy of the Olympics could deal with health inequalities?

[Mr Whittingdale]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right in his aspiration, although he identifies probably the hardest challenge for the Olympics to achieve.

[Mr Foster]

I apologise to the Chairman of the Committee for intervening a second time. Will he ensure that we have very clearly on the record the situation regarding the take from the lottery and good causes? He will recall that the previous Government initially wanted to take around £1.5 billion from the national lottery. There was a lot of concern about that, but they later requested a further £675 million. Many people were concerned about that further request, and it was agreed that that the additional £675 million would be returned. Will he therefore remind the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) that £1.5 billion of lottery money has gone in to help him and will not be repaid?

[Mr Whittingdale]

My right hon. Friend is entirely right and I am grateful to him for spelling out the detail. That is exactly why the £675 million was identified.

It has rightly been said that legacy is the most important issue facing us. In the course of the Committee’s monitoring of preparations, we have visited a number of previous Olympic cities. In the past seven years, we have been to Athens, Barcelona, Seoul, Munich and Beijing, and have talked to the organisers of the Sydney and Los Angeles games. It is fair to say that none has achieved a successful, lasting legacy. Some cities have achieved some aspects, but the challenge for London was always to succeed where other cities had not.

The first challenge, which is obviously of interest to the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), is on the facilities in east London. The Secretary of State told the House recently that six of the eight facilities now have identified tenants and uses, which leaves two. They are the two that have proved the most difficult—the stadium and the media centre. I suspect that we cannot yet say any more about how those two facilities should be used, but obviously the stadium is an extraordinarily expensive facility, and it is important that it is not just used for the Olympics and Paralympics and that we find future uses for it. All the members of the Committee who went to Athens and saw the grass growing out of the tarmac in the Olympic stadium came back determined to avoid such a thing here. I hope that the Minister will talk about that.

The other issue, which my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham rightly raised, is the harder task of creating a sporting legacy. Seb Coe, when he originally made the pitch, concentrated on the need to use the Olympics to inspire young people across the country to want to take up sport. The Government have not sustained the 1 million target, but nevertheless I welcome the Places People Play programme and the extra funding given to it. We are most anxious that when young people, watching inspirational sportsmen winning medals in whatever discipline on the television, think, “I’d like to take up that sport”, they should find it easy to do so. It is terribly important that we support local sports clubs, schools and sporting facilities right across the country, so that those facilities are there and we can get that immediate benefit from the inspiration that the games will undoubtedly bring to people.

I will quickly touch on three areas that my hon. Friends the Members for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) and for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field), in particular, have mentioned. As I suggested to my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough, ticketing was always going to be difficult. LOCOG could either have pitched ticket prices at such a level that anyone who wanted one would have been likely to get one, in which case it would have been criticised for setting prices too high, or it could have done what it did, which was to set prices at such a level that they were within the reach of most people, but as was entirely predictable, I suppose, demand massively outstripped supply.

[Mike Weatherley (Hove) (Con)]

As my hon. Friend will be aware, ticketing raised £527 million up to December 2011, and could have raised considerably more had it been based on a free-market approach. Given that the model of secondary ticketing has been banned in the Olympics and given the inspirational nature of the Olympics and other cultural and sporting events, does he agree that the same model should be considered for other events too?

[Mr Whittingdale]

My hon. Friend tempts me on to another topic that has occupied the Select Committee for hours and on which I could speak for some time, but I suspect that you might interrupt me, Mr Speaker, if I strayed too far from ticketing. However, my hon. Friend makes a valid point.

[Mr Leigh]

I was not making that point. I said that the public do not understand—I am sure that my hon. Friend can reassure me on this—why, given that the taxpayer has paid for it all, so many tickets are being taken by the corporate people. That is what we cannot understand.

[Mr Whittingdale]

One reason is that financing and staging the games, which was not a cost to the public purse, required the attraction of sponsors, in which we have been very successful. However, that required that the corporate sponsors derived some benefit, and that was always going to include tickets.

[Hugh Robertson]

rose—

[Mr Whittingdale]

My hon. Friend will be able to provide greater detail.

[Hugh Robertson]

Of the tickets available, 75% across the piece were available to the general public. That is a far higher percentage than has ever been available at any other games. Of the remaining 25%, 8% are available to sponsors, in their many different forms—corporate and government. In return, the private sector has provided more than £700 million of private sponsorship. That is a pretty fair deal.

[Mr Whittingdale]

I am grateful to the Minister for supplying the figures that I did not have but which strongly demonstrate why this was necessary. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough that the 20,000 people who applied in the first and second rounds of ticket sales but failed to get any will be given priority over the remaining 1 million tickets about to go on sale. If he happens to be one of those who has been unsuccessful, he stands a good chance should he apply again.

[Mr Leigh]

I shall hold the Minister personally responsible.

[Mr Whittingdale]

I may come to regret giving that guarantee.

I understand that this issue is a cause for concern, but LOCOG has done as much as it can to ensure that everybody who really wants to attend the games will have the opportunity to do so.

I do not want to spend a great deal more time speaking. I shall merely note the two big challenges, which have already been raised. The first is security, which we have talked about at some length. Obviously the climate has changed since the original budget was set, but the issue will always be a matter of some concern, and I am sure that the Minister will want to say something about it. The second challenge is transport, which I know has occupied the attention of the Government; indeed, it has also caused some concern to the Committee. Even if we achieve the target of reducing journeys on the part of commuters and businesses by 20% on the busiest days—asking people to change their habits to that extent is quite a demanding target—that will still, we are told, lead to half-hour delays in getting on tube trains at certain stations. That is a measure of the difficulty that the issue has caused. Indeed, if there is one issue that is causing the most anxiety to those responsible for preparing for the games, it is transport, so I am sure that the Minister will want to say a bit more about it.

[Lyn Brown]

rose—

[Mr Whittingdale]

I will give way for the last time.

[Lyn Brown]

I should say that I am off to a European Committee shortly, so I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the opportunity to get in quickly on the issue of transport. One of the biggest issues—which we are yet to resolve—for the community living around the stadium is which roads will be open and what special arrangements will be made for that community. Resolution of this issue is now desperately needed, and I hope that this afternoon’s debate might shed some light on that.

[Mr Whittingdale]

I am sure that the Minister has heard the hon. Lady’s point and will attempt to shed some light on it, if possible.

[Mark Field]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Whittingdale]

This really will be the last time.

[Mark Field]

My hon. Friend is very generous. Obviously there are concerns about what will happen with transport in July, August and September. However, it is also worth putting on record that it is greatly to the credit of the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell) and my hon. Friend the Minister that we have placed a lot of focus on getting the broader transport links in the area right. I hope that will augur extremely well for the legacy that we all wish for. There will be new docklands light railway stations and better transport in the area. I accept that there will be massive congestion during the Olympics, but those developments will stand us in good stead for the future.

[Mr Whittingdale]

I think what my hon. Friend says applies more generally. We hope not only that the London Olympic games and Paralympics will be a fantastic event that will be celebrated and enjoyed across this country and around the world, but that we will secure a lasting legacy that will certainly benefit east London and, I hope, people right across the country.

The Select Committee has inevitably concentrated on the areas of concern. We have identified where we think there could be problems and I hope we have done so in a way that has allowed them to be tackled. However, I congratulate the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood and her party, the right hon. Member for Bath—whom I could not leave out—and my colleagues on the Front Bench on the work that they have all done. In particular, I also congratulate both the Olympic Delivery Authority, which has done a fantastic job in building such world-class facilities on time and, we hope, within budget, and LOCOG, whose main job is still ahead, but which has nevertheless done a huge amount of impressive work. I look forward to the rest of the debate, but I look forward even more to a fantastic games in July and August.

16:19

[Simon Kirby (Brighton, Kemptown) (Con)]

On 27 July, many if not most of my 90,000 constituents will join the 4 billion or so people around the world who will be watching the Olympics. Brighton, with its strong heritage of culture, media and sports, will be particularly pleased that the world’s eye will be on London and Great Britain as a whole. To those who do not welcome the additional investment, I say this: what kind of opening ceremony should we produce? Should we produce a substandard one for the rest of the world to see? Or should we do our absolute best and ensure that London and Great Britain are put firmly on the map?

I congratulate the whole Olympics team and my right hon. and hon. Friends on delivering the games on budget and on time—a remarkable achievement, which I very much welcome.

[Rehman Chishti]

My hon. Friend congratulates the Government and other bodies on bringing the games here, but will he pay tribute to Sport England—an excellent and fantastic organisation, which has provided facilities and opportunities to some of the athletes who will be representing our country at the Olympics? At this point, I declare an interest as a parliamentary fellow for Sport England.

[Simon Kirby]

I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to what is an outstanding organisation.

I welcome the additional investment, and the UK can be proud of its success to date—and there can be no doubt that there has been considerable success to date. We can proud of what I am sure will be a fantastic games and proud of the legacy that the games will leave behind.

These Olympic and Paralympic games represent remarkable value for money, generating both financial benefits and other perhaps less tangible ones as well. The opening and closing ceremonies will be worth potentially £5 billion to the UK. When it comes to global promotion of our great capital city and our great country, this legacy of brand awareness will increase tourism and foreign business investment, which will sell the UK as a destination for many millions of people around the world. We have an interest in students from overseas looking at this brand—and I have to say that brand GB is great product and we should do all we can to sell it. Brand GB will have a huge knock-on effect for years to come. VisitBritain estimates that an additional 4.6 million visitors will visit this country over four years, creating 60,000 extra jobs and a spend of an additional £2.3 billion —a fantastic achievement.

Another part of the games legacy will be a physical legacy, with economic regeneration much needed in this part of east London. Jobs, businesses and money will be created, and the post-Olympic games has the potential to be every bit as exciting as the games themselves.

[Rehman Chishti]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way once again. He mentions the benefits for east London, but does he recognise that one of the great benefits of the Olympics will be through the sports centres that are being developed as training centres around the country? In Medway, for example, we have Medway park, where Senegal and the Republic of the Congo will be training. This is a socially and economically deprived area, so children from different backgrounds will be inspired to take part in sport.

[Simon Kirby]

As usual, my hon. Friend is right, and I suspect that very few parts of the country will be unaffected by the games. Many young people in Brighton and Peacehaven are involved with sport at a grass-roots level, and I believe the Olympics will act as a catalyst to increase participation and improve health up and down the country.

[Mike Weatherley]

Does my hon. Friend agree that just the sight of the torch going through places such as my constituency of Hove will inspire people?

[Simon Kirby]

I agree. I am sure the torch will light up Hove and act as a beacon for the Brighton and Hove area.

Incidentally, I spent some time this morning at the Meridian school in my constituency in connection with Brighton and Hove Albion’s excellent Albion in the Community project. Sport has always had an ability to reach across barriers and to communicate in a way that few things can equal. It is able to resonate with people of all ages. I welcome that aspect of the games, and of the funding that we are discussing.

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

Must we not ensure, however, that the inspiration and the benefits of the Olympics are experienced by every region of the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland?

[Simon Kirby]

I am sure that many people in every part of the United Kingdom will enjoy watching the games, either in person or on the television, or enjoy the economic benefits that will no doubt be experienced throughout the country. However, the hon. Gentleman makes a valuable point.

We should be very proud of our Olympics, because they are our Olympics. We should be proud to fly the flag for our country, and to advertise our nation. It was said in days gone by that the sun never set on the British empire. Our Olympic and Paralympic games will, I am sure, be a huge success, and their influence and impact will also shine around the world. These games will celebrate sport, they will celebrate competition, and, perhaps most important of all, they will celebrate our great country—as a great place to visit, a great place to invest, and a great place to study.

16:31

[Mr Don Foster (Bath) (LD)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby), who—like, I hope, many other Members—has been supporting the Olympics and the Paralympics, but in particular ensuring that his own constituency has an opportunity to gain a lasting legacy from them.

The Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), began his speech by saying that we probably all remembered exactly where we were at the moment when Jacques Rogge tore open the envelope and said “London”. I can tell the hon. Gentleman—in fact, he already knows—that I was in Singapore at the time, enjoying the celebrations. Even before we had won, there was a genuine cross-party consensus supporting first our bid, and subsequently all the work that has been undertaken to ensure that we experience—as I am absolutely certain we will—the most amazing cultural and sporting extravaganza in the Olympics and Paralympics later this year.

The reason the Liberal Democrats were especially keen to support the bid, and the work that has followed, was not particularly to do with a cultural and sporting extravaganza that would last for a few weeks. Our support was due to the fact that we truly believed that putting on such a fabulous show would provide a lasting benefit for every single part of the country, including Northern Ireland. I have often spoken in the Chamber about some of the things that have happened in the Olympics, but I want to say something now about the important work that is being done in Brighton and in many other places where local committees, under the umbrella of the Nations and Regions Group, have been planning activities that will ensure that there is a lasting legacy in their own communities.

[Sir Bob Russell]

I am delighted that my right hon. Friend can remember where he was when that announcement was made. So can I: I was in my office in the Upper Committee Corridor North.

If the Olympic games are to be the success that we wish them to be in all four nations of the United Kingdom and in the regions, they must, from the opening ceremony onwards, be more than London-centric.

[Mr Foster]

I disagree with my hon. Friend. He says that that should be the case from the start of the Olympics, but I believe that all parts of the country should be benefiting from them now, and should have been benefiting from them for some years. I am sure he is aware of the opportunities that have already been provided for building and other contracts, and of the opportunity for schools to benefit through the Get Set programme. He will also be aware of the opportunities offered by the volunteering programme, and of the opportunities for cultural organisations and activities in his constituency and elsewhere to get the Inspire mark. I entirely agree that it is important that the benefits come not only to London but to all parts of the country, but we should also make the point that these benefits should have already started and that we hope they will continue for a long time.

[Sir Bob Russell]

Perhaps I did not make myself clear. I endorse all those points, but it is essential, in the opening ceremonies, that the nations of the United Kingdom believe it is their Olympics, not just London’s.

[Mr Foster]

I am sure Mr Danny Boyle is listening with great interest to the entirety of this debate and that he will have taken on board my hon. Friend’s comments, with which I entirely concur.

The quarterly report of the Olympic and Paralympic games is due to be published tomorrow, and I am optimistic that the figures will show that we continue to be on course to ensure we are within budget and that the building work will be completed on time. LOCOG and the ODA have already done a fantastic amount of work, not only in building the theatre, but in getting the show ready to be put on.

[Rehman Chishti]

The hon. Gentleman talks about the Olympics and Paralympics. Linked to that, we also have the British transplant games this year, which allow people with transplants to take part in sporting activity. Competitors will be using the excellent facilities in Medway park. We can therefore see the benefits of the legacy, as everyone will have a stake in such facilities.

[Mr Foster]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on drawing attention to that important additional sporting event. The Special Olympics and a number of other important sporting activities are also taking place, ensuring that we give people from all sorts of backgrounds the opportunity to become involved.

[Rehman Chishti]

Last week, I attended a British transplant games event. These games make people aware of the benefits of organ donation, as they can see transplant recipients participating in sports.

[Mr Foster]

I am sure all Members are grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing attention to the importance of that event and the wider issue of transplant donation.

The figures to be published tomorrow will only show what has been spent on the national endeavour. They will not include the great deal of money that has been spent up and down the country in ensuring there is a legacy. For example, in my Bristol-Bath area I had the privilege of establishing Team West of England, now jointly chaired by me and the chief executive of the British Paralympic Association, Tim Hollingsworth. We have now been working for five years, with the support of our local councils and various businesses, to maximise legacy opportunity in our sub-region. As a result, in 2008 we were able to bring the UK school games to Bath and Bristol, thereby injecting £2.5 million into the local economy while also enthusing many businesses and schoolchildren. We have been able to ensure far more opportunity for inter-school sport competition. We have been able to provide taster sessions, enabling youngsters to find out about sports they did not know much about, and perhaps find one that truly excites them. We have also been able to engage large numbers of people, getting them involved in volunteering and providing them with training to give them the opportunity to become, perhaps, one of the games makers.

We have ensured that many businesses have developed the skills to be able to sign up for the CompeteFor website and, more importantly, to go on and win contracts with LOCOG and the ODA. We have helped to develop links with various national bodies, too. For example, the British Paralympic Association will locate its training camp at the wonderful Bath university sports facilities. The first deal done after we had won the Olympics was between Bristol university and the Kenyan Olympic team. It involved a 10-point plan, of which only one was that the training camp would be held in Bristol. That demonstrates the importance of legacy, because the deal included business links, other forms of sporting links, educational links between schools in Kenya and in Bristol, cultural links and many other things. Lots of things are happening locally in addition to the work that is going on nationally.

[Louise Mensch (Corby) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman speaks movingly of the legacy being put in place, particularly for young people in schools. As he mentions the Paralympics, does he agree that it is fantastic that, for the first time, Paralympic sports are being offered in schools as part of the legacy programme? That will offer unrivalled opportunities to disabled children, who in the past have not had such opportunities.

[Mr Foster]

The hon. Lady tempts me into a long peroration about the Paralympics. This country is the home of the Paralympic movement, and I am delighted that so much emphasis is being placed on it. The national media coverage by Channel 4 of those events will shine so much excitement into our homes, and I suspect that many Paralympic sports of which most people are currently unaware will become firm favourites in years to come. I often give a particular mention to the Paralympic sport of goalball in these debates, because I believe that many people will be talking about it in a few months’ time. She correctly says that it is all right having things done at the elite national level, but what is really important is making sure that our children with physical disabilities have an opportunity to participate and excel in sport, and to have competition in which they can demonstrate their excellence. That is why it is so good that the Olympic-style school games that has been developed by the Government includes Paralympic sporting activities. She is absolutely right to raise that issue.

Nationally, lots of legacies will flow from the games and from the funding that has been spent, and the high-profile ones have been adequately discussed by the Chair of the Select Committee. We have heard of the concerns about the security budget, which has increased significantly, but all hon. Members are well aware that the circumstances changed dramatically the day after we heard that we had won the bid, with the tragedy of 7/7. A more detailed analysis of the needs has shown that we now require 23,700 security people instead of 10,000, so the budget has inevitably increased. Everybody would welcome the fact that we have a team of people who have done fantastic work to ensure that these games are the safest they can be given the difficult circumstances, and most people would recognise the importance of providing that necessary funding.

As I mentioned in an intervention, the other thing that seems to be causing much concern, although I genuinely do not understand why, is the £41 million increase in the funding for the four ceremonies—the two opening and two closing ceremonies. That seems an awful lot of money, but we must bear in mind that 4 billion people will be watching, so we have an opportunity to showcase this country and there are potential benefits for tourism and business investment. As the Chairman of the Select Committee said, we can all imagine how disastrous it would be if we got those four ceremonies wrong. So that is money well spent, and I welcome the decision to increase the funding.

We need to ensure that we have legacy benefits in the areas of sport, culture, business, tourism, education, volunteering, transport and regeneration. I am confident that there will be benefits in every one of those areas, not only in London, with the huge development and regeneration of part of east London, but in all parts of the country. If we look at any of those in detail, the House will see that real benefits are set to come. Let us consider, for example, the sporting legacy. Of course I expressed disappointment in the early days of this Government about the decision to reduce the funding for the school sport partnership scheme. That had the potential to damage the sporting legacy we could hope for from the 2012 games. Since that time, with the development of some of the other initiatives—not least the school games—we have made up lost ground. I welcome the fact that there are a stack of schemes to ensure that there is a legacy.

It is worth remembering that we have made a commitment as a Government that after the games we will continue to fund elite sport at a high level—the first Government ever to do so following a games. I welcome the fact that we have so many schemes to ensure that there are improved sporting facilities for our local communities, including the Places People Play programme, which I very much welcome, and the London 2012 Changing Places programme, and I also welcome the way in which so many schools have embraced not only the school games but the educational Get Set programme.

One thing that is rarely mentioned but deserves to be is something for which the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell), deserves a great deal of credit as she, more than anybody, pushed for the international inspiration scheme. As well as funding activities in this country, we have been funding work around the world. When we were in Singapore, as I mentioned, the now chairman of LOCOG, Lord Seb Coe, said that we would

“reach young people all around the world and connect them to the inspirational power of the Games so they are inspired to choose sport…improving their lives as a result”.

Already, 12 million children around the world in 19 different countries have actively participated in sport, physical education and play as a direct result of that scheme, many of them for the first time; nearly 80,000 teachers, coaches and young leaders have been trained to lead sports and physical educational activities; and 21 legislative changes have taken place around the world influenced by the work we are doing.

These games are important, not just because they will be a fantastic sporting and cultural extravaganza for a few weeks in London and one or two other places, but because they will benefit every part of the country, providing a lasting benefit to our generation and to future generations. The money has been well spent.

16:47

[Louise Mensch (Corby) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to be called to speak in this debate, particularly because it is rare in politics to find a topic on which one can speak with unbridled enthusiasm. This being an imperfect world, almost everything has its caveats, but that is not so with the London 2012 Olympics. I was privileged to be part of the inquiry undertaken by the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport into the Olympic and Paralympic games—considering both the games and their legacy—and I can honestly say that in my brief time in this House, I have not come across anything else in politics so wholly impressive, unless it be the speeches of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), who is over there in the corner.

The revised £9.3 billion budget, as set by the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell), was sensible and sober and it remains intact. It is a slight pity that the right hon. Lady cuts an elegant but solitary figure on the Opposition Benches—although I am sure that, like Horatius, she will be able to hold the bridge against the ravening hordes on this side of the House, especially as there is so much good will towards her over the Olympic project.

With a project of this size and complexity, it is a fact that not everything will go right all the time. LOCOG practically doubled its security budget, adding £271 million to take that budget to just over £500 million in total. As we have heard repeatedly, the opening and closing ceremonies have also approximately doubled their budgets, adding £41 million to the cost. I would say that they are cheap at the price. The deal that had been in place for the Olympic stadium collapsed after legal wrangles, including a complaint about too much state aid being made to our wonderful partners in the European Commission, and a leasehold solution is now being sought, with either a football or non-football option. Tenants have not yet been found for the media centre—I am sure that the Minister will have something to add on that Subject—but the Department and the Olympic authorities are confident that some will be found in due course.

Although those budgetary revisions make the headlines in the papers and are the subject of frothing documentaries by Sky and articles in The Daily Telegraph, the enormous savings achieved by the Olympic Delivery Agency do not—surprise, surprise—cause so much comment. Since 2007 the ODA has managed to save out of its projected budget a total of £910 million. That is one reason why the overall budget envelope of £9.3 billion for the Olympics remains intact. Indeed, in the few months between July and September last year the ODA achieved £42 million in savings. Hon. Members with keen memories will note that that is £1 million more than the additional funding provided for the opening and closing ceremonies. Like a good housekeeper, the ODA is successfully managing its budget; perhaps my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will call on it to give him some advice on the difficult task before him next month.

The esteemed Chairman of our Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), who has rather heroically remained in his place after his extended speech, in which he skilfully steered us through the inquiry on the Olympics, has said to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, with the typical forthrightness that is his hallmark:

“If it goes wrong, you are dead.”

Although the National Audit Office has said there is a “real risk” that more money will be needed, I am certain that the Secretary of State can sleep soundly in his bed. Everything our Committee has heard from LOCOG, the ODA and the legacy company indicates that the 2012 Olympics will be an unmitigated triumph—and, furthermore, that they will deliver a successful, sustainable community in Stratford, which will be of immense benefit to London, and indeed the entire country.

From the first tendering of our bid there has been incredibly successful management. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr Foster) has just mentioned the bid for the coverage of the Paralympic games, and many people were surprised that the preferred bidder was Channel 4 rather than the BBC. However, Channel 4 is another public service broadcaster—many people do not realise that—and with its edgy brand and appeal to young people it will really be able to showcase the Paralympic games as they have never been showcased before. As has been mentioned, six of the eight legacy venues have been disposed of before the games have even commenced. To put that in context, no other country that has delivered an Olympic games in modern times has come anywhere close to disposing of six out of eight legacy venues before the games even started. Currently the focus is on the disposal of the media centre and the Olympic stadium, but that is because they are the last two venues, and the two most difficult, of which we have to dispose. When my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was accused of being a “glass half full” person, he responded, quite rightly, that the glass was three-quarters full. I think we have to pay tribute to the legacy company for the incredibly successful way in which it is delivering the Olympic legacy.

I believe—I am prepared to stick my neck out on this right now—that our Olympics will be something that our country perhaps has not been used enough to in the recent past; a textbook case of our getting everything right. Rio de Janeiro is already looking at how we are doing things, and I believe that future hosts of the Olympics will come to Britain and ask how we did it successfully, on time, under budget and with a proper sustainable legacy that will carry us right through to the end of the legacy period in 2016 and beyond.

Hon. Members might remember the surprisingly strong reaction in this country to the London fireworks that opened 2012. There was surprise that for once we had done something really well, and—I hope the House will forgive my language—stuck it to Sydney by producing the best fireworks around the world. Although it was just for one night, there was a great sense of surprise and pride in our nation. Something as short as 12 minutes of fireworks on new year’s eve managed to achieve that, and I give all credit to the Mayor of London, for whom I am happy to be campaigning later this week, for delivering those fireworks. I am prepared to bet that the period of the Olympic and Paralympic games will deliver, on a much larger scale, that same glow of national pride —and perhaps slight national astonishment—that we have managed to pull the event off, as I believe we will.

Here we are, on an estimates day, talking about the cost estimates for the Olympics. In a way they are a difficult subject for us to debate, although it is easy to measure hard metrics, such as the economic benefits, direct and indirect, that will be brought to the country. For example, the Westfield Stratford shopping centre, which opened in September and is one of the largest shopping centres in Europe, would never have been built without the impetus created by the Olympic games. The centre is a fantastic facility for London in general and the people of Stratford in particular. We can measure that type of hard metric far more easily than we can the soft metrics such as happiness, and national and local pride.

In Corby and east Northamptonshire, which I have the privilege to represent, we are massively proud of our local contribution to the Olympics. Our Team GB gymnast, Daniel Keatings, who opened our international pool in Corby, will represent our country in the Olympics, and hurdler William Sharman is in training to qualify. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby), I am delighted to be able to say that part of my constituency, Corby, is to be a host venue for the Olympic torch. We look forward to hosting the Olympic flame on 2 July, when the whole town will be out on the streets to welcome it. We plan a cheerleading and swimming display at our international pool, and any Member of the House who wishes to attend is welcome to do so. In the more rural part of my constituency, east Northamptonshire, inter-school games are marking the event. As a community, we have no doubt that although the games are located in London, they will bring their benefits to the heart of Northamptonshire, the rose of the shires.

When I intervened on my right hon. Friend the Member for Bath, I mentioned that although Sport England’s 1 million figure may have been a little unrealistic, the amount of additional sporting participation that has been achieved is greatly to be welcomed. I especially welcome Sport England’s introduction of Paralympic events into schools. For far too long, our disabled children have felt left out of school sports, they have not had role models to aspire to emulate, and they have not felt part of the national conversation. The one-two punch of investment in school Paralympic sports and Channel 4’s no doubt innovative coverage of the Paralympic events will make a real difference.

We have not yet touched on the Cultural Olympiad, which has also been running since 2008. It has already involved more than 16 million Britons either as participants in workshops run by the Cultural Olympiad or as audience members, and will culminate in the London cultural festival in 2012.

The Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon, mentioned how concerned we were to urge the Government to ensure that the opportunity is not lost to drive home the message at grass-roots level. The Committee has urged the Government to look at so-called red button technology, so that when a particular sport is being shown on the Olympic broadcasting channel and networks, people will be able to press the red button on their remote control to find clubs for that sport in their area. Someone watching volleyball, for example, can press the red button to see where and how they can get involved in the sport locally. Every year after Wimbledon, we see a surge in the number of young people enrolling in tennis clubs. It may not last long, as we tend to be eliminated in the quarter finals—I am sure that will change any minute now—but we do see that upsurge in tennis participation. Perhaps the Minister will say in his closing remarks how the Government intend to seize the opportunity to drive home the message about the opportunities that exist up and down the country for participation in sports that may not normally get their moment in the sun.

Although we have heard today about concerns about ticketing, I suggest that they are yet another metric of how successfully the Olympic games are being run. The fact is that there is massive demand for Olympic tickets, even for events where there is normally little demand.

That leads me neatly to a comparison between our games and those in Beijing. As we watched the television coverage of those games we saw vast swaths of empty seats during the various stadium events. The tickets had been given away to corporate sponsors who were not particularly interested in the games, or in some cases to people in provinces and regions of China who found it too difficult to travel into Beijing to attend the games.

I pay tribute to the London Olympics authorities for the way in which they have managed the ticketing. They are trying to make it as fair as possible and to give everyone a chance, but the fact is that demand for Olympics tickets outstrips supply. Neither the Government nor the nation should be upset about that; it is something that we should absolutely celebrate. I should also like to mention the innovative and imaginative way in which the Olympics authorities are trying to ensure that as many people as possible get to see their favourite Olympic sport on the day. They are going to copy the highly successful ticketing system introduced at Wimbledon last year, and anyone leaving the Olympic stadium will be able to hand in their ticket stub, enabling their place to be resold at face value to anyone who wishes to enter. That will ensure that there are no empty seats.

The Olympic authorities have also imaginatively targeted the people who are most likely to be interested in particular sports. For example, they have approached local hockey clubs first to ask whether their members would be interested in tickets for the hockey events. They have thus ensured not only that the seats will be filled during the Olympic games, but that they will be filled by genuine fans, rather than by people who have purchased tickets at vastly inflated prices from ticket touts. This is yet another metric of how well we are doing. If some, like myself, have not been fortunate enough to secure Olympics tickets—

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

Hear, hear.

[Louise Mensch]

What do you mean, “Hear, hear”?

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

I share my hon. Friend’s disappointment. I, too, did not succeed in my repeated bid for tickets. Does she, however, share my excitement at the prospect of up to 1 million tickets coming to those of us who failed on the first two occasions?

[Louise Mensch]

I do share my hon. Friend’s excitement, and I hope that she and I will be fortunate. If we are not, however, I suggest that that will be a small price to pay for having a well-ticketed, well-attended Olympics that genuine fans can get into. If there is some disappointment, it is only because these Olympics are being run in an absolutely fantastic manner and because the whole country is engaged with the desire to see and participate in them.

Marketing Week has estimated that during the entire 11-year period from the build-up to the end of the designated legacy period in 2016, the gain to the country as a whole from the Olympics will be £36 for every man, woman and child. I almost hesitate to read out the figure for those living in London: the gain to them will be £787 per person. In pure hard cash terms, that is a phenomenal return on investment. However, many right hon. and hon. Members have said that we cannot measure the success of the Olympics in bread, or money, alone.

These Olympics represent a chance in a lifetime for our great capital city and our country as a whole. More or less every penny of that £9.3 billion will be money well spent. The House and the nation are already looking forward to celebrating Her Majesty the Queen’s diamond jubilee earlier in the summer, and I can honestly say that when we couple the diamond jubilee with the Olympic and Paralympic games, this is going to be a great summer for Great Britain.

16:59

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this important debate on the Olympics estimates. It is always a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Louise Mensch). I read her contribution to the Select Committee debate—it provided interesting research material for today’s debate, which has been interesting so far.

I congratulate the previous Government not only on securing the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games but on setting a realistic estimated budget for the delivery of the games. Their announcement, in March 2007, of an increase from the initial estimate of £2.3 billion at the time of the bid to £9.3 billion attracted unwelcome and negative comment at the time, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) said, it is probably much better to announce a large increase in one go than to announce incremental increases over time, and we welcome the fact that they did so.

However, even with the cost savings announced in May 2010 and the recent increase in the security allocation, the estimated budget looks about right. That is important, because previous games have ended up two or three times over budget and in these times of financial constraint it is essential that British taxpayers do not feel that they have overfunded a sporting event.

What is clear—this is why it is important that we welcome the realistic setting of the funding package—is that, although we must not overspend on what is essentially a sporting event, we must not underfund it either. The Olympics are not just any old sporting event; they are the world’s greatest sporting event. More than 200 nations will compete in some form of Olympic game and the event will be watched by a global audience of billions. The 2008 Beijing Olympic games had an estimated global audience of 4.7 billion, which was significantly higher than the 3.9 billion achieved in Athens in 2004. I see no reason why London 2012 will not achieve something around the 4 billion mark, so the world will literally be watching our ability to stage the games. It is therefore essential that we do not fail. Much of the viewing total will be clocked up at the opening ceremony. With 80,000 spectators and 130 heads of state expected to be in the stadium, more than 1 billion people are expected to watch the ceremony on television. Again, an important balancing act must be achieved between providing good value for money for the British taxpayer funding the ceremonies and showcasing the country to the world.

The Secretary of State is right that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I think that everyone acknowledges that our ceremonies will not be as extravagant or expensive as those in Beijing, but we must grasp the opportunity while we have it, because if it succeeds the taxpayer will benefit, but if we fail not only will it be a financial disaster, but it will be the Government who get the blame.

[Louise Mensch]

I completely endorse everything my hon. Friend is saying, but I put it her that, although the ceremonies might not be as expensive as those in Beijing, I have good reason to believe that they will be every bit as extravagant and just as good, if not better.

[Tracey Crouch]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Indeed, she demonstrated in her speech that we can put on a good event, as the new year fireworks demonstrated this year—as she so eloquently put it, they put Sydney to shame—so we can certainly do this.

It is important that we get the balancing act right for the taxpayer. Of course, if financial tightrope walking was an Olympic sport, all of us here today would be willing the Minister into the gold medal position. Arguments will take place over funding for specific aspects of the Olympics, such as security, ticketing, ceremonies and so on, but I believe that the most important part is the bit that we probably cannot put a price tag on: the legacy of London 2012. For many youngsters, these will be the first Olympic games they remember, and it is here on their doorsteps. I vaguely remember watching the 1980 games while sitting with my dad on the sofa, but it was the 1984 Los Angeles games that really began to penetrate my memory, with Coe, Ovett and Cram becoming instant playground icons.

[Justin Tomlinson]

I share my hon. Friend’s happy memories. In fact, my friends and I were so inspired that we soon dashed out in our quest to become mini athletes, admittedly at varying levels of success. Clearly our Olympics have the potential to inspire a generation, so does my hon. Friend agree that it is essential that we all support the Government’s plans for the school games?

[Tracey Crouch]

I certainly agree. I am lucky to share a county with the Minister, who has been a strong advocate of encouraging people to participate in sport and the games. We would encourage not only greater participation, but inter and intra-school competitiveness, which I think is hugely important.

[Amber Rudd]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the legacy of the Olympics for young people is not just about individual sports, but about the importance of competition within those sports, because competition is such an important part of succeeding in this world?

[Tracey Crouch]

I completely agree. For too long we have had an “everyone should have prizes” culture, and the great thing about sport is that it does encourage competitiveness. Competitiveness is right at a particular age: it is important to ensure that young people at an early age engage in sport, but as they get older competitiveness becomes a hugely important part.

Returning to the 1984 LA Olympics, I only remember the track events to be perfectly honest, perhaps because that is all television showed at the time. There was no red button to switch from the popular track and field events to others.

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

I am enjoying my hon. Friend’s recollection of the Los Angeles Olympics. Hockey was given a terrific boost as a result of the success of the men’s team, who won an unprecedented bronze medal at the time. Interest in the sport was given a huge boost.

[Tracey Crouch]

I completely agree, and my hon. Friend will be aware that there are three Kent players in the GB team, so we look forward to an increase in people’s participation in hockey, although my memories of it, at a girl’s school in his constituency, fill me with horror sometimes.

With the advent of multi-platform broadcasting, I am excited for our younger generation, who will be able to watch almost any event live in their front rooms and be awed or inspired by the athleticism of our British competitors. Medway, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) said, will host various teams in the run-up to the Olympic and Paralympic games, including the Portuguese gymnastics and trampolining squads and the Barbados Paralympic team.

The Olympic torch will come to Chatham, as it will to other towns, giving local people a real sense of participation in the games. I learned recently that I have a former Olympian living in my constituency. Frank Sando ran the 10,000m in the 1952 and 1956 Olympics, finishing a respectable 5th in Helsinki but 10th in Melbourne. He was, however, a dominant force in international cross-country for most of the ’50s, and I am sure that he will act as an inspiration to many locally, who may go on to join Maidstone Harriers, a popular athletics club.

[Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that her being able to cite people in her constituency who go back to the 1952 games shows the real long-term legacy of the Olympics? People write themselves into history, and the rest of us—in this House and everywhere else—remember them. I am therefore absolutely certain that holding the Olympics in this country is the right thing, and that the legacy will go well beyond £1 billion, or however it might be quantified in monetary terms.

[Tracey Crouch]

I completely agree, and it is not just about the people, but about the clubs that help prepare the athletes to reach major sporting events such as the Olympics. Our investment in that legacy will show a huge return in the long term.

As a Kent and Medway MP I am delighted that we, as a county, have a number of locally born and bred athletes taking part in this year’s Olympics. The county will join the country in being 100% behind each and every one of them in whatever sport.

As the House knows, I remain involved in girls football, and the 13 and 14-year-old girls I see every weekend, and their friends, will be able to watch someone such as the world’s number one trampolinist, Kat Driscoll, who grew up in Chatham and went to the same schools as them, compete for an Olympic gold medal; and she can serve only to inspire and encourage them to remain active. We have an opportunity nationally to showcase Great Britain to the world, and I hope that Kent and Medway athletes will play their part.

[Louise Mensch]

My hon. Friend refers, as I did, to an Olympian in her constituency. Does she not agree that that is part of the answer to those who say that the Olympics are too London-centric? We all see in our local areas, whether through the Olympic torch, schools sports or the Olympians who come from our constituencies, that the games are touching, and providing a legacy to, the whole country. London is merely the location, but the Olympics are held in all our hearts.

[Tracey Crouch]

I completely agree, but let us remember that there are several sporting events in the Olympics and not all will take place in London. Such factors will encourage people from all over the country to go to the Olympics, but the Olympics themselves will be spread far and wide across the nation.

The estimated budget, as supported by today’s motion, was realistically set by the previous Government and has been managed excellently by this Government and by the delivery organisations. I appreciate that it sounds like a lot of money to spend on a few weeks of events, but the benefits, economic and otherwise, of ensuring that we have the world’s greatest, most historic sporting event far outweigh the downsides. I am sure that the whole House will join me in praying that London 2012 runs smoothly and without incident and that we can provide a strong Olympic legacy to benefit many people for years to come.

17:14

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

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), who is known, among other things, for being an able sportswoman herself. Sadly, I am no athlete but, like many Members and residents of the country, I will be looking forward enormously to the Olympics.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I must stress that I am not an athlete either, which may come as a surprise to Members of this House, but we have a Sports Minister who, when he was at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, got colours in three separate events. I reckon that that is pretty special, so well done the Minister.

[Amber Rudd]

I thank my hon. Friend for that interesting intervention and for further reason to respect the Minister.

There are many different ways for us to celebrate the Olympics. There will be the huge and exciting drama of the opening ceremony, the actual competition—

[Rehman Chishti]

One of the great things about the Olympic opening ceremony this time is that the people of Tunisia will have there a Head of State who is elected by them, as will the Libyans, who will be represented by a Head of State in whom they have confidence, unlike in years before.

[Amber Rudd]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for pointing to the important political front of house that goes on at the Olympics. It is interesting to remark on that, because we tend to focus on the sporting and cultural elements.

Unfortunately, like many other Members, I did not get tickets. I am hoping to get them in the next round; otherwise, I will be glued to the television at particular points of the event.

[Damian Collins]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the abject failure of Members of this House successfully to apply for tickets shows what an open, honest and transparent system it was?

[Amber Rudd]

I can concur with that, disappointing though the outcome may have been for most of us.

The element that I am particularly excited about is the torch relay, which is taking part throughout the country and is an excellent way of bringing the games to the whole of the United Kingdom. The budget for the torch relay is part of the operating costs for the running of the games and is administered by LOCOG. It is expected to be £3.8 million, which is a small fraction of LOCOG’s overall budget of £2 billion, and I am happy to say that it is being met almost entirely from broadcast rights, sponsorship and ticket sales.

The torch relay will start in Land’s End on 19 May and will then showcase the diversity of the UK by visiting over 1,000 communities. I learned earlier in the debate that the torch is visiting Hove and Corby. That is very good news for those places, but I am afraid that I have to say that the great news for my constituency is that the torch is not only visiting Hastings but spending the night there; it is a very lucky torch indeed. We are planning some fantastic events for that evening to attract more tourists and visitors and to make it a truly spectacular occasion for the residents of Hastings, for those visiting the area, and for the torch’s escorts. I am delighted that we will play our part in this historic occasion, which will provide an excellent opportunity for the whole community to come together to celebrate the Olympics. Lots of my constituents were, like me, disappointed not to be successful in the ballot for tickets, but they are looking forward enormously to the special moment on 17 July when we have the torch in the town and are able to celebrate the Olympics in that way.

[Louise Mensch]

I know my hon. Friend’s beautiful constituency of Hastings and Rye very well, having lived next to it before I was so fortunate to be selected for Corby and to move to my natural home in the rose of the shires, and it is steeped in history. In Hastings, as in Corby, people will no doubt line the streets to see the Olympic torch and participate in local events to celebrate its passage through their towns. The torch relay is one way for the Olympics to visit us, given that we cannot all go to London. If not everybody can go to the Olympics, the Olympics can go to an awful lot of people around the country.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. May I remind Members that they should face the Chair when making interventions? That is not just so that I can look at your wonderful faces but so that you are speaking into the microphone.

[Amber Rudd]

I thank my hon. Friend for her comments. She is well known for having a way with words, and today is no exception.

The Olympic torch relay represents peace, unity and friendship, as the flame is passed from one torch bearer to another. The torch relay in 2012 will give everyone in the UK the chance to be part of this historic occasion. The torch will go to almost every corner of the UK. LOCOG has achieved its ambition of taking the flame to within an hour’s journey of 95% of the population. We should applaud and congratulate it in achieving that endeavour.

The torch and the relay are not innovations. They were important elements of the cultural festivals surrounding the Olympic games of ancient Greece and they are just as important to us in 2012. The torch relay will spread the excitement of the games across the UK and mark the final countdown to the games.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating Lord Bates, who has just completed his Olympic walk from Greece to London to raise awareness for the Olympic pledge of peace that will hopefully reign when the Olympics take place?

[Amber Rudd]

I am delighted to join those congratulations. It is always encouraging and exciting when there are new initiatives to draw attention to the Olympics.

Traditionally during the games, a sacred flame burned continually on the altar of the goddess Hera. In addition, heralds were summoned to travel throughout Greece to announce the games, declaring a sacred truce for their duration. Our heralds in 2012 will be 8,000 inspirational people, who have been nominated by their local communities to have their moment to shine. I am sure that many Members have been involved in nominating torch bearers. The focus will be on the nation’s youth, with a large percentage of the torch bearers being 18 years old or under. Even today, a precise ritual for the lighting of the flame is followed at every games. It is lit from the sun’s rays at the temple of Hera in Olypmia in a traditional ceremony among the ruins of the home of the ancient games.

On looking back at the torch relays over the years, one appreciates how important the Olympic torch has been. In the modern games, the Olympic flame represents the positive values that man has always associated with fire. The purity of the flame is guaranteed by the way that it is lit using the sun’s rays. When the UK hosted the games in 1948, the torch delivered a welcome message of peace in a Europe sorely afflicted by the aftermath of the war.

[Rehman Chishti]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is being very generous in giving way. With regard to the positive values of the Olympic games, one of the great things that we will see is that some countries, such as Saudi Arabia, will send women to take part for the first time. That will empower women and spread positive values around the world.

[Amber Rudd]

I thank my hon. Friend for that interesting point. I agree that if the Olympics can contribute to the emancipation of women in other countries, it will be a further benefit of what we are doing.

[Louise Mensch]

My hon. Friend is being very patient. I was inspired by her repeated references to white-armed Hera, the consort of the gods, who was well known for her jealousy and envy. Does she agree that the process of submitting bids for heroes and heroines in our communities to be torch bearers, despite many people not being successful, has brought the country together? While the torch bearers will be the spearheads of the Olympic effort, their efforts will be replicated by the volunteers who will be games makers and ambassadors for the Olympics. The good will that is derived from the Olympic spirit has spread throughout the community.

[Amber Rudd]

My hon. Friend is right. The Olympics are about so much more than the competitors. My remarks focus on the torch relay, but the games are also about the volunteers. These are ways of engaging the whole country, young and old, in the excitement of the games.

If I may, I will finish my little anecdote about 1948, when the Olympics were here. The first runner, Corporal Dimitrelis, symbolically took off his military uniform before carrying the flame, commemorating the sacred truce observed in ancient Greece.

I return to Hastings, where we have the great excitement of the torch staying overnight. I ask the Minister to see whether he can possibly get me some assistance in a negotiation with LOCOG upon which I and my local council are trying to embark. We are very excited about the journey that the torch will make. It is due to come along the coast road, but we are trying to persuade LOCOG to make a small change to the route so that it can go to the William Parker sports college.

If that small diversion can be made, we can ensure that possibly 1,000 or 2,000 young people, who will be meeting for their annual sports event, are present. It would be impossible to get all those young people together in a safe environment on the sea front, where the torch is due to go. That small diversion could have a dramatic impact on them. I wrote to the Minister about that point in January, and he kindly referred me and our initiative to LOCOG. The borough council is now working with LOCOG on the matter, but I would be very grateful for the Minister’s intervention and assistance in making the case to LOCOG.

As we know, there has rightly been much talk about the investment in the Olympics and the legacy that we want from them, but what will be the greatest legacy of all? It will surely be in the minds of the young people who are inspired to take up competition and sports. In that way, the truly life-changing legacy that we hope to get from the Olympics can come to the young people of Hastings.

17:26

[Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)]

It may come as no surprise to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that, unlike Members such as the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), I have absolutely no sporting prowess whatever, and there is none in my family.

[Rehman Chishti]

My hon. Friend is very modest, but will he be inspired by the Olympics to take part in a sport afterwards?

[Richard Harrington]

In another life, perhaps.

My sporting achievements are somewhat limited. In fact, it is fair to say that even a sprint would be out of the question, and a marathon to me is a former name for a chocolate bar. As far as the high jump is concerned, it is quite clear that with the exception of certain moments in the Whips Office, it will never be open to me. However, I believe that the Olympic games and their legacy are absolutely critical for this country and everything that we stand for.

I know that there has been a lot of discussion about cost overruns, arguments about corporations and sponsorship being involved, people saying, “It’s not like it used to be” and all that sort of thing, but a country such as ours has to have its turn at hosting such tremendous events. For example, we hosted the G20. We hosted the World cup, and I hope we will win it again. A country that depends so much on its international prowess in sport, commerce and trade, and that is one of the leading nations for foreign aid and many other things, must have the Olympic games every so often. I am delighted that we will do so in my lifetime, and I am pleased to hear Members on both sides supporting what we are doing.

[Rehman Chishti]

My hon. Friend has mentioned other sporting events, and one of our fantastic, well-loved sports is cricket. We had the cricket world cup here, and we won the World Twenty20. On the legacy of the Olympics, does he support the excellent work of Sport England in putting more than £30 million into its Sportivate programme to get 16 to 24 year olds into sport in the long term?

[Richard Harrington]

As I have learned to say in the trade, my hon. Friend makes a very good point. I know he has done a lot of work on the subject.

When I consider the legacy of Olympic games and the other great events that have happened in this country, I think of the museums that came out of such events in the 19th century—the empire exhibitions, or whatever they were. We had the Victoria and Albert museum, the Science museum and the Natural History museum. More recently, in the last century, Wembley, which has become a national institution, was the legacy of the Empire exhibition following the first world war. I am certain that some of the buildings and institutions that will come from this Olympic games will be remembered a long time after current Members of the House are no longer with us—I do not just mean electorally—and for many generations to come. Those are the real legacies of Olympic games.

More of those buildings will have private names following this Olympics and will be sponsored by Sky, Vodafone and whatever. I agree that that is a difference, but it simply reflects how society has moved on. Private enterprise is involved in such huge international events in most countries far more than it ever was—I gave examples previously.

Watford is normally the hub of the universe—it can certainly compete in its own right with Beijing, Manhattan or wherever—and it gives me no pleasure to report that the Olympic torch is taking a wide diversion down the M1 and will not stop there. There are no Olympic events in Watford, but I am a fanatical supporter of the Olympic games and the effect they will have on Watford. Daniela Sposi, for example, is trying hard to get into the British handball team. Everyone that she has known from her schooldays onwards is inspired by the hope that she will get into the team.

Hundreds of schools in Hertfordshire have taken part in the Hertfordshire school games, which the Secretary of State launched not so long ago. A constituency or town, therefore, does not have to be a destination for the Olympic torch. My hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd) spoke about her impressive and excellent town, but those of us who were less fortunate with the Olympic torch route have a lot to play for, and many things will come from the Olympics.

Watford has embraced the Olympics in other ways. We have developed a fitness and play area—the Sports Legacy Zone—which was inspired and opened by two famous Olympians, Steve Backley and Roger Black. We have volunteers rushing to help in the Olympics. Only on Friday I met a young man who had graduated in chemistry from Oxford university who is organising his career so that he can take time to be an Olympic volunteer. There are so many things, other than the Olympic flame and stadiums, that every person in this country and every constituency can take from the games.

[Rehman Chishti]

rose—

[Louise Mensch]

rose—

[Richard Harrington]

I will give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Louise Mensch).

[Louise Mensch]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He touched on the matter of private sponsors for the Olympics, which some in the House and elsewhere have decried. Does he agree it should be a matter of great pride for the Olympic Delivery Authority that it has managed to attract such private support for the games, which means that we can deliver a games that will be successful, sustainable and under-budget? Does he also agree that private sponsorship is not necessarily bad? For example, regrettably, there were very many deaths and injuries in the hurried construction of the Olympic stadium in Beijing, but there have been no deaths, and I believe a grand total of one injury, in the construction of our Olympic stadium.

[Richard Harrington]

I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend, and the criticism that she cites is typical of many journalists and detractors in this country. It is easy to criticise, because the Government and the Olympic authorities cannot win. On the one hand, they would be rightly criticised if the vast sums spent were all public money, but when private money is so intelligently brought in, people say, “In that past this was all provided for the public.” It is a no-win situation. The attitude that the authorities—the previous Government and this one, and the Olympic authorities—have shown in bringing in a reasonable amount of private sponsorship is a credit to both the public and the commercial sectors. The detractors and those who criticise are the kind of people who would criticise anyone. They do not have to take the decisions themselves or live with the responsibilities. They just criticise.

[Rehman Chishti]

rose—

[Richard Harrington]

I apologise to my hon. Friend for my delay in giving way to him.

[Rehman Chishti]

Not at all. My hon. Friend is being exceptionally kind in giving way. Having prosecuted for many years as a barrister at Harrow Crown court and knowing Watford well, I think that he does a fantastic job, and if he wants to make an application to the Minister for the torch to go through his area, I would be more than happy to support it.

[Richard Harrington]

I am more than usually grateful to my hon. Friend. There might be a secret plot to divert the torch at the last minute but I do not think it will come to anything. My point is that although it would be nice to have the torch, there are many other ways in which Members can support the Olympics. For me, that is the most important thing.

Here am I, probably the least qualified of the 600-plus Members to take part in any Olympic event, except possibly for the ladies’ shot put, for which I was once told I had an ideal physique.

[Bob Stewart]

I, too, am unqualified to comment. I am certainly unqualified for Olympic sport.

[Richard Harrington]

My hon. Friend is, as ever, being unduly modest. I am sure that he must have shown great fitness to achieve what he achieved in other walks of life prior to entering the House. I have never done so

To sum up, I think that the Olympics are fantastic. I am extremely proud that I will be in this country and the House when the Olympics are taking place. Despite the griping about the money, the legacy will be fantastic and something of which we can all be proud.

17:36

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the Members who have spoken in this debate, particularly my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd), who spoke with great eloquence about Hastings’ plans for the Olympic torch and the torch relay. I hope that they do not wear it out too much because it is due in my constituency the following day, and it sounds like there will be a full and arduous programme in Hastings.

[Amber Rudd]

I hope that my hon. Friend will allow me to accompany the torch and visit his constituency to ensure that they maintain the high standards that we will set in Hastings.

[Damian Collins]

My hon. Friend has an excellent idea —perhaps we can hand it to each other on the Camber road and wish it well on its way. I am sure that my constituency, which will see the Olympic torch on 18 July, will put on some spectacular events as well. It will truly be the part of an Olympics that inspires the whole country. As my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Louise Mensch), who is a fellow member of the Select Committee, said, it is an opportunity for the games to go to the country as well as for the country to come to the games, which it will do when they are staged in London.

[Rehman Chishti]

As a fellow Kent MP, does my hon. Friend agree that we in Kent are very proud of our colleague, the Sports Minister, for doing such a fantastic job on the Olympics?

[Damian Collins]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and fellow Kent Member. It would be churlish of me not to agree with him. All of us in Kent are extremely proud of the role that my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Hugh Robertson) has played, as Sports Minister, in steering the Olympic games safely through the final development of the facilities and planning. He has been ably supported by an excellent team at LOCOG and the ODA, which have done a terrific job in ensuring that the games will be ready on time, We can all be proud of that as we look forward to their happening.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) referred to how the Olympic games will inspire young people across the country. They are a major sporting event. One of my first sporting memories was probably of Sebastian Coe winning his gold medal in Moscow in 1980. The 1984 Olympics were an inspiration to my generation of school children across the country not only for the great variety of sports on the athletics track but for the hockey, which I mentioned earlier. We know that children will take a great interest in it and find it very exciting. Their memories of the London Olympic games will be a defining moment of their young lives, and might inspire them to take up a new sport or pursue an existing interest in sport. The legacy is difficult to quantify at this stage, but we all have faith that it will be an important part of the games.

[Bob Stewart]

It crosses my mind that the Olympic games will be an inspiration to women worldwide. When the games are broadcast, people across the world will see that it is not possible to take women out of the Olympic games. They will be involved, and women who are not normally allowed to take part in sport in some countries will see that women in London can do so. That will be one of the huge inspirations of our London Olympic games.

[Damian Collins]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I think of Kent and the inspiration of Kelly Holmes, as one of our great Olympians, to young people right across the county. Many streets throughout the country, including in London, are named after famous Olympians. I believe there is a road in south London named after Tessa Sanderson, after she won the javelin gold medal at the LA Olympics. The great athletes of our country, men and women, will be inspirations to generations to come, as they have been in the past, and an important part of the Olympic movement.

I want to touch on some of the local aspects of the Olympic games. The torch relay comes to Hythe, Sandgate and Folkestone on 18 July, before making its way to Dover for its next overnight stop. That is something the whole community can celebrate and enjoy, giving people a chance to see and touch part of the Olympics. It is also an excellent way of building up the excitement and anticipation of the events.

The school games are an excellent initiative, led by my hon. Friend the Minister for Sport and the Olympics, and schools across the country will actively participate in them. The application rate has been incredibly high. Schools such as the Marsh academy, the Harvey grammar school and St Augustine’s primary school in my constituency will be taking part in the games. It will be an inspiration to students that the staging of the games will involve some of the major Olympic facilities in the Olympic park, such as the aquatics centre and the Olympic track. Indeed, some of the first competitive events involving British athletes using those facilities will be at the school games, rather than the main Olympic games. What a fantastic message that sends out about the great importance we attach to developing school games. [Interruption.] Does my hon. Friend want to intervene?

[Bob Stewart]

I was just shifting position.

[Damian Collins]

Sorry, I misread my hon. Friend’s signals.

[Louise Mensch]

I will be glad to step into the breach. My hon. Friend and colleague on the Select Committee was with us when we visited the aquatics centre. Does he agree that it will also be a great inspiration for local people to know that after the games, the centre will be available for their use and the use of the people of London? It will provide the community with a phenomenal swimming facility where none currently exists and where one is sorely needed.

[Damian Collins]

I completely agree. The aquatics centre is not only a stunning and iconic building, but a venue for elite athletes to compete where one is badly needed. That will benefit not only people in east London, but communities with good access to the Olympic park. My constituency of Folkestone will be only 55 minutes by high-speed rail from the Olympic park, so athletes there will also benefit. However, there will also be a community aspect. The fact that parents can take their children swimming at the aquatics centre at the Olympic park after the games is a wonderful way not only to encourage young people to start swimming, but to inspire them through their surroundings, as they will know that they are swimming in a pool where some of the greatest swimmers in the world have competed. When the Select Committee visited Munich, as part of our inquiry into football governance last year, we saw that the aquatics centre from the Munich games is still used even now, more than 30 years later, by the people of that city as an important and cherished community facility. That is a vision for the future of what the aquatics centre in the Olympic park in London could be like.

[Rehman Chishti]

Does my hon. Friend agree that initiatives such as free swimming for the under-11s and over-65s in Medway is a fantastic way to benefit communities and promote participation in sport, linked to having sports centres such as Medway Olympics park, which also help people to take part in those sports?

[Damian Collins]

My hon. Friend is a great advocate for Medway and everything it strives to achieve, and I am certainly happy to congratulate it on that excellent initiative.

Earlier, my hon. Friend also touched on the work of Sport England. I would like to add my thanks to Sport England, for its support for sporting facilities in my constituency through the Places People Play fund. I was delighted to join the fund in presenting cheques to the Folkestone sports centre and the Hythe sports pavilion, which have received combined funds of £60,000. That money is being spent now, and those facilities that are being refurbished will be ready before the Olympic games, so that those who are inspired to take part afterwards will have newly refurbished facilities ready and waiting for them. It is good not only that the money has been made available, but that it is being committed and that those facilities are being improved.

The Chairman of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), mentioned the sporting participation target and the Government’s decision not to keep to the target of 1 million people increasing their active participation in sport. I think we would all hope that the long-term legacy is indeed a greatly increased participation, but it is difficult to know now exactly what that increase will be, over what period it will happen or even whether we could exceed that target. The Minister and the Government should look, and continue to look, at how targeted intervention through sporting programmes for particularly needy young people could be an effective part of the legacy of the games.

Let me say a little more about that. If money is left in the contingency for the Olympic games by the time the games are staged—I appreciate that there will be many demands on it—perhaps the Department could look at the possibility of using it to help those people. We know from a number of excellent sporting initiatives—the Premier League’s Kickz programme, the Rugby Football Union’s Hitz programme and its Second Chance programme run in young offender institutions—that sports can play a dramatic role in changing the lives of people living in challenging circumstances, particularly young people. These programmes are often delivered at very low cost and are exceptionally good value for money, but the programmes delivered so far are often relatively small projects in relatively few neighbourhoods around the country.

I believe that the research done so far suggests that these programmes can have an excellent impact. An excellent report, “Teenage Kicks”, produced by the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation, focused on a project delivered by the Kickz programme run in partnership with Arsenal football club at Elthorne park in London. It showed that within a one-mile radius, there was a 66% reduction in youth crime. If the project were responsible for only 20% of that reduction, it would have demonstrated a return on investment of £7 for every £1 spent.

I mentioned the Second Chance programme run by the Rugby Football Union. A report was recently produced based on the pilot at the Portland young offenders institution. It followed what happened to those youngsters who had engaged in the sporting programme. It found a reoffending rate among the young men of about one in five. That might sound quite high, but if we consider that the average reoffending rate for young men in that institution is one in two, this shows a dramatic transformation in their fortunes.

As so many of the facilities already exist in young offenders institutions to provide sporting programmes, it is simply a question of bringing in the coaches and support to deliver them. They can be delivered at low cost. It has been estimated that if one of these sporting programmes stopped just one young person from reoffending and from being recommitted to a secure centre, that success could pay for the delivery of the entire programme within that single young offenders institution.

Some excellent work has been done in this area, but we need a proper study, sponsored by the Government, to see how to deliver these sporting programmes both within the community, targeting vulnerable young people in areas of relatively high crime and antisocial behaviour, and within the young offender institutions themselves. We need to ascertain what rules we can devise from the work done so far and work out how to plan these schemes and projects on a much bigger scale. We also need to work out what incentives we could provide to companies and sporting organisations to run and fund more of these trials.

This could be an incredible legacy of the Olympic games. A study with the backing and weight of the Government to demonstrate how best to run these programmes and the success they could bring would be a worthwhile achievement and pave the way for more programmes like this in the future. It would be excellent if we could use sport to touch the lives of more people in some of these hard-to-reach communities. It would require a piece of major research, preferably led by the Minister for Sport and the Olympics, and a unified approach across Government.

The Government have with the aid of lottery money supported the Olympic games, and I believe that hon. Members of all parties are united in their admiration for the start of the process—it was begun by the previous Government and has been continued subsequently with the support of Members across the House. The value of the investment is widely acknowledged. It would be excellent if the Minister could use his position and stature as the Minister responsible for the Olympics to take a lead on understanding how these sporting programmes could work to benefit people throughout the country and if he could work with colleagues in other Departments, particularly with the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department for Education. The Government have a strategic interest in sport across a wide area of government, and it would be good to see a co-ordinated approach, which the Department for Culture, Media and Sport could lead.

[Rehman Chishti]

My hon. Friend has praised sports centres in deprived areas. In Medway, in north Gillingham, £11 million has been invested in the Medway park centre. There is a difference of seven years between life expectancy in that area and life expectancy in the other part of the constituency. Training centres of that kind perform the important function of inspiring people in socially and economically deprived areas.

[Damian Collins]

My hon. Friend is right. Such facilities are often most needed in harder-to-reach economic areas. Sporting provision in those areas need not be expensive. The success of the midnight basketball leagues, which have been operating in major urban centres in the United States, is one example. Programmes like that are not expensive to deliver, and they can do a huge amount of good.

So far the debate has not focused on the business legacy, and I want to record my admiration for the initiative to create a business embassy at Lancaster house. Corporations and business people from all over the world will come to London to be part of the Olympic games. It is excellent that there is a venue where they will be able to learn more about what this country has to offer in the long term: about the resources and facilities that exist here, and about the businesses that are ready to take advantage of their being in London and demonstrate, for instance, the way in which we can develop our trade routes and interests around the world.

I note that two days of the session at the business embassy will be dedicated to the creative industries, in which the Select Committee takes a particular interest. We should all be proud of that, because it reinforces the message that the Government are sending in their campaign to market everything that Britain has to offer the world in the run-up to the games. Of course the games themselves will be a great showcase for the United Kingdom and London, but we also want a legacy that will last for many years after they have ended. We want them to serve as a massive advertisement for everything that the country has to offer.

[Louise Mensch]

A couple of Members have described themselves, most self-effacingly, as “not a great sportsman” or as “not having much to do with sport,” but will not the legacy of the Olympics also cover the cultural Olympiad, to which those Members might feel themselves to be more suited? As my hon. Friend has said, there are marketing and tourism opportunities, and opportunities for the creative industries. The Olympics do not exist in a vacuum. Their impact on our whole economy will be enormous, and people will be able to involve themselves in many activities besides sport.

[Damian Collins]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. A fantastic programme of cultural events has been organised to coincide with the games, such as the Damien Hirst and Picasso exhibitions at the Tate. A huge variety of theatre and outdoor performing arts events will form part of the cultural Olympiad, and I think that people will really enjoy those.

Like many other Members, I have not succeeded in obtaining tickets for the Olympic park. I must admit that when I was first elected to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, a number of my constituents came up to me and said, “I suppose you will be all right for Olympics tickets now.” They have been devastated to discover not only that I have no tickets for myself, but that I have none to pass on to them. That has been a great loss. The fact remains, however, that many fortunate people from all over the world will come to London to be part of the Olympic games. They will enjoy their time at the Olympic park and other Olympic venues, but they will also have an awful lot of time to spend in London and elsewhere in England. They will spend some of that time in the centre of the city, enjoying the cultural activities that take place here. They will enjoy shopping in our shops, eating in our restaurants and drinking in our bars, and that will be good for the whole economy of our country. I hope that they will also spend some time touring England, and seeing what we have to offer in such places as Northamptonshire and Kent.

As I have said, the Olympics should serve as a great advertisement for what we can put on. It will encourage future tourism, and I hope that initiatives such as the business embassy will encourage new business investment, export links and further things that we can celebrate. In our constituencies there will be a direct sporting legacy from the games, a legacy of interest stemming from the Olympic torch relays. There will be business benefits, especially in Kent. Most tourism companies are expected to have full books during the games, including campsites and hotels that currently have vacancies, and small regional airports such as Lydd in my constituency are likely to experience a substantial increase in business.

Indeed, a variety of business benefits will be seen during the Olympic year. Admittedly there will be some transport difficulties, and it will be harder to get around. It will certainly not be business as usual, and all of us—as Members of Parliament and as members of the Select Committee—will devote special scrutiny to the implementation of the detailed transport plans. Nevertheless, there is a huge amount for us to be excited about as we enter the final three months leading up to the Olympic games. None of us can truly appreciate what it will be like for Britain, for the first time in the modern era, to host a sporting event that will be televised globally and will reach all parts of our country and all parts of the world. We should all be very excited to be associated with that event this year.

17:55

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to take part in the debate. Members will have to forgive me if, rather than delivering a wide-ranging speech, I concentrate on the specific issue of the Paralympics. They have featured here and there in the debate so far, but not as much I should have liked. It is a bit difficult to separate them from the Olympics, because only one Olympic venue, Eton Manor, has been booked separately—for the wheelchair tennis event—at a cost of £2 million. However, I think it crucial, when we talk about the Olympic legacy, for us to consider the benefits of the Paralympics as well.

I remember Euro 96. I will not try to sing the theme tune, but it contained the words “Football’s coming home”. Indeed it was, and in 2012 the Paralympics are coming home. It was in 1948 that the noted neurologist Dr Ludwig Guttmann first used his expertise in spinal cord rehabilitation for wounded servicemen. He organised a competition between different hospitals and sports clubs at the same time as the London Olympics, and the Paralympics emerged from that. When I was doing my research for the debate, I was surprised to learn that as recently as 1984 the Paralympics were taking place, half in New York and half in London, while the Olympics were taking place in Los Angeles. We have come a long, long way very quickly, and 2012 in London will of course be of a vastly different order of magnitude from what happened in 1948.

Early in the debate we heard a few intimations of concern about the possibility that not everyone in the country was fully imbued with the Olympic spirit. It was thought, for instance, that the games might be considered rather costly. I ask all who have doubts to try to fix their minds on the fact that for a few weeks this summer the entire nation will be transfixed, and not just by the spectacle of sporting prowess. Plenty of us are intimately acquainted with the rules applying to various minority sports, but many more people will be interested in the human dimension represented by people such as Tom Daley and Baroness Grey-Thompson, who face challenges all of which will be relevant and interesting to those who are watching their televisions during this sporting festival.

The last Paralympics event, in Beijing, was an unparalleled success for the United Kingdom. I do not think we celebrate often enough the fact that we came second in the medals table, and out-performed the UK main Olympics team. There were some inspirational individual performances. Young Ellie Simmonds was only 13 when she won a gold medal, and in Blackpool we were able to celebrate the achievement of our multi-medal-winning wheelchair athlete Shelly Woods. We all praise the cycling team in Beijing, but the Paralympic cycling team won 17 out of 31 gold medals, believe it or not. That almost puts the main Olympic team to shame, although they did just as well. We should regard the Paralympics as a fantastic opportunity to put out some positive news stories about the abilities, skills and triumphs of disabled people more generally. At a time when some in the third sector seem to be busy trying to narrow our horizons, I believe that this year’s Paralympics will offer us a chance to give people a vision of the future.

Numerous Members have said today, “I am not an athlete,” or, “I have no athletic prowess at all.” It may surprise Members to learn that I have a track record in disability sport. I have competed at national junior level in dressage with the Riding for the Disabled Association. Indeed, at the age of about 12 I was entered in two classes in the national dressage championships at Stoneleigh. I was thrilled to be able to perform. I came last and next to last, which I thought was a wonderful achievement, so when I hear athletes saying, “It’s an honour just to be here,” and, “I feel I’ve achieved something,” I sympathise with them. More importantly perhaps, that experience taught me the lesson of the school of hard knocks; it taught me that success is not guaranteed and that failure is something we all have to deal with in life. It also gave me confidence. I had to go along there every week, often so unwillingly that my mother would have to drag me into the car saying, “You will go, whether you like it or not.” I was not always keen to go; I was a teenager and, like many other teenagers, I was grumpy. Yet I went along and it gave me confidence.

It also showed me how much commitment so many families put into enabling their children to benefit from sport. At Lymm riding centre we had young people with Down’s syndrome and many with muscular dystrophy. I saw the immense amount of care and effort that families put into such children, and it was awe-inspiring.

Now, as MP for Blackpool North and Cleveleys, I see similar things on the ground in my constituency. Christine Anderson from Thornton-Cleveleys has, just in the past year, set up a wheelchair sports club called the Cheetahs. Out of nothing, she has managed to generate passionate enthusiasm among a core group of parents. They have dragged in Paralympians and sponsorship from here, there and everywhere, and they have even got me playing wheelchair basketball. I had no idea it was such a violent and frightening experience. My hands were bleeding by the end; it was not pleasant. I have also seen how sport can inspire people who might otherwise be at the margins of society. As my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) said, they may not feel as if they could play a role in society, but through participating in sports they can start to do so.

There are other organisations like the Cheetahs in my constituency, and they do fantastic work. Just down the road from where I live is Moor Park swimming pool, where Blackpool Polar Bears engage in all sorts of aquatic sports. My local Sainsbury’s has been supporting it as its charity of choice for the past year. Many other such organisations are based at Blackpool leisure centre in Stanley park.

Young people with disabilities across Blackpool and the wider Fylde coast area will be inspired by what they see on their television screens day after day this year. In the coming months they will be able to see people with disabilities performing at the highest levels and achieving in ways that are, perhaps, more meaningful than winning “The X Factor”, which represents the avenue of choice for so many youngsters these days: they think they can win fame and fortune.

In common with my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), I did some research ahead of this debate. I read the report of the Minister’s evidence session, for instance. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) suggested that when the Minister next talks to the BBC he should raise the idea of getting details of local provision to flash up whenever viewers press their red button. The Minister might have had that conversation with the BBC by now, and I also urge him to raise the idea with Channel 4, so we can ensure that viewers of the Paralympics have as much access to that information as Olympics viewers.

I commend Parasport. Its website enables people to discover the sports to which they might be best suited. In the international Paralympic classification, I qualify as CP8, which is “impaired, yet fully standing”—and given that I currently have a cracked rib and find sitting down uncomfortable, it is especially true today that I am “impaired, yet fully standing”. Through the Parasport website I discovered that as someone classified as CP8 I might be particularly suited to Nordic skiing, so the Whips Office may want to prepare for some requests to miss votes in the coming weeks. I have no idea how I might do at Nordic skiing, but I can try.

Legacy has been discussed a lot, but I sometimes get concerned that we focus too much on physical infrastructure and on who will take control of facilities after the games and what will happen to the buildings, because I believe that the legacy in cultural attitudes to sport and to disabled people more widely is more important. Recently there have been some negative images of disabled people, and it is said that there has been an increase in disability hate crime. I therefore hope that in the coming months we will see more positive images of disabled people—of them achieving things and having powerful life stories to tell—and that that will help to reverse that trend.

I am chair of the all-party group on young disabled people. We have been looking at the suitability of venues such as leisure centres, in the hope that we can enable more disabled young people to get involved in sport. We found that, for instance, many community swimming pools do not have the necessary hoists or ramps to allow children who use wheelchairs to get into the pool and get swimming. Young disabled people are sometimes unable to access hydrotherapy sessions, too. I therefore welcome the “places people play” fund. It has made a great difference in many constituencies. I cannot yet find an example in my constituency—the nearest is half a mile outside it—but I shall keep trying.

I also welcome the youth and community sport strategy, which was launched in January. I hope that some of the £1 billion will trickle down to local and constituency level, and in particular to the disability sports clubs that are being set up and the many special schools that are trying to develop a sporting aspect to their provision. I welcome the recommendation that schools should be able both to use their facilities throughout the year and to link with community sports clubs. Special schools must also be included in that.

I also want to pay tribute to an event that is not taking place in London: the Special Olympics. They are for people with an intellectual disability, whereas the Paralympics are aimed more at those with physical disabilities. In London there will be some participants with an intellectual disability, but nowhere near as many as I would like. Those who know their Olympic history will be aware that there was an unfortunate experience in 2000. One team was found not to be as intellectually disabled as it claimed to be, and that has queered the pitch somewhat. I am glad that those with intellectual disabilities have been brought back into the Olympic tent. I also commend the Special Olympics for trying to secure health care for those with an intellectual disability. The Special Olympics does not just organise a sporting event; it also campaigns on public health messages.

There is a website that encapsulates all the points I have been trying to make. It is called www.encourage omar.co.uk. Young Omar Haddad is from Widnes in Cheshire. He is a Special Olympics gymnast who won five gold and three bronze medals in Athens last year. His website is a participatory website. In order to watch Omar’s routine, people have to show encouragement to him. There is a volume slider that must be manipulated, and if he is not given enough encouragement he goes back into the changing room; the film rewinds. If he is given enough encouragement, however, he concludes his routine and gives everyone a big smile. When I got to the end of that three-and-a-half-minute video, I began to understand the power of the Paralympics and to realise that we all must give encouragement to these disabled athletes, and that what they are doing matters to us. Their endeavours are not a sideshow that we can ignore or dismiss because they are shown on Channel 4. Instead, they are an integral part of our Olympic experience this year. If we can all give as much encouragement to Omar as we give to all the other people who are participating, I truly believe that in 2012 we will see a much brighter dawn for disability sports in this country.

18:09

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

It is always a great honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard). He is clearly taking the clever man to Cleveleys, as well as demonstrating a greater degree of passion for disability sport than any other Member. Like him, I have a poor record as a dressage performer; I frequently lost my horse from the arena and was eventually demoted and finally fired from the team. I was a much better jockey—but I was not that brilliant a jockey either, as I broke 19 bones, which hurt a great deal, and ended up in hospital more times than I care to name.

A feature of this debate has been that Members of Parliament have attempted to do two things. First, they have attempted to persuade their constituents that they do not have any Olympic tickets. I, too, can assure my constituents that I have no Olympic tickets, despite having made great efforts. I can find nobody who has tickets—[Interruption.] Except my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey). People should write to her on a regular basis for her tickets, which are doubtless for the football, as she is a keen Liverpool fan. Other hon. Members who, like me, have no tickets have attempted to assure our constituents that we are people who are well capable—

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

May I enlighten my hon. Friend by letting him know that the next sale of tickets will take place on 15 March?

[Guy Opperman]

I take it that that refers not to my hon. Friend’s tickets but to other Olympic tickets. I wish to assist her, because I know that she was not referring to her tickets.

Secondly, all of us have tried to show an Olympic discipline in which we could be proficient. I was very impressed by the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Richard Harrington), who is, sadly, no longer in his place. I understood his description of how for him a “marathon” was a large bar of chocolate to be eaten regularly. I once ran the New York marathon for Children with Leukaemia. Most people experience “the wall” during a marathon. Some reach it at 10 miles, but I did so at 20 miles. When I hit the wall and approached the point where I felt like stopping, I was told by a gentleman in the Bronx, “Don’t stop there man. They’ll only steal your shoes!” Nothing could have encouraged me more to start sprinting at that stage.

I am pleased to discuss the north-east tonight, as it is seeing a great deal of the Olympic torch and of the Olympic movement. I agreed with almost everything that the Chair of the Select Committee said, but at one point he said that the eyes of the world will be on London. I accept that that the eyes of the world will largely be on London and its surrounding regions, but if London is the hub, the spokes of the Olympic wheel are going to various other parts of the nation. There is no question but that the north-east will participate in a great deal of the work in terms of the Olympic flame.

As we know, half the world’s population will be watching the Olympics; 83% of our schools are involved in the Get Set programme, with 508 schools games taking place thus far; 40,000 journalists—we greatly welcome them all—will be covering the games and would expose every one of the Minister’s errors but for the fact that none will be made; and the torch relay is to cover 8,000 miles around the country. I greatly welcome the fact that Newcastle will host nine football matches, including the men’s quarter final. I can assure hon. Members that that will take place at St James’ Park, not in some place that none of us have heard of called the “Sports Direct arena”, although we gratefully accept the sponsorship of the Sports Direct brand.

However, this is not all just about sporting events. Obviously I will be cheering people on, as will my constituent Steve Cram, the man who started the Kielder marathon—a man who has won Olympic medals and now lives just up the road from me in Hexham. We will be cheering on Matt Wells and other members of the Hexham community who are in the Olympic squads. But we must celebrate not only the sport but the business element, about which many have spoken.

I stress that it has been a fundamental feature of both the previous Government’s approach—to their great credit—and the present Government’s approach to buy British and to support local organisations. I pay due tribute to: Sotech in Durham, which has provided the roof cladding for the aquatics centre; Hart Door Systems Ltd, which has provided the roof shutters for the Olympic stadium; Hathaway roofing in County Durham, which has provided roof cladding for the international broadcasting centre, keeping all those 40,000 journalists nice and dry and warm; and International Paint in Newcastle, which has supplied the paint for aquatics centre.

The other good thing is that the north-east will see the torch almost more than any other region. We will have it for five days, when it will take in things such as the angel of the north in Gateshead, the Penshaw monument in Sunderland, and Hadrian’s wall. Friday 15 June will be a spectacular day—I recommend this to people above all else—because the torch will travel from the Tyne bridge to the quayside by zip wire. I have doubts about this, because I am nervous that the torch might fall into the water or get otherwise extinguished. However, I am sure, as the organisers have assured me, that that will not happen. That will be a memorable event, and then on Saturday 16 June, I and many of my constituents will be welcoming the torch—indeed, many of them will be carrying it—as it travels across the Hexham constituency and down into County Durham.

We will also have the great benefit of the hundreds of cultural events, which will be based not only in London and the regions around it but in the north-east. I welcome the fact that the north-east band Folkestra, which I heard play fantastically well when the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport came to Newcastle on 26 January, will be playing as part of the cultural Olympiad. I respectfully submit that that is another wonderful example of making the regions part of the main Olympic movement.

The long and the short of all this is that there has to be a wider element, and I wish briefly to discuss the business impact on tourism, which will be huge. I understand that approximately £39 million is being spent on the advertising campaign that will promote Britain as a tourist venue. That is an excellent thing, because we have the chance to showcase this great country. Although the Olympics and the Paralympics will last for just six weeks, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to showcase Great Britain. I warmly welcome what the Government and the previous Government, to their great credit, have done in this respect.

We also need to play our part in supporting tourism, because with the 20.12% discounting scheme and the 2012 tourism initiatives this is surely the year, above all others, when we should be “staycationing”. I shall be walking the entire 270 miles of the Pennine way, starting in Edale, in the great county of Derbyshire. We will travel all the way north through South Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, Cumbria and Durham and into the great county of Northumberland, where we shall journey the Pennine way through my constituency for five days and then finish up in Scotland. We will be doing that for charity, but on the way I will take advantage of many bed and breakfasts, restaurants and, of course, the odd pub or two. We should all invite our respective organisations to “staycation” and to support tourism in the best way they can, because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

I shall finish by making a couple of brief points now, because I am conscious that the great sage of Colchester is waiting to enlighten the House. Pre-Olympic training camps are coming to the north, so we will welcome, for example, the Sri Lankans and the Colombians to Newcastle and the north-east. We will also be in a position to have our own games, as multiple local schools are holding multiple local games, and I wish to urge the Minister on this one issue. My sole criticism of the whole Olympic organisation is related to the fact that, as he will know, efforts have been made by lots of local organisations to run their own games. I entirely understand that the word “Olympics” cannot be used in the titles of those games, because of branding and all manner of other issues that would take too long to explain, but it is difficult to promote those games.

I am a big supporter of the East Tynedale games, which are organised by the chair of Wylam parish council and various other organisers in the Prudhoe, Wylam and Bywell region, but they are having great difficulty trying to organise events. For example, when the members of the Women’s Institute of Wylam tried to organise the “Wylimpics”, based on things that the Women’s Institute does, they were disappointed to be told that they were prevented from doing so. I urge the Minister to send out edicts to the organisers and guardians of such matters to be as flexible as it is possible to be within the meaning of the law, so that organisations such as the Women’s Institute and local communities that want to hold events can do so.

For my part, I welcome the games—and I now bow humbly to the sage of Colchester.

18:20

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

Numerous speakers have quite rightly praised the previous Government for winning the Olympic games for this country and the coalition Government for taking them forward. Let me be the first Member of this House for many years to say, “Well done, Tony Blair,” as I believe that it was the presence in Singapore of the then Prime Minister that swung it. Indeed, on the Front Benches this evening we have three of the participants in that great achievement in Singapore on the parliamentary podium.

I would say, however—and I intervened on my right hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr Foster) earlier to do so—that my concern is that if we are not careful the games will be viewed throughout the United Kingdom as a London-centric Olympics. I think that the opening ceremony will be key, and if the nations and regions of the United Kingdom do not feature, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and other parts of the regions of England will feel cheated. All of us who have spoken tonight are anxious to promote this as a UK Olympic games, but as a historical footnote let me point out that for more than 1,000 years Stratford was in the county of Essex. Indeed, until it was annexed when London moved eastwards, it was a proud part of that county, so these could have been the Essex games. I am delighted to say that the mountain biking will take place in Essex and it is my hope that as many as six people from the borough of Colchester will take part in the games if they are successful in the qualifying.

I should place on record my appreciation not only to the people in the Olympic movement in this country who are delivering the games but to the people—more than 40,000 of them—who have worked to deliver the games. I pay tribute to the professionalism and skills of them all, whether they are in the offices or on the building sites that we have seen materialise in east London. I repeat the important point, however, and I hope that the Minister will take this message back with him, if it has not already been received: it is crucial that the opening ceremony, with the greatest global TV audience the world has ever registered—more than 4 billion people—reflects the fact that these are the United Kingdom’s games and not just the London games.

I am delighted that Britain’s oldest recorded town and the first capital of Roman Britain will welcome the torch as one of the 1,018 places that the torch will visit, and I pay tribute to the 8,000 people who will eventually be chosen as torch bearers. We do not know the precise route, but—let me get this plug in—I hope that the route will go past the largest Norman keep in Europe and down the oldest high street in the country, as Colchester High street follows the line of a Roman road. If any countries are still looking for a base for their team or for elements of their team, I can nominate my constituency, a mere 40 minutes away by direct rail link between Colchester main line station and London Liverpool Street, stopping off at Stratford. The university of Essex, Colchester garrison and the town itself house numerous sporting facilities and, in addition, tourists and visitors to this country would be well advised not necessarily to stay in London but to move a journey of 45 minutes to one hour to the east, where they will be warmly welcomed.

I want to mention two other points. It is disappointing that it would appear that a large number of the Olympic souvenirs will not be made in Britain. Even at this late stage, I would like to ask those responsible for souvenirs to take the view that the British Olympics should have British-made souvenirs.

Last but not least—I tried to raise this issue at business questions on Thursday and have been raising it for nearly two years—we know that the games will be a great showpiece for this country. The Olympic village and stadium and all the other sporting venues are fantastic and some visitors will travel to Stratford on the overground line from London Liverpool Street, which is a wonderful example of Victorian Britain and of when we used to be able to build and design things well. I am delighted that we have done that in the 21st century with the Olympic games set-up. Unfortunately, the track from London Liverpool Street to Stratford is arguably the most neglected to be found anywhere in the United Kingdom. There are shabby and derelict buildings along the trackside, graffiti-splattered walls, rotting vegetation and general neglect and decay. Anybody who has travelled into London Liverpool Street will know that because, unsurprisingly, as one approaches a terminus the train goes very slowly and the graffiti can be read. I cannot get anybody to take responsibility for ensuring that that bit of the Olympic area is given the attention it should receive. To my mind, it would be nice to see walls painted with the flags of the nations that are competing and with sporting murals.

I welcome the Olympics, and welcome the fact that this is the third time that London has hosted them. Here is a little challenge: I wonder whether those who are organising the games could find somebody who was born when the games were held here in 1908. There must be somebody of 104 who was born at the time of the 1908 Olympics.

In conclusion, I tell the Minister that these are Britain’s Olympic games. They might be titled the London Olympics, but if the opening ceremony is London-centric and ignores the nations and regions of the United Kingdom, from day one we will have lost it.

18:28

[Tessa Jowell (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I welcome this debate and the enthusiasm of the many hon. Members who have spoken, as well as their determination to ensure, particularly when the torch makes its tour around the UK, that the towns, villages, cities and communities of Great Britain lead the celebration. We can be very confident on the basis of what we have heard today.

This week will mark 150 days to go until the opening ceremony when, as so often mentioned in the debate, half the world’s population will be watching the Olympic stadium in London. We must all feel a special tingle of anticipation at the prospect of what lies ahead.

I listened carefully to all the speeches and, although he is not in his seat, I would like pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard). He captured, certainly better than I could, the spirit of “One Vision” and the equivalence between the summer Olympics and the Paralympics. Indeed, many of the Paralympian wags will say that the summer games are simply a test event for the main event that follows—the Paralympics.

This is a moment to take stock, under the watchful eye of the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), at whose mercy I have spent many hours in the past 10 years. It is a moment to focus again on why we decided to invest £9.3 billion of public money in seeking to host the greatest sporting event in the world. The term “legacy” is used very loosely, but it is important to pin down precisely the legacy commitment we made. It was twofold: first, that an Olympic games would drive the regeneration of east London and, secondly, that an Olympic games in London would transform a generation of young people through sport. As we consider the use and value to the public of that enormous investment of their money, let me set out briefly the achievements regarding each of those legacy promises.

[Keith Vaz]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way and I join others in commending her for her role in securing the Olympic games for us. One of the legacies of the games is that they are going to be the ethical Olympics. Does she still share my concern about their sponsorship by Dow Chemical, especially given that the Indian Government have today launched a formal protest because of evidence that Dow and Union Carbide used private investigators to spy on activists who were supporting the Bhopal victims?

[Tessa Jowell]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. We have shared considerable concerns about the risks of that particular sponsorship and its investment in providing the wrap for the Olympic stadium. We have to be realistic about the degree and fundamental nature of change that the Olympic games alone can achieve, but they provide a moment to shine a bright light on continuing injustice in the world. We should never forget the suffering of the up to 25,000 people who died in the wake of the Union Carbide disaster. Neither should we forget that Saudi Arabia is the only country that will not be sending a team that includes women, flying in the face of the International Olympic Committee commitment—the Olympic commitment—to gender equality. Nor should we forget the stories about the exploitation of children, which I am glad to say were rapidly acted on by LOCOG. The Dow sponsorship will remain controversial, and I am glad that my right hon. Friend has raised that issue.

Let me return briefly to the two central commitments on legacy. First, on the regeneration of east London, many have rightly paid tribute to the outstanding work of the Olympic Delivery Authority, led by David Higgins, Dennis Hone and, of course, Sir John Armitt. They have done something that nobody believed possible when we started on this long course nearly 10 years ago. That work is a fantastic advertisement for a bold, confident UK plc and for the work force of the UK and I very much hope that the benefit of that investment—the expertise that been so carefully developed—can be traded around the world after our games.

This has been Europe’s largest public sector construction project and, possibly, the most ambitious exercise in regeneration. We have had many arguments over the Dispatch Box about the Olympic budget. When Labour was in government, we increased the scale of the ambition. Yes, we could have put what was called a flat-pack games on a contaminated site, but if we had not undertaken the regeneration of the site we could never have built homes there or built the polyclinic for which my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) has campaigned so hard. Neither could we have had the venues with legacy use for our elite athletes of the future and for the young people of the communities in the six Olympic boroughs. Of the money spent on constructing the park, 75p in every pound has been spent on regeneration—on cleaning the soil, decontaminating the site, getting rid of the waterlogging and installing the wetland area that means that Canning Town will be protected from flooding. That is real regeneration in action. Some 90% of the material derived from demolition at that site was taken to be recycled.

As the hon. Member for Corby (Louise Mensch) rightly said, however, we have to measure the legacy in terms of more than just physical structures. For example, there has been a recreation of opportunity in the lives of the people who have worked on the park and in the lives of people in that part of east London, which houses two of the most deprived boroughs in the country. Of the 40,000 people who have worked in the Olympic park, 20% have come from the six boroughs and 13% were previously unemployed. There has been special focus on apprentices, with three times the regional average working not only in the park but on the construction of the village and at Westfield, where there are 10,000 permanent jobs and a retail skills academy.

There has also been a story around the country, which has been referred to by hon. Members, of contracts being let at a time of severe economic anxiety for small and medium-sized enterprises. The fact that such businesses have won 1,500 contracts means that we can tell a story of the Olympic park—of the steel for the aquatic centre coming from Neath, of the turf in the field of play coming from Huddersfield, of the steel for the Olympic stadium coming from Bolton and of the plants coming from Thetford. So, there has been investment in creating opportunities in the lives of a population who would not have had those opportunities were it not for the Olympic games.

Let me speak briefly about the second commitment—transforming a generation of young people through sport. That is a commitment not only for this country but for others around the world. The whole House can feel proud of the international inspiration programme now going on in 20 countries, which the organisers of the Rio games have agreed to take forward. In Bangladesh, 80,000 children have been taught to swim, and in north-west Brazil there have been leadership programmes. Magic Bus, which I know well—I have the bracelet—is a child development programme that uses sport to engage children in education.

All that has been achieved against a background of absolutely solid cross-party support, but there has been one decision that was incomprehensible: the dismantling of the organisation of sport for children in primary and secondary schools under which every child was doing two hours a week of sport. Those children were competing and had a choice of being involved in up to 14 sports. In the spirit of collaboration that has been such an important part of this process, I am prepared to wait and see how the Government’s plan unfolds, but I think the abandonment of school sport partnerships and of sport and physical activity for children in primary school and for younger children in secondary school is a terrible, missed opportunity. However, I do not hold the Minister or the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport responsible for that.

Many thanks are due: the plaudits for LOCOG will be endless, but we also celebrate the world-class excellence of, the ODA and the fact that it has achieved so much. We thank Sir Charles Allen, who has given life to the nations and regions programme, so that we will see all of the UK celebrating and creating its own experience of the Olympics. The Olympic Park Legacy Company has taken an extraordinary lead. The hon. Member for Corby was right to say how extraordinary it is that seven of the eight venues already have long-term tenants. We can be confident that the site will be a great social, commercial and sporting centre for London in the future.

[Tracey Crouch]

Will the right hon. Lady join me in thanking the private companies that have over a number of years invested in our athletes, but that will get nothing from the Olympic games, perhaps because they are not official sponsors? Aviva, where I worked before entering Parliament, has sponsored elite athletes; British Gas has sponsored swimmers, I believe, and other companies have sponsored gymnasts. They have helped our athletes to perform the best they can at the forthcoming Olympics.

[Tessa Jowell]

I am delighted to support everything the hon. Lady says. Through UK Sport, our athletes have been the beneficiaries of unprecedented funding to enable them to do their very best in front of the home crowd, but this is quintessentially a public-private partnership. I know the support that athletes have received from their sponsors has been indispensable, as has the sponsorship by some of our great companies of the games themselves.

[Mr Foster]

I was remiss in not mentioning this in my speech, but although the right hon. Lady is correct in saying that it is a public-private partnership and we should be grateful to all the private sector bodies that have sponsored and become involved, the one part of the public sector that is often missed and not thanked is local government. My local authority, Bath and North East Somerset council, has put in an enormous amount of effort and money to ensure that we get a lasting legacy.

[Tessa Jowell]

Again, I am delighted to join the right hon. Gentleman —my right hon. Friend for the purpose of Olympic business—in welcoming that work. I met a number of London local authorities last week to hear from them directly about their plans and the efforts they are undertaking. The commitment of so many local authorities is inspirational.

Many references have been made to the importance of cross-party support, which has been fundamental, first, to the stability of the delivery of one of the riskiest programmes imaginable; and, secondly, to maintaining public confidence. In particular, I thank the Minister for Sport and the Olympics, the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster) and the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport for the way in which they have maintained that cross-party solidity, from which lessons can be drawn, I believe, for other aspects of public policy that require long-term commitment.

There is a point at which we will hand the games over to the initiative, the passion and the enthusiasm of the British people, because there is only so much that Government, LOCOG and the ODA can do. There will be a moment in the middle of May when, as many hon. Members have said, the Olympic torch is lit and it begins its tour around our country. That will be the moment when the whole country wakes up to the certainty that the Olympic games—the UK’s games—will be held in London in a matter of 30 or 40 days.

18:40

[The Minister for Sport and the Olympics (Hugh Robertson)]

Today, there are 151 days to go and the good news for the whole House is that the construction is now 96% complete and we are on track to deliver within the much-discussed £9.3 billion funding package. Of the original £9.3 billion, more than £500 million remains as uncommitted contingency, with the ODA holding just over £100 million and the Government about £400 million. The details will be released to the public, as they always are, tomorrow morning.

I thought the best way to wind up the debate would be to go through the various contributions made, the first of which was from the Chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale). As we have come to expect from him, he made a typically sensible, informed and balanced speech and, I am delighted to say, he acted as a lightning conductor for all the early questions, thereby saving me some trouble.

My hon. Friend was right to point out that when the budget was moved from the bid budget to the delivery budget, it contained considerable contingency funding. It is a fair point that, as a result, we have been able to absorb the lack of private sector investment in both the village and the international broadcast centre/main press centre.

My hon. Friend rightly praised the ODA. I believe that the ODA has recalibrated Britain’s reputation abroad, as we saw clearly during the world athletics championship bid at the end of last year. Put simply, we are now trusted to deliver what we promise. That is the real achievement of the ODA. He rightly pointed out that the LOCOG operating budget is finely balanced. Set against that, it has done extraordinarily well both in ticketing revenue—for all that that has given rise to one or two other issues—and in gaining private sponsorship.

My hon. Friend rightly drew attention to the repayment of the national lottery, in fulfilment of an undertaking given by the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell) at the time the new budget was set in March 2007. It will be reimbursed by land receipts. It is also worth pointing out that the national lottery is doing much better now than it was in 2005, and the amount of money that sport receives from it is due to increase from £1.3 billion in 2010 to £1.8 billion by 2016-17. In part, that is because of the change in the shares and the Olympic levy dropping out, but it is also because lottery ticket sales are rising. I believe that when people see lottery cash being spent on projects to which they can relate, they buy more tickets. The Olympic project has a part to play in all that.

I am sorry that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) is no longer here. He attacked the Scottish position, but as many in his party do, he forgot that the increase in lottery shares and in cash going to sport, the arts and heritage benefits organisations in Scotland just as it does organisations south of the border. Sport in Scotland will benefit precisely when he wants it to—around the time of the Commonwealth games.

I cannot say much about the legacy of the stadium, because we are in a contractual moment. There were 16 expressions of interest in the stadium, which is rather more than we expected, and the process is continuing. We will know at the end of March how that has gone.

My hon. Friend the Member for Maldon said that two challenges remain. In a sense, for Government there are three main challenges relating to the Olympics: security and transport, which he mentioned, and legacy, which everyone who has spoken in the debate referred to. If we get those things right, everybody will concentrate on the sport and forget about us, which is probably the ideal situation.

[Lyn Brown]

The Minister will know that I wrote to him earlier this month about local transport issues in the area and the need to let local people and local businesses, particularly my small and medium-sized businesses, know about our plans. Will he address that matter with some urgency?

[Hugh Robertson]

Yes, I will do so. That is the simplest answer to the hon. Lady’s question.

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

Will the Minister give the House a commitment that the legacy will include working outside the London area? He and I have already discussed the fact that the national lottery has designated an iconic site in my constituency for post-Olympic development. Can we ensure that the Government back that up?

[Hugh Robertson]

Of course we can. A number of Members have mentioned the Places People Play legacy scheme, which involves £135 million worth of funding from Sport England precisely to try to regenerate sports facilities that, for various reasons, have fallen out of previous funding rounds. That has been so successful that Sport England plans to bring forward another £100 million worth of funding in the next cycle. Close to £250 million worth of funding is therefore going into the renovation of grass-roots sports facilities, so I am sure that the hon. Gentleman’s scheme will have as good a chance as any other, provided that it meets the criteria.

[Ian Swales]

The Minister referred to security. Is he aware of the Public Accounts Committee hearing of 14 December and of subsequent letters expressing real concern about the escalation of security costs and, in particular, the trebling of the cost of the G4S contract?

[Hugh Robertson]

Yes, I am. I am not absolutely sure that the G4S contract will treble, in the end. That judgment was probably made before the re-division of the security numbers—the man-guarding numbers—at the end of December. Let us not pretend that this is not a tricky question, however. The responsibility of every Government is the safety and security of their citizens, and of all those who attend the Olympics, so if it takes a doubling or tripling of the budget to keep people safe, that is what we will do. It is very easy to throw bricks, but it is extraordinarily difficult to get an accurate figure that can act as a comparator. Normally, with events such as these, we would look at the previous games. However, it is very difficult to draw meaningful security comparisons with the Beijing games, or with the Athens games, which took place in the immediate aftermath of a number of terrorist outrages. We therefore use the Sydney games in almost all cases when we need a comparator. They took place before the birth of the modern terrorism age, however, and it is extraordinarily difficult to get this absolutely right. I am as confident as I can be at this stage that the re-division of the security budget that took place at the end of last year will meet the challenge that is being presented to us, that the plans now being put forward are extremely robust, and that the combination of some military presence and some G4S—although not as much as originally envisaged—along with volunteers and the filling-the-gap scheme will produce the right de-risked mix of security that will enable us to deliver a safe games.

My hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby) rightly talked about the effect of the opening ceremonies on the national economy. The GREAT campaign is designed precisely to make use of those opportunities. Through him, I would like to congratulate Brighton and Hove Albion, a club with which I have had dealings in the past, on its community work.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr Foster) spoke about the use of local committees to ensure benefits. Like him, I want to pay tribute to the work of Team West of England, which is an excellent example of what can be done. Two other Members made points during his contribution. My hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne) mentioned the work being done in Much Wenlock, the original home of the Olympics, and the major exhibition that is to start there. My hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) talked about the good work that he and Sport England have done to bring about the events that will take place in Medway park.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Bath also made some excellent points about the four opening and closing ceremonies. When we have these debates, it is worth remembering that two of those will be Paralympic ceremonies, at which we will celebrate the contribution that this country has made to Paralympic sport. He also rightly mentioned the legacy of increased funding through the lottery, which has allowed us to fund the school games and the Places People Play scheme. He was also absolutely right about international inspiration. All of us who have seen this project from the inside regard that, in some ways, as the great untold success story of the legacy of the London 2012 Olympics. Twelve million children in 19—soon to be 20—countries have been touched directly by London 2012.

My hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Louise Mensch) was right to praise the work of the Olympic Delivery Authority. She was also correct to highlight the work of the Olympic Park Legacy Company on securing legacy uses for six of the eight main venues. The Westfield shopping centre in Stratford has also been a fantastic success. I think I am right in saying that it has broken every record by getting more than 1 million people through its front door in the first seven days.

My hon. Friend also talked about participation, and it is worth saying a few more words about that. We have set ourselves the most extraordinarily difficult task in trying to increase participation, which the national lottery has failed to do despite almost a decade of funding. It is akin to trying to turn round a super-tanker. Australia, with all the great advantages of a sporting nation—a warm climate, lots of outdoor space and so on—failed to do it on the back of the 2000 games.

There are several reasons why we have thus far failed to make much of an impression in that regard. The 1 million target was not, in itself, unrealistic, but the measurement system by which it was assessed almost certainly was. Asking people to record three separate incidents of sport a week in order to contribute to the target rather overlooks the fact that most people who play sport one level below national or international level probably train once a week and play at the weekend. That is certainly what I was doing when I was playing hockey at a reasonable level. Such people would fail the Sport England measurement target. Dave Brailsford, the performance director of British Cycling, is widely respected as a high-performance coach and a mass participation expert. He believes that cycling alone has gained 500,000 participants since the Beijing games, but that the problem is that they do not meet the target of three separate incidents a week, because most people take out their bicycle at the weekend.

It is therefore extraordinarily difficult to increase participation. Allied to that, I do not think that the governing bodies really worked out how to do it, in the early stages of whole sport plans. A lot of consumer-related work needs to be done around the subject, and many of the bodies did not realise what was involved in influencing consumer behaviour. My hon. Friend also made a good point about red button access, and I shall pursue that matter with the BBC later this week.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) is my constituency neighbour and a prominent footballer. She was absolutely right to pay attention to the part played by Olympians in inspiring young people to take up sport. It was also great to hear the plans put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd) for the torch relay when it stops overnight in Hastings. I will look into the question of the William Parker sports college. The problem is that, since the torch relay route was announced, she is about the 15th or 16th Member to press me to divert it just a tiny distance to take in some well-meaning group or other. I will look into her request, but such diversions almost always have a knock-on effect somewhere else; if we divert the relay to a particular school, for example, we have to take it away from somewhere else, because those days are incredibly congested. I will, however, have a look at the matter for her.

My hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Richard Harrington) was unnecessarily modest about his sporting talent. He rightly stated that many of the venues constructed for London 2012 will be iconic. Indeed, many of them already are. The velodrome has already won a number of architectural awards, as has the stadium, and the aquatic centre will undoubtedly do so.

My hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) talked about the benefits of the torch relay to his constituency. He was also absolutely right to mention the inspirational effect of Olympians on young people. Representing the county of Kent, we both know about the work being done by Kelly Holmes, as well as younger athletes such as Georgina Harland and Lisa Dobriskey from Ashford, who have done a huge amount in that regard. He was also right to point out that the Places People Play scheme has been designed to refurbish sporting facilities on the back of London 2012. I absolutely take his point about the effect of sporting programmes on reoffending. The Home Office will no doubt lead on that issue—I am looking along the Bench to the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire) as I say this—but we will ensure that that work is undertaken.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard)—the House’s dressage expert, as he is now to be known—made some powerful points about the Paralympics. Britain is of course the home of the Paralympic games; they started here in 1948. There is an interesting parallel involved here. We started the Paralympics in that year precisely because we had so many injured servicemen coming back from the second world war, and when I look at the Paralympic teams that I see training up and down the country today, it is extraordinary to see how many servicemen and women who have been injured in Iraq and Afghanistan are finding a new future for themselves through Paralympic sports. My hon. Friend was also right to mention the Special Olympics.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) spoke powerfully about the benefits of the Olympics for the north-east. I have been up there twice in the past month, including a visit last week to Durham, where a new sports centre is being opened on the back of the Places People Play programme. He was right to emphasise the tourism benefits for a region such as his, which has so many great cultural and tourism opportunities. Having seen what I have seen on both my visits in the past month, I am sure that this will be a wonderful moment for the region, and that it will definitely make the most of it.

Let me deal with this business about Olympic brands, which is sometimes as frustrating for the Government as it is for organising committees. We were keen to have a schools Olympics but were not allowed to do so. This rule can be infuriating, particularly when we see it applied to flower shows and all the other things that get caught up. However, without it sponsors would not have had the security they needed to commit to the games in the way they have done. I hesitate to make this direct connection, but I think that it is very unlikely that we would have raised £700 million of private sector sponsorship from big firms if it had not been through the security they got through the original London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006, infuriating though it is for many small societies and organisations.

I absolutely take the point made by the hon. Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) about London-centric games, which I think we are all very aware of. I cannot say too much about the opening ceremony, but there is a clue in the title revealed two weeks ago—Isles of Wonder—which does not necessarily suggest anything too London-centric. I think that he will find that his concerns have been met. Of course, the train line between Liverpool Street station and Stratford can be picked up through the “Look of London” funding, so I think that that should be possible.

Finally, I thank the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood for not only her contribution, but her ongoing work as a member of the Olympic Board and everything she has done up to now. She was right to lay out the legacy for the bid in two ways: the regeneration of the east end and the ambition to energise young people through sport. I think that we are now in as good a place as we possibly can be to try to meet that. It remains to be seen whether we can do that and then record it in a meaningful way that allows us to show that it has been done. I think that we are at last really beginning to understand what needs to be done to achieve that very laudable aim. I thank her once again for the cross-party support and the way she has dealt with this in government and in opposition. She is absolutely right that, without that, we simply would not have the public confidence in this project.

We have had a good debate today. I thank the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon, for all the work that he and the Committee have done. We are on track, on time and just under budget to deliver a great games. Tomorrow, with 150 days to go, we will be in a position to reveal that, of the original budget, over £500 million remains in unused contingency.

Question deferred till tomorrow at Ten o’clock (Standing Order No. 54).

SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES 2011-12

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

Forensic Science Service

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Relevant Documents: Seventh Report from the Science and Technology Committee, on the Forensic Science Service, HC 855, and the Government’s response, Cm 8215.] Motion made, and Question proposed,

That, for the year ending with 31 March 2012, for expenditure by the Home Office—

(1) further resources, not exceeding £66,029,000, be authorised for use for current purposes as set out in HC 1755,

(2) further resources, not exceeding £4,421,000, be authorised for use for capital purposes as so set out, and

(3) a further sum, not exceeding £173,266,000, be granted to Her Majesty to be issued by the Treasury out of the Consolidated Fund and applied for expenditure on the use of resources authorised by Parliament.—(Mr Newmark.)

19:02

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

On behalf of the Science and Technology Committee, it is my pleasure to open the first debate we have held in the Chamber in this Parliament. Our report on the Forensic Science Service was published in June last year. It was prompted by the Government’s decision to wind down the FSS and the ensuing concerns from the forensic science community and, indeed, Members across the House. Before going any further, I would like to thank the outgoing members of the Committee—motion 4 on today’s Order Paper identifies their replacements, who are welcome—for their contribution to the report and the work of the Committee. I would also like to put on the record my thanks to our scientific specialists and the Clerks for their sterling work.

I point out to the Minister that the report was unanimous, with all Committee members being dissatisfied with not only the situation we found ourselves investigating, but the Government’s response to it. To ensure the House understands the history of the situation, a few dates are relevant, and it goes back rather a long way. In 1991 the FSS became an Executive agency of the Home Office. In 1999 it gained trading fund status. In 2002 it stopped being the preferred supplier of forensic services for the Association of Chief Police Officers. In 2003 a Home Office review recommended that it become a public-private partnership via a government-owned company, a GovCo. The transition to a PPP was never completed. In 2005 the FSS changed from a trading fund to a GovCo. By March 2011, as part of a transformation programme, three FSS sites had been closed. On 14 December 2010 the Home Office announced that the FSS would be wound down and that there would be

“no continuing state interest in a forensics provider by March 2012”.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that that is very worrying and could lead to future miscarriages of justice?

[Andrew Miller]

I will go through the Committee’s case—hopefully reasonably forensically—but one of the concerns we express is our worry that this could lead, in the worst cases, to miscarriages of justice. At the time the Government made their announcement, the FSS’s operating losses were claimed to be about £2 million a month and the projected shrinking of forensic markets was cited as the reason for the decision.

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

Before my hon. Friend moves on, does he agree that one of the appalling things about the Government’s decision was that there was no consultation? There were discussions afterwards about how to wind down the FSS, but no consultation either to look at the finances or, in particular, to determine what impact that would have on the science base.

[Andrew Miller]

I not only agree with my hon. Friend, who plays a sterling role in the Committee, but think that the Government, had they undertaken the kind of consultation he envisages, would have made savings by approaching the problem in a different way. There was undoubtedly a problem, because the GovCo would technically have been trading illegally if it had carried on trading at a loss, but for reasons I will set out there were solutions to that.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Before venturing any further, I should say that I have an indirect family interest in the matter.

My hon. Friend says that there were other ways of doing this. One such way was the closure of laboratories at Chepstow and Chorley, which had been envisaged and was itself controversial, but the financial effects of which have not been seen. Therefore, the Government have effectively stepped in with both feet to make this radical change before seeing whether the FSS could have put its own financial house in order.

[Andrew Miller]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Before the hon. Gentleman continues, I remind all Members that when making an intervention or speaking in the Chamber they must face the Chair and not turn their back to it, because otherwise it is very difficult not only for me, but for other Members to hear their contribution and pick up clearly the point from the microphones.

[Andrew Miller]

My hon. Friend makes a fair point, and I will demonstrate later that when we saw the next set of FSS accounts, the supposed £2 million a month loss had shrunk by a remarkable degree.

The FSS provided forensic services to police forces across England and Wales and to other agencies, such as the Crown Prosecution Service. It held about a 60% share of the market when the closure decision was made. We were told that the decision was based on commercial and legal grounds. The FSS had been struggling for many years, and it had gone through a series of status changes over the previous two decades, eventually becoming Government-owned.

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

Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that in 2003 the then Minister said:

“The investment required could never be funded year by year out of surplus”—[Official Report, 5 November 2003; Vol. 412, c. 282WH].

[Andrew Miller]

The hon. Gentleman is right, and I shall cover that issue in a moment, because the whole point of the Committee’s investigation is that the FSS is not simply a trading arm; it incorporates a range of other resources, and the Government now agree that it is necessary to protect some of them, such as the archive.

In 2008 the FSS transformation programme, funded by a Government grant, was designed to turn the service into a profitable and sustainable business. The FSS told us that prior to the 2010 closure decision it had been on track—this supports the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) made—to reduce the headcount and to close three of its sites as part of that programme.

One suspects that had successive Governments—to respond to the point raised by the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti)—placed in a separate account the cost of primary research and the cost of maintaining the archive, the figures would be quite different today. However, the internal financial struggles of the FSS must be seen in the wider context of the changes to the forensic market.

Anyone who has ever run a business will know that, however much they restructure, the profitability and sustainability of their business ultimately depends on the size of the market. The market for forensic services is largely driven by the police customer, and it is worth clarifying that police forensic expenditure splits into “internal”, what they do in-house, and “external”, what they spend on external providers. External spend constitutes the bulk of the forensics market.

The peculiar factor in the Forensic Science Service is that its initial customer is the investigating police officer, but as time goes on the relationship transforms and ultimately the customer is the jury. This rather unusual transformation means that the customer is initially in one Department but finally in another, the Ministry of Justice.

Our inquiry found that between 2005 and 2011, police external forensic expenditure steadily decreased, and unpublished analysis of the forensics market in September 2010 expected the market to decline from £170 million in 2009 to £110 million in 2015. Ignoring the impact of the 2010 spending review, which had yet to bite on police resources, that analysis represented a 35% decrease in the market.

[Rehman Chishti]

Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that the Science and Technology Committee’s seventh report of Session 2010-12 makes it quite clear, on page 67, that on this matter the previous Parliament called Labour’s approach misleading and confusing?

[Andrew Miller]

The hon. Gentleman is clearly reading from a Government-prepared brief, but he is right. Let me be clear—

[Rehman Chishti]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Miller]

No, I will not.

The Committee’s report is not a partisan attack on the Government; it represents a Committee unanimously criticising the actions of a particular Department under both its current stewardship and its previous ownership. I hope that the hon. Gentleman does not think that I am taking a partisan view.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is entirely possible that the previous Government got things wrong, that this Government are also at risk of getting things wrong, and that what matters is not whose fault it is but what we can do to ensure that forensic science in this country is improved?

[Andrew Miller]

I agree. The important point is to get things right, and I hope to demonstrate that that is what the Committee achieved in its recommendations. Indeed, the Government seem to have acted on one of the substantial recommendations, and we welcome that.

Police internal spend on forensics generally increased between 2005 and 2011, but although we have had explanations, such as increased efficiencies, reduced demand, competition and driving down prices, for the decrease in external spend, we have not been able to obtain from the Government a satisfactory explanation either for the increase in internal spend or of how the money was spent.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) had a very unsatisfactory response to a series of freedom of information requests, and I raised that with the Minister on 19 December 2011. In answer to my question about whether it would be reasonable to add together revenue and capital to make sense of the figures that the police forces gave us, he rightly said that that would be mixing apples with pears—but that is exactly what the Metropolitan police did in response to my hon. Friend’s inquiry.

Let me put on the record what the Scrutiny Unit had to say about the period covered by the FOI requests. During that period only £10.6 million in total was classified as capital, and that was only by fewer than half the police authorities that provided data. That accounts for less than 2% of total expenditure, but the low level of expenditure might be down partly to how capital expenditure is recorded. The Scrutiny Unit notes, for example, that the Met police stated:

“The budgets for forensic science are revenue budgets and any expenditure incurred would have been through these revenue budgets. This includes any equipment purchases or building works.”

That is not in line with normal accounting practice, whereby expenditure over a pre-determined level on items with a lifespan of more than one year is classified as capital expenditure. That normally covers items such as building works and expensive laboratory equipment, so we agree with the Minister about not mixing apples with pears.

It remains the case, however, that there is no overall control of forensic budgets, and I think the Committee proves beyond doubt that the Government’s case remains seriously damaged. This situation also demonstrates the cavalier attitude of police authorities to a reasonable request from an hon. Member making an FOI inquiry.

[Graham Stringer]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is laying out the ambiguities in the finances, but on the two deep issues as the police changed from an FSS customer to a competitor: first, some bodies are not accredited to the right level in forensic science; secondly, the experience from the United States of America is that when the police do their own forensic work they end up with a conflict of interest.

[Andrew Miller]

My hon. Friend’s first observation takes us right back to the first intervention that I took, on the risk of miscarriages of justice. His second point is interesting. Some laboratories that are currently up and running do not meet the standards that the regulator wants, and police authorities that have thought about that have started to bring some of the resources together in house. If we are not careful we will reinvent the FSS, and find that we have wasted a huge amount of money in the meantime.

[Dr Huppert]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there are already a number of concerns about this? For example, a survey by New Scientist earlier this month found that 28.6% of analysts said that they sometimes or always feel pressured to produce a particular result. There are problems now, and there is no reason to believe that they will be resolved.

[Andrew Miller]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. I hope that every senior official of the Home Office is required to read that New Scientist article, because, first, it would do them good to read some science, and secondly, it underlines an important point about the quest for justice that this should be all about.

Looking forward, one of our key recommendations was that the forensics market must be stabilised. Police in-sourcing must be regulated to ensure that there is a competitive market for remaining providers; otherwise, the UK’s forensic science capabilities could be further damaged.

We also considered the implications of closing the FSS in terms of the risks to the skills base available to the criminal justice system. Our primary concern was whether forensic analysis would be taking place in unaccredited laboratories. Forensic services provided to police forces by the FSS and private companies had to be accredited to the standard of ISO 17025, but police laboratories do not have to be so accredited, and that seems to be an anomaly. That standard assesses the competence of an individual scientist and the organisation in which he or she works, as well as the validity of methods used and impartiality. Adherence to the standard is therefore crucial in maintaining the confidence of the courts and the public in the scientific evidence used in criminal cases.

We concluded that transferring work from the FSS to an unaccredited laboratory would pose significant and unacceptable risks to the operation of criminal justice. We specifically recommended that the forensic science regulator should be given statutory powers to enforce compliance with quality standards, and we remain disappointed that the Home Office has not committed to that. To the regulator’s credit, however, since our report was published we have not heard of any work being transferred to unaccredited environments.

The FSS has maintained an archive of materials, case files and notes—a rich resource that has proved valuable in cold case reviews and investigations of miscarriages of justice. To give a flavour of the scale, the FSS estimated that in May 2011 its archive held 1.78 million case files. We were deeply concerned about the uncertain future of the FSS’s archive, and strongly considered that it should not be fragmented, whatever the future of the organisation. I am pleased to say that the Government agreed with that recommendation. This underlines the fact that both Governments should have dealt with the GovCo’s accounts in a different way. About 21 staff will maintain the archive, and the Government’s estimated running costs are stated to be approximately £2 million a year. It would not be appropriate to put on a side wager with the Minister, but I predict that that cost will inexorably rise significantly, because the bigger the archive gets and the more complex the science gets, the more expensive a project this will become, albeit one that we ought to maintain in the interests of justice.

The long-term future of the archive remains uncertain. There are still several archive-related activities previously undertaken by the FSS that must be picked up elsewhere. In particular, the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which investigates alleged miscarriages of justice, will need in future to pay a private forensic service provider for the services previously provided free of charge by the FSS. I would be interested to know what assessment has been made of the impact of these changes. This again illustrates my point about the fact that the issue crosses Government departmental boundaries.

Another facet of our inquiry was to examine the impact of closing the FSS on forensic research and development in the UK. The FSS spent £3 million to £4 million a year on R and D. Private sector players also spend on R and D, but often more towards the development end. Basic forensic science research in universities and other institutions has long struggled for funds, and this area has not been supported by the research councils with the degree of priority that it deserves. We therefore recommended that the Home Office and research councils develop a new national research budget for forensic science. Alas, while there have been some soothing noises, we have not yet seen any real commitments. If this is not the job of the research councils or the Home Office, then whose responsibility is it—or are we just going to leave it in the air?

Last but not least, the strength of any organisation is its people. That is why we took a particular interest in what would happen to the highly skilled forensic scientists facing redundancy. This country is a world leader in the field, having pioneered DNA forensic technologies, for example. One does not become a forensic scientist overnight; it takes years of training and experience. Much of the UK’s intellectual wealth in this area resides within FSS scientists, and once it is lost, I fear that it will not be easily regained. We recommended that transfer of FSS staff to other forensic service providers be conducted under TUPE regulations, which provide the necessary employment protections. Reflecting our concern that forensics expertise may be lost altogether, we were keen for forensic scientists to be retained within the profession and within the UK.

The FSS had over 1,000 staff, about 840 of whom have left since December 2010. Unfortunately, while 103 staff have moved via TUPE to the Metropolitan police service and another 11 staff will move via TUPE to Government agencies, no staff have transferred to other forensic service providers via TUPE. Furthermore, because the FSS is a GovCo rather than a non-departmental public body, FSS staff have thus far been unable to access internal civil service vacancies. I am awaiting a response from the Government on this point, having written to the Minister for the Cabinet Office on 9 February.

Adding this all together, we are talking about the loss of skills to the UK; the damage to the UK’s reputation from closing a world-class service; the cost of running the archive; the fact that what the Government estimated to be a £2 million per month loss was in fact £1 million; the lack of understanding of expenditure in this important area and of the way in which it spills over to other Departments; and the impact on justice. That combination of factors makes this matter far too important to be dealt with on an estimates day, and I regret that this debate cannot take place on a votable motion.

The picture is looking bleak overall. Last week the FSS suggested that the vast majority—up to 80%—of forensic scientists from the FSS have left the industry, with an even larger percentage, closer to 90%, of research and development scientists moving to a different sector. Although there are not yet any definitive data, it appears that the UK is losing that intellectual wealth. We often talk about the brain drain in science. This could be a mass exodus of talent.

I hope that Members will agree that our inquiry into the Forensic Science Service was both necessary and timely. Before I conclude, it is worth mentioning that we put on the record criticisms of the way in which the FSS has been handled by both the previous Government and the current Government. What I would like to see from the Government is a proper well-considered strategy for forensic science in the UK. It is important that this matter be addressed well before the imposition of police and crime commissioners. It is also imperative that the strategy be based on the delivery of justice, not just on the interests of the police as a customer, as important as those are.

[Graham Stringer]

My hon. Friend has made an extremely powerful speech on behalf of the Select Committee. He mentioned justice. I advise everybody in the Chamber to read the oral evidence that Dr Tully gave the Committee, in which she made it absolutely clear that there will be cold cases, and perhaps current cases, in which murderers and rapists get off free because of the changes that have been made.

[Andrew Miller]

I repeat what was going to be my final point. It is imperative that the strategy be based on the delivery of justice, not just on the interests of the police, important as those are. I noticed the Minister nodding at that point; I am sure that it is one on which he and I would agree.

19:31

[Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller). To continue the forensic analogies, it is an unquantifiable pleasure.

I want to start by recognising the excellent work that forensic scientists do, no matter where in the country they work. It is often painstaking work and it is often undertaken in unpleasant situations. Much of the work that they do is unsung and they remain largely anonymised within the system. I therefore praise the work of the forensic experts and scientists who do so much to support the criminal justice system in this country.

The Forensic Science Service has been making a significant loss for a considerable period. This is not a new situation that has materialised suddenly in the 18 months since this Government came into being. The Forensic Science Service has had 20 years of fiscal decline and difficulties. It has lost about £2 million a month. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston is signalling that it is more like £1 million a month. Even if that were true, and it is not accepted that it is, £1 million a month is a great deal of money to lose, particularly in these straitened times of austerity. One cannot lightly brush aside such significant monthly losses.

[Mr Slaughter]

The overwhelming client of the Forensic Science Service is the police in England and Wales, although there are some other clients. The money is therefore being paid by the police service. If the contracts are adjusted, as they may well be by commercial providers, all that will happen is that the police service will pay more money. These notional losses are a consequence of the way in which the system is set up. What parts of the criminal justice system does the hon. Gentleman think should make a profit?

[Michael Ellis]

The Government have supplied £20 million to maintain operational continuity and some £8.7 million to cover staffing costs in recent months. There is no point in Opposition Members taking the anti-privatisation and anti-capitalist approach and saying that the best approach is for the Government to run everything from the centre. That is not the best approach. We know from numerous examples over the past 20 or 30 years how the commercial sector has driven better results and circumstances for the Government and for the individual.

[Andrew Miller]

The hon. Gentleman will find that neither I nor any other member of the Select Committee from either side of the House has ever criticised the principle of having private sector providers. LGC and other providers are first-rate scientific laboratories. However, that does not make the economic case.

[Michael Ellis]

It was Sir Robert Peel who set up the Laboratory of the Government Chemist in 1842 to analyse alcohol and tobacco products. It remained in situ until 1996, when it was privatised. There has, in effect, been a managed decline of the Forensic Science Service for years, including under the previous Labour Government.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree with my constituents who work as forensic scientists for LGC that since 1991, when the market was opened up, there has been more innovation and investment, quality has been driven up, and prices and turnaround times have been driven down?

[Michael Ellis]

I do agree with that.

In Germany and the United States, both of which are first-world countries and in the group of the 20 leading industrialised nations, it can take up to six weeks for routine forensic results to come through, whereas in this country, as the LGC managing director has confirmed, similar results can be obtained in two to three days. That has been the case for years. Opposition Members express concern about the private sector and ask, “What price justice?” I say to them that the private sector has been used in forensic services for years.

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

To support my hon. Friend’s point, I cite Cellmark Forensic Services, which is based in Abingdon in my constituency. It was established in 1987 as the world’s first commercial DNA fingerprinting service. It was involved in presenting the first DNA evidence at the Old Bailey. It highlights the fact that private companies can establish a reputation for quality and for technical evidence. It has had the ISO quality accreditation since 1990 and is fully accredited to submit crime scene profiles and profiles taken under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 to the DNA national database. I am concerned that some of the contributions to this debate will undermine public confidence in forensic evidence that comes to the criminal justice system from private companies. I hope that Members wish to avoid that.

[Michael Ellis]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) spoke about criminals getting off free. Such scaremongering is not acceptable. One has to juxtapose such suggestions with the fact that the private sector has been involved in forensic science for years and is currently responsible for up to 50% of the work.

[Dr Huppert]

There is no dissent across the Chamber on the fact that the private sector has a role and performs it well in some instances. If we are going to talk about management structures, I understand that 20% of LGC is owned by its management and staff, and that all its staff have phantom shares. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a great argument for employee share ownership, because it drives companies to care about their staff and staff to care about what they are trying to achieve?

[Michael Ellis]

That sounds like a perfectly sensible idea.

[Graham Stringer]

The hon. Gentleman referred to what I said earlier, and I should like to clarify two points. First, the private sector does an extremely good job on many occasions. It has sped up DNA analysis, and it has improved things where there is a regular scientific progress to go through.

Secondly, if the hon. Gentleman reads the evidence, he will see that there is likely to be a problem with the interrogation of the database. That service of the FSS is likely to disappear for ever. That was why some of the evidence given to the Committee indicated very strongly that cold cases would not be solved and that in current cases guilty people would go free.

[Michael Ellis]

I do not accept that at all, but I am very pleased that the hon. Gentleman has had a chance to give his view.

Private companies already provide 35% of forensic services to the criminal justice system. To counter points that Opposition Members have made about a potential conflict of interest in the police analysing forensic evidence, I point out that there are already numerous examples of constabularies up and down the country being responsible for analysing forensic evidence such as footprints, fingerprints and the like. They farm out some areas of forensic science, but there is no suggestion that there have not been numerous examples of the police analysing evidence themselves. I see no reason why we should fear impropriety.

The archives will be retained, which is right. It is also right that staff are being moved prior to the controlled shutdown of the FSS and that work is being safely transferred. I note with some interest that the Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr Keir Starmer, who I believe was appointed by the Labour Government, remains satisfied that the closure is orderly and that things can be properly managed. The financial service regulator has also—

[Andrew Miller]

Not the financial service regulator, the Forensic Science Regulator.

[Michael Ellis]

Forgive me. The Forensic Science Regulator has said that laboratories, prosecuting authorities, professional bodies, the judiciary and the Association of Chief Police Officers all feel that they can support the Government’s measures. The concerns being expressed by one or two Opposition Members are not duplicated by those authoritative organisations.

Twelve new service providers have already been contracted, and some already have vast experience of dealing with particularly significant cases of public fame and notoriety. They already have the type of experience that the FSS has under its belt.

Getting forensics right is important to the defence as well as the prosecution. One tends to hear the argument that it is important to secure prosecutions, but forensic results can also exonerate people who are suspected of criminal offences. They therefore serve the wider public interests of justice. The defence should be factored into what is done, and there is no reason to think otherwise.

As I alluded to in my answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell), the managing director of LGC Forensics, one of the larger companies doing private work in the field, has pointed out that privatisation has provided and will provide capacity where the Forensic Science Service cannot necessarily cope. As in many other fields of privatisation, that greater capacity will provide faster turnaround times, which will be in the wider interests of justice. That gentleman gave the example that it takes six weeks in Germany or the United States to get some results that we in England and Wales can obtain in two to three days.

The private sector can invest in the future and in innovation in a way that Governments tend not to be able to do, or to be as efficient at doing, because of the sheer size of government. Commercial entities must innovate or die, and the private sector companies involved in the field of forensic science will be looking to innovate in certain areas. That will have a beneficial effect on the wider interests of justice.

I give as examples two inventions in the forensic science field that have been credited to LGC. Automated fibre analysis and the analysis of minuscule amounts of DNA are new fields of forensic analysis that were invented by that private company, and apparently both were used to aid the prosecution of the killers of Stephen Lawrence. I do not wish to focus only on that company, but it is right to point out that it has some 650 forensic scientists or experts in its employment and turns over £170 million annually. Such companies can expand, advance and examine what advances are being made internationally. That is another signal reason why privatisation can be in the wider interests of justice.

It has been my experience in the courts of England that juries are not particularly interested in what company a scientist comes from. If anything, they are more focused on their qualifications or experience. They are particularly impressed by how long a scientist has been working in a particular field and what his or her qualifications are. In my view, they are not likely to focus on whether the scientist comes from company A, company B or the Forensic Science Service. That will not influence juries.

[Andrew Miller]

I totally agree with the hon. Gentleman on that point, but does he agree with me, and with Andrew Rennison, the regulator, that a jury is much more likely to be persuaded by somebody from an accredited laboratory?

[Michael Ellis]

No, I do not think I do agree with that. Of course I accept that a laboratory must be accredited, but it is most unlikely that a judge, never mind the prosecutor or the defence, would accept without question evidence from unqualified scientists. The scientists will be highly qualified to give persuasive evidence to a court, but it is of course necessary to ensure that scientific laboratories are properly accredited and qualified.

[Andrew Miller]

I accept the hon. Gentleman’s last point—that is critical in the interests of justice. The Science and Technology Committee has said that whether laboratories are in the private or the public sector, work should be done in accredited laboratories; otherwise, justice could be at risk.

[Michael Ellis]

There is a very big difference there. Hon. Members will do well to recall that under the McFarland review the previous Labour Government effectively accepted a move towards privatisation but botched the job. There is no point in trying to get away from the fact that the FSS is urgently in need of change, and the Government’s move is the right one for the wider interests of forensics.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree—perhaps this has not been understood—that before a so-called expert can give written or oral evidence to a court the judge has to be satisfied that they are indeed an expert in the field in which they say they are an expert? It matters not where they have come from. What matters to the judge is that they have qualifications, experience and so on, so that it can be determined that they are an expert in the field in which they are giving evidence.

[Michael Ellis]

I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend—I have made that point already. The reality is that the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Crown Prosecution Service would not seek to put a case before a judge and jury that relied on someone who was not actually an expert. Therefore, pursuing that argument is clutching at straws.

[John Howell]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way again—he is being incredibly generous—but may I take him back to the point that he was edging towards making? By proposing a £50 million subsidy in March 2009 for the transition arrangements, did the previous Government send a message that they were not interested in the private sector? Does he agree that that did more damage than anything else to their scope for investment at that time?

[Michael Ellis]

I agree. When the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) was Home Secretary, he accepted the recommendations of the McFarland review into the future of forensic science services. The then Government said that the review

“makes a number of helpful observations and recommendations aimed at improving FSS performance, but the most fundamental is that it should be transformed from a trading fund into a government-owned company as a precursor to development into a private sector classified public/private partnership…I am confident that the proposed change will stimulate and broaden the market”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 17 July 2003; Vol. 651, c. WA167-168.]

The proposals are an extension of that position. The right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) said at that time:

“The status quo is not an option, and it is clear that we need to act to ensure that the FSS remains a leading-edge forensic organisation.”—[Official Report, 5 November 2011; Vol. 412, c. 280WH.]

That is what will happen now. The Forensic Science Service needs to provide an excellent service, but it need not be in Government hands to do so. Farming it out to the private sector is simply an extension of the current position, to the tune of between 35% and 50%, depending on whom we listen to.

The Committee report states its

“disappointment at the historical inadequacies in government decision-making that brought the FSS to its current dire financial situation.”

I recognise that, but the Committee wished to place

“on record that we consider much of the responsibility for the current problems facing the FSS to lie with previous administrations.”

I am happy to accept that point. I happen to agree with it, but I would go further and say that the FSS is in its current position almost solely because of how it was run down under the previous Labour Administration.

I note that the Committee agreed with the Government that allowing the FSS to go into administration would have been undesirable. I presume that Labour Members agree with that, because allowing the FSS to go into administration would not have been good for the criminal justice system or for FSS staff.

It is clear that the wider interests of the criminal justice system in this country are best met by the actions that the Government are taking. They are taking the bull by the horns, which has to be done to provide the continuation of the excellent service from forensic scientists and experts, who have given such excellent support to the wider criminal justice system in this country for many years.

19:49

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

I am obliged to my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) not only for his Committee’s review, but for his explanation of its position. The Committee, of course, is impartial—there is a majority of coalition Members on the Committee, so it is clearly not biased in any way.

I come to this debate with no scientific expertise, but with some knowledge as a criminal lawyer. I can see on the Government Benches very eminent members of the Bar, for whom I have a fair amount of respect. I understand that the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) sits as a recorder in the Crown Court, and my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry)—she is clearly not in the same party, but we get on particularly well—is a barrister.

I had suspected, although I did not know this until he spoke, that the hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) was probably a member of the Bar too. I was confused about parts of his speech. He seemed to suggest that Opposition Members had said there was no room for the private sector in the FSS. With respect, I suspect that he was reading a speech that he had written in anticipation of what my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston might have said, rather than speaking in response to what he actually said.

I am concerned. The loss of the FSS is short-sighted and could lead to an increase in miscarriages of justice. My hon. Friend’s first criticism in the review was of the lack of consideration to the future of the FSS and of the Government’s failure to consult scientific experts. The Committee also expressed concerns about the loss of expertise—top scientists exiting the profession—and research and development work. That must be a concern for all Members on both sides of the House.

I echo those concerns, but I shall concentrate on the possible implications for the criminal justice system. Provision could be fragmented, which cannot be positive. Formerly, the FSS would independently deal with evidence from a crime scene, oversee tests and co-ordinate different pieces of evidence. I am concerned that the introduction of a number of different private providers—I do not instinctively dislike private providers—will fragment that process.

Having different providers dealing with different pieces of the jigsaw is fraught with dangers for justice and might lead to miscarriages of justice. I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Northampton North, who seemed to say that the proposals are all about money, which is fine. Of course, at times of austerity, we need to be careful about how money is spent, but hon. Members will not think I am a raving lunatic if I suggest that £24 million a year is not an awful lot of money for justice, which is my chief concern.

We need joined-up, experienced teams to deal with those pieces of evidence from a crime to ensure that scientists have the complete picture. My concern is that fragmentation will mean that that will not happen as it does now.

[Michael Ellis]

The hon. Gentleman does not think that £24 million is a lot to spend, but it is a £24 million loss when areas of the private sector can function without making such a loss. Does he not think it would be better if the cost to the Government were not a £24 million loss?

[Karl Turner]

Of course I do—it would be marvellous if money was not lost—but there are two sides to the argument, and I understand that the FSS says that some of that cost can be put down to the restructuring of the service.

I am also concerned about the potential for police bias. I am worried that moving forensic work in-house could undermine public trust in our judicial system and create a significant risk of police bias. There will be a clear conflict of interest if the police have to decide what evidence to test while under pressure to secure a conviction. We can see examples of that. The public must have complete trust in our judicial system, but that trust might be compromised by convictions based on forensic science that is no longer perceived to be truly independent.

[Anna Soubry]

The hon. Gentleman was kind in his opening comments, and I respond to him in equally warm terms, but does he not agree that the police already conduct all sorts of scientific analysis—for example, relating to fingerprints, footprints and the taking of hair samples for DNA analysis? He is right to be concerned about fairness in such circumstances, but the record shows that the police are perfectly fair when it comes to such scientific evidence.

[Karl Turner]

Of course the police conduct all sorts of inquiries and investigations—the hon. Lady makes a reasonable point—but my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston has told us that his Committee had concerns when conducting its review, and it was right to point out those concerns.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

I draw my hon. Friend’s attention to the concerns of a constituent of mine about the changes in the FSS that led me to talk to Humberside police chiefs about what was happening. It was clear to me that they were determined to do a good job in the circumstances but that they were concerned about the change and felt that the previous system worked very well.

[Karl Turner]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes a valid point. It is worth noting that we are to hold elections for police commissioners in November, which might cause further problems.

Historically, prosecutors have relied on independent expert evidence from forensic specialists who have personally examined evidence collected in police investigations. The closure of this respected major research institution will, I think, lead to the loss of the most experienced forensic scientists. To be honest, I have heard little criticism of the FSS in robing rooms in Hull, and I have not heard members of the judiciary particularly—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Broxtowe looks at me with complete dismay.

[Anna Soubry]

This should not be a competition for anecdotal evidence but, in my experience, there is growing concern about the FSS’s ability to deliver its findings swiftly and efficiently. Those concerns have been growing for a number of years. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that many of us with experience of this part of the criminal justice system take the view that the service, sadly, is no longer fit for purpose?

[Karl Turner]

I do not accept that. Absolutely not. It is true that I have heard grumblings about aspects of expert evidence put before courts, but I do not think that there is a major problem. I have certainly not heard members of the judiciary complain particularly about the service.

One of my major concerns is about the Government’s rushed decision. As with many of their policies, this policy has been rushed and is fraught with difficulties. Their desire to create a market for the provision of scientific support is putting police authorities under unacceptable pressure. The closure of the FSS will have major implications for the criminal justice system and could result in miscarriages of justice.

20:04

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I start by paying tribute to the work of forensic scientists, who do a wonderful job, whether on national cases, cold cases or, indeed, on the new activities, such as analysing drugs in people’s blood by the roadside, that we should be encouraging. These are all extremely worthwhile activities. However, despite the Opposition’s protestations of support for private companies, that does not come across in what they say; what comes across is that the FSS is the linchpin and only player in the whole sector.

I mentioned in my intervention that LGC Forensics is based in my constituency. It is the largest private sector provider of forensic science services to UK police forces, and it employs 200 people at the Culham science centre. I visited it, and its scientists are exceptional. They are extremely disciplined and dedicated. I note that my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) mentioned a private sector provider in her constituency. She is my parliamentary neighbour, and it is perhaps fortuitous that we have a little cluster of forensic scientists, given that our constituencies cover the area of Midsomer. Indeed, probably more television forensic scientists than drinkers have crawled over the tables of my local pub. That is an encouragement to people to drink.

[Nicola Blackwood]

I should point out that I am also the Member of Parliament for Inspector Morse and Lewis.

[John Howell]

I feel trumped in the television stakes, as one would expect.

[Michael Ellis]

Dr Who was born and brought up in my constituency.

[John Howell]

I fear that this is turning into a debate about who has got what television show—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we will have no more Dr Whos or anything else. We will stick to the subject before us.

[John Howell]

I am grateful for those comments, Mr Deputy Speaker. I intended to head in that direction anyway.

In 1991, we had a major change with the FSS that attracted new entrants to the market, including companies such as LGC Forensics. It ushered in a period of investment and scientific innovation that has driven up quality and ensured that prices and turnaround times have reduced dramatically. That move has resulted in a safer and more secure society together with better value for the police and taxpayers. That is an important combination of factors.

But what confusing signals the previous Government sent to this emerging sector! We had just encouraged the sector to be innovative and to invest, but then, as I mentioned in my intervention, in March 2009, the Labour Administration agreed to a £50 million subsidy to support business transformation. That was a major subsidy for a company that existed in a competitive market, and it sent a very confusing signal. No one in the private sector wanted to see the end of the FSS. Indeed, some of those private companies have said that they wanted the FSS to continue because a healthy competitive market is good for all. However, doing that through this sort of heavy-handed subsidy was not the way to go.

There are good private sector providers, as even Opposition Members agree, and they have a crucial role to play. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) mentioned the Stephen Lawrence case, because it illustrated the importance of the current investment in technology. It was not available at the time, and I do not think we would have had that result otherwise.

[Andrew Miller]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would also recognise that one of the crucial points about the Stephen Lawrence case was that we were dealing with accredited laboratories. The defence would have had a powerful line of attack had those laboratories not been accredited. That point is agreed by the regulators and the Committee.

[John Howell]

The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point. From the point of view of my constituency, nobody is suggesting that LGC Forensics is anything other than a leader in the field whose reputation extends not just to this area of police work, but to a number of other areas where forensics can play a major part.

The only other point I want to make is about how the transition from the FSS is going. My feedback from the market is that the transition is going very well. Therefore, I do not accept that we will lose any of the skills or that the transition will in any way dumb down results or the activities that are undertaken. I am looking to ensure that we continue to bolster the sector. It is a sector that we can be proud of and that offers potential for even more exports, in terms of the scientific discoveries that it makes.

The only other thing I want to do is make an apology. I am grateful that you kindly called me to speak so early in this debate, Mr Deputy Speaker, as I have another engagement. If I do not make it back for the wind-ups, I apologise.

20:09

[Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)]

Let me first place on the record my thanks to the Science and Technology Committee for its report and to my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) for the excellent leadership he has shown and the way in which he introduced the debate.

I hesitated to speak in this debate for two reasons, both linked. I had responsibility for the Forensic Science Service in the very last months of the previous Government. Therefore, there is inevitably a hesitation when one rises in such debates, not only to say something positive about what we did, but to talk about one’s successor, because the second point is this. I do not think it is fair when Ministers have left office if they jump up at every opportunity to criticise or comment on what their successors have done. The Minister deserves my support, in exactly the same way that he gave me support when I was honoured to hold the position that he now holds. However, I want to make some brief observations, not from the perspective of a criminal lawyer by any means, but from the perspective of what I think is good or bad public policy.

Whatever else has been said, the reality is that the fortunes of the Forensic Science Service have proved difficult for every Government, and would have done for any Government—both for this Government and the previous Government. They have been difficult for all sorts of reasons, not least because of the changing nature of forensics in recent times, particularly with the proliferation of DNA testing, but also because of a market—if one wants to call it that—that has been complex and in which both the Forensic Science Service and a number of private providers have played a part. When I say that in my experience some of those providers proved to be fickle, that is in no way a criticism of those who do an excellent job and are an integral part of the market; indeed, nothing that we did was about undermining what they were trying to do. However, it is true that some companies put their toes in the water and tended to look for the cheap things they could do to make a quick profit before moving on. This particular aspect of the criminal justice system deserves better.

Where I would disagree fundamentally with the hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) is that we should not take an either/or approach to the forensics sector. There is no reason to believe that it would be better just in private hands or just in the hands of Government-run bodies. That was the approach that we took, and that is why the transformation programme was necessary. It was not a subsidy, as he suggested; rather, as the name suggests, it was meant to transform the Forensic Science Service from being a loss maker—which we all acknowledge it was—to being a player that could continue in the forensics market. I believe that the FSS brought, and still brings, something of great value to the forensics market. It helps to be a guarantor of the highest standards, which are not simply necessary for criminal justice in our country, but well regarded and well respected elsewhere.

The transformation programme was radical in what it intended to do. It aimed to close four laboratories around the country—not three, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston said. Crucially, however, in the seven that remained, work was to be done differently, because it was entirely unacceptable that an organisation such as the FSS could continue to make a loss. That was the whole point of the transformation programme as we saw it.

The Government’s defence, in their response to the Select Committee’s report, is that the FSS was continuing to lose £2 million a month. I dispute that figure, not least because the numbers were coming down. Also, in answer to a point that was raised earlier, the intention was not to have a Forensic Science Service that was continually indebted to the Government and the taxpayer; it was to have one that could stand foursquare on its own two feet. In that sense, therefore, I do not think the transformation programme has been characterised properly. The Government’s response to the report warns:

“Without funding from the Government, the FSS would have entered administration in early 2011.”

I have news for the Minister, although he already knows this: all the discussions that we had throughout the transformation programme took that for granted—not that the FSS would be in administration, but that it would always be on the edge of difficulty. Again, that was the whole point of the transformation programme: to ensure that if we wanted a Forensic Science Service, things would have to change, and they did.

Let me ask the Minister a question that I hope he will address. One of the issues that was in danger of tipping the FSS into difficulties was the black hole in the pension fund. Forgive me, but if the FSS is closed, I would imagine that there necessarily remains a commitment to the pension fund. Somebody will have to fill that hole at some point along the way, so how much of the money that the Government are using to close down the FSS will go into the pension fund?

The previous Government, of whom I am proud to have been a member, introduced a reform programme. However, contrary to what we have heard this evening, we started from an assumption that at one point in the future the FSS would be—could be—privatised. My only concern was that it would have to be demonstrated that it was better to put the FSS into private hands than for the Government to continue to have an interest in it. In my view, that needed to be demonstrable, and the evidence was simply not there. However, as far as I remember, closure was not an option that was seriously considered—or, indeed, seriously sought. I wonder where it came from, because it is quite a major step from where we were. Will the Minister confirm that the Home Office scientific adviser played a key role, not in responding to the decision, but in formulating it? What was the role of the forensic science regulator? The report talks about Andrew Rennison in excellent terms—he is indeed a fine man—and about how he has been reappointed, but was he consulted before the decision was made? Or again, has he simply been asked to make the best of a bad job? What did the police say? We can only really know that once the Government have published ACPO’s response—I refer not, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston did, to how the police will cope, now that the Government have already made the decision, but to whether they said it was a good idea or not.

We were criticised for how we introduced the transformation programme. I still have the scars on my back, not least those inflicted by a Deputy Speaker who was, and remains, a doughty fighter for his constituents in Chorley, over one of the labs that was to close. Let me say this. On looking at the decision, how it was announced and the consultation, it makes me think, although Mr Deputy Speaker will not agree, that what we did was a model way of doing it. I am afraid this Government’s response is not acceptable.

I want to pay tribute to the excellent men and women of the Forensic Science Service. They have given, in some cases, decades of commitment, building up decades of experience not just for the service, but for our country. The reality is, as we have heard, that when the FSS goes, some of those people will leave forensics and some will stay in it but go to other countries, which will benefit from the experience that we built up over a long period. I simply ask whether this is the right decision.

[Michael Ellis]

Does the hon. Gentleman not think that those excellent scientists will have more places in the private sector to go to and may well end up with a wider choice and earn more money? That is the free market at work.

[Mr Campbell]

They may do. It is entirely their choice if they want to do that, but let me ask the hon. Gentleman a question. When the Gulf states, which are running out of oil and are making investments for a modern state, wanted the very best forensic service for their country—indeed, the best in the world—who did they go to? They did not go to America or to Germany; and when they came to this country, they did not go to the private companies either. I will tell him who they came to and still have a contract with, as far as I understand it: they came to the Forensic Science Service. What is it that the Gulf states appreciate about this service that we apparently no longer do?

I have enormous respect for the police, for the science and, indeed, for the courts, but there is an issue about what will happen if forensics lies mainly or wholly in the hands of those working in police labs. They are doing their best, and we know that they will not cut corners or come up with the wrong decisions for whatever reasons people might suspect. The criminal justice system, however, is about more than that. It is about respect for people in that situation. I want some reassurance from the Minister, who has nodded his head when this matter has been raised, that when the FSS has gone, along with the expertise, status and respect that goes with it, we will not see miscarriages of justice or court situations where cases are thrown out because the police have not only caught the criminal and aided in the prosecution, but have provided the forensic evidence as well.

This debate is about whether we want a forensic science service in the future and what it will look like. We would have known what it looked like if the transformation programme had been given a chance. We asked some hard questions, so I ask the Minister whether those same questions were asked when he looked at the world beyond the FSS. For example, can he guarantee that in a major incident a forensic officer will be in there within four hours? It seems obvious that one will be, but is that the case? We asked that very hard question of the FSS, which sometimes struggled to give us an answer.

What will happen, God forbid, if there is a 7/7 or a 9/11? Is the Minister convinced that we will have the capacity in forensics to deal with that situation? At the time of the report, Durham, Cleveland and South Yorkshire constabularies not only did not have the necessary facilities, but did not have the contracts with external providers either. Yet we are told that the FSS is going to disappear this year. I wonder whether we are taking risks.

My final point is that this is a risky decision. I do not envy the Minister the decisions he has to take; I envy him his job, but not his difficult decisions. This is one decision, but what about all the other things happening across Government? What about the cuts in police numbers? What about the Justice Secretary’s acceptance that crime will inevitably rise in a recession? What about the changes to the rules on DNA that the Government are making in the Protection of Freedoms Bill? Add them together, and I am worried. Whatever the Minister’s motives, this is the wrong decision. I do not doubt that the Minister has gone to the nth degree to look at the issues, but I worry. This is my final question: why is it that instead of spending taxpayers’ money to get an FSS that is fit for purpose, we are spending the same amount of taxpayers’ money to end up with no FSS at the end of it all? It just does not make sense.

20:25

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in this important debate. I have been approached on this issue by a number of constituents, particularly those who used to work in the Huntingdon lab. I also have an interest as a member of the Home Affairs Committee. In fact, I have a number of parliamentary questions on this matter tabled for answer today. Sadly, as I came into the Chamber, they had not yet been answered, but I am sure they will be during the course of our debate, and they will of course be published. As ever, the Government will respond, I am sure, in time.

I congratulate the Science and Technology Committee, and particularly its Chairman, the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller), on their work. It is a shame that the good and balanced work from the Committee—with one major exception, which I will come to later—has been let down slightly by the quality of the debate on both sides of the House. We have heard a rather tedious debate about who made what mistakes at which point in the past, and a rather odd debate about who is in favour of the private sector and who is in favour of public sector administration. My answer is that I am in favour of whatever gives us the best forensic science services, and I hope that all Members would agree with that.

It is important to have high levels of accreditation and standards. Otherwise, there could be concerns, although they might have been over-egged. It is certainly true that in 2009 the US National Academy of Sciences strongly recommended that forensic labs should be buffered from forces investigating crime. That is because pressures necessarily arise from working too closely with them. What that means is that we must ensure that the new scheme does not fall foul of those traps. We certainly do not want the same police officer who is leading on an investigation to be the same person who does the forensic analysis. I believe, however, that it is possible for the police to find a way around that, as, for example, with the good work done by the National Policing Improvement Agency in looking into serious injuries. It has a rather gruesome collection of images, and I do not believe that suggestions of bias have been made in that case.

It is important for the Government to keep an eye on this issue, and I hope they will consider reviewing the impact of the changes over the coming years, particularly in respect of the trust of the public and ensuring that we do not see miscarriages of justice. I do not think that they will happen, but I want to know that the Government will ensure that they do not. They must ensure that there is enough time to analyse samples. A huge number of analysts in the New Scientist report I mentioned earlier said that they were not given enough time to do that properly. I hope that the Government will make sure that we secure the trust of the public in that respect.

There is a related problem. Programmes such as “CSI” have led the public to believe that forensic science is far more powerful than it really is and much more clear cut. It is simply not as simple, powerful or clear cut as is often portrayed. That causes real problems in both directions when a case is being examined. It means that juries expect simple, clear answers, but also that they could be excessively concerned at the times when they are not given what they expect.

There is also a problem—I hope the Minister will find some way to tackle it—with a recent ruling. As far as I know, it has not been overturned, and I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong. The issue is how juries are taught to deal with the prosecutor’s fallacy and the statistical errors that can arise when looking at numbers. It was ruled in a recent case that Bayesian statistics could not be used in the court. I find that very worrying, because such statistics are key to the way in which data are interpreted. The premise is simple: the information that is available should be examined before a test is carried out. For example, if we hear the noise of hooves, we know that it could be being made by a horse, a zebra or a unicorn, but given our prior knowledge of which animal is most likely to be proceeding along Horseguards, we conclude that it is probably a horse. That sort of analysis is very simple, and it ought to be possible to employ it in a court. I hope that there will be a way of ensuring that juries know how to use such information, because the generating of information—which is what we are talking about—is useful only if the information is examined correctly.

I was shocked to discover that the regulator did not have the statutory powers that I think are necessary, and that that had clearly been the case for a long time. I had genuinely assumed that we would provide regulators with the powers that they need. I hope that the Government will think again, because providing statutory powers would provide some extra reassurance, particularly given the new world in which we are living. I also hope that regulators will have the resources that they need to do their job, because as providers become more disparate, the process of regulation will be increasingly important.

I had intended to ask what more would happen about cold cases and existing samples, but the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston dealt with that, and I assume the Minister will respond to what he said. Nevertheless, we need to think about how we are to ensure that there is continuity after the FSS.

One aspect of the Committee’s report causes me great concern. It involves the role of the chief scientific adviser, Professor Bernard Silverman. He was personally criticised in the report, and I very much regret that: I do not think that it was appropriate. I think that there is a problem with the way in which the Home Office looks at scientific advice, and with the seniority and the access that the chief scientific adviser is given in the Home Office. I have raised those points in the Committee with the chief scientific adviser, who has a slightly different perspective on the issue of the amount of access provided.

I think that chief scientific advisers should sit on the boards of their Departments, and should have access to information enabling them to deal with any concerns at an early stage rather than waiting to be invited to comment. There is a problem across Government in regard to their role, and that means that there will be similar problems in a number of areas in which advice is sought too late in the process. I fear that the Minister will not be able to tackle that problem alone, and I hope that the Government as a whole will ensure that chief scientific advisers are given an important role.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Surely it is up to the chief scientific adviser to put his spoke in at an early stage, rather than waiting to be invited to comment. He should have enough intelligence—I mean intelligence in the classic military-type form—to understand what is going on, and to say “Look, I want to comment on this.”

[Dr Huppert]

I will not make the standard jokes about military intelligence that would normally arise at this point. I entirely understand what my hon. Friend means. That is precisely why I think it essential for all chief scientific advisers to be provided with all the papers. The problem is how they can know what is going on, because some Departments are not as free with their information as others. I will not single out the Home Office in this instance, but I think it right for chief scientific advisers to have the information at an early stage. It is difficult to comment on things that you do not know about until it is too late.

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

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dr Huppert]

I will give way once more, but then I must make some progress.

[Diana Johnson]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman was as surprised as I was when I read the evidence from the chief scientific adviser, who had said that he did not think it appropriate for him to be consulted about the decision to close the FSS because he thought that it was merely about finance and the possibility that the service would go into administration. Was that not a rather shocking approach for him to take?

[Dr Huppert]

I think the key point is that chief scientific advisers should be consulted, as a matter of routine, at the beginning of the process. That is much more important than raking through the question of exactly what counts as a commercial and hence legitimately non-scientific issue, and what counts as a genuinely scientific issue. Chief scientific advisers should be given more access, and their roles and seniority should be elevated.

Professor Silverman conducted a review of research and development in forensic science, and the findings were published in June 2011. They make a very interesting read, and raise a number of issues. I hope that the Minister will tell us how the Government will respond to some of the key points.

The report says that, when it comes to forensic sciences,

“improvement in the degree of linkage and communication would drive forward innovation most effectively”.

Will the Minister consider whether the forensic science regulator should have a duty to improve the linkages that are necessary, in order to fill the role that was formerly occupied largely by the FSS?

The report also recommends that there should be a regular cross-disciplinary forensic science conference, and I hope that that will be possible. Perhaps the regulator should be able to deal with it as well, because there are problems with fragmentation of the field.

Another issue that has not been touched on so far is training, and ensuring that the right people enter the forensic science sector. I had a very interesting time when I visited the Laboratory of the Government Chemist. One of the issues that we discussed was the poor quality of the vast majority of training courses in forensic sciences at universities. If I remember correctly, there were only two courses that the LGC considered to be of a sufficiently high standard. I will not test my memory by attempting to remember which two they were, but it is a problem if the right people are not being employed in the sector.

The LGC believes that it should generally take people who have been trained in chemistry and a range of other subjects, and that people are being misled into taking forensic science courses that are not good enough to secure their employment in the sector. I hope that the Government will think about that, because it would be consistent with Government policy to try to steer people away from courses that will not enable them to achieve the expected goals.

Professor Silverman’s report also argued that

“the interdisciplinary nature and societal importance of forensic science, as well as the opportunities that would be created by better communication, make it an appropriate candidate for particular attention by the Research Councils and the Technology Strategy Board.”

In other words, he recommends that we should be investing in it as part of our general science spend. Although I am, of course, aware that there must be limits on how much the Government can tell the research councils what to do, has the Minister had any conversations about whether that recommendation could be implemented?

[Andrew Miller]

The hon. Gentleman will be interested to know that the final point we made was that

“we would certainly welcome any further thoughts from you, Professor Silverman, about the relationships with the TSB, the Research Councils and HEFCE. We would be grateful if you, Mr Rennison, would flag up to us any concerns you have about the quality of the science that you see during this very difficult process, because the one thing that we can all agree on, despite all the arguments about whether this was right or wrong, is that the interests of justice have to come first in all of this.”

The Minister then closed the meeting by agreeing with that. I therefore think we can all agree on this point.

[Dr Huppert]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Although I have tried to follow what his Select Committee does, I do not necessarily manage to follow every nuance.

How assessment is conducted is also an issue. In respect of the research excellence framework, there is a table in the Silverman review detailing the units of assessment that might apply to forensic science, an approach that creates the risk of falling between many cracks. I do not intend to dwell on the REF, however.

What are the long-term prospects for research and development? When I visited the LGC the staff proudly showed me a field kit they were working on that is intended to enable DNA testing to be done out in the field and therefore speed up getting results. That would be very welcome. They said they had spent about £3 million on developing the kit thus far—it is not finished yet. The LGC is able to do that because it is a large organisation. I cannot imagine a police force being able to invest so much money in such a detailed and specific project. Research and development is not an area in which we can have 10 organisations each doing a tenth of the work. The LGC is clearly able to do that work, so it does not require the help of the FSS. I hope the Government will ensure that we have research and development with a long-term perspective. In areas such as low copy number analysis, there are risks of over-interpretation of data. There must be sufficient coherence in our research and development programme to address such issues.

I do not want to rehearse in detail who did what when. We are where we are, and we must now make sure we go forward in the right direction.

20:37

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

May I begin by referring to the declaration of interests that I made earlier in this debate? I also wish to praise the contribution—not only in today’s debate, but in leading the Select Committee—of my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller). He has framed the general discussion on this subject.

I could talk about the many aspects of the Government proposals that I consider to be short-sighted—the effects on the police, on the current staff and on the international reputation of forensic science in this country, for instance—but instead I shall focus on a central point, which the Select Committee report sums up thus:

“The primary consideration throughout must be the health of the criminal justice system.”

The Criminal Cases Review Commission, the Royal Society of Chemistry, Sir Alec Jeffreys—the inventor of DNA profiling—and senior members of the legal profession have all called on the Government to reconsider their decision, citing the serious negative impact it will have on criminal justice. The Government appear to be concerned only with the question of whether other people will do the work; they have not asked what the quality of that work will be.

I say that because the Government conducted no consultation on the wider criminal justice implications of this decision. Instead, they looked at the books, saw an organisation that cost more than it recouped—I shall say more about that shortly—and decided to close it. They did not consult the Director of Public Prosecutions, and they appear to have neglected to talk to the CCRC. Even the Attorney-General was consulted only in the “final clearance processes”.

The Government undertook no investigation. They looked at none of the wider issues. In the words of Sir Alec Jeffreys, this is “bean-counting”. It is no way to make policy, and this decision smacks, above all, of short-sightedness. The Government justify their decision by talking about saving money, yet the amount that could be saved is contested. As we have heard, the Government say it is £24 million, whereas the FSS, which perhaps knows more about its own budget, says that it is about half that—£11 million in the past year.

[Bob Stewart]

Surely the most important thing is the kind of service we will get. If the FSS is at a certain level and we do not get any other system up to the same level, there is no question of abolishing it. We must have a service of at least that level or higher; otherwise we are wasting our time. Justice must be done, and if necessary we will have to pay for it. I also agree with the hon. Gentleman’s points about the worldwide reputation.

[Mr Slaughter]

I most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making his point clearly and forcefully, and I hope that the Minister will address it head on. However, given that other Government Members have constantly referred to the figure—the £24 million, or the £12 million —I fear that the cost argument is the best the Government have. It is not a good argument, and it is not even very valid. As I said when I intervened on the hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis), although not every piece of FSS work comes from the police services, the overwhelming majority of its work does. So what we are saying is that the FSS is subsidising police services at the moment.

Perhaps the police services have got a good deal. For example, if a particular police force negotiates a fixed fee with the FSS for complex cases and an hourly rate for simple matters, clearly that police service will have got a good deal, as it will get a fixed fee for important and complex cases with many pieces of evidence, and where it thinks that there is not much involved in a case, it will pay just for what it wants. If that is right, it may actually be the right way to do things, as it may take the pressure off the police in terms of not submitting items of evidence. If a police force was paying by the hour or for every piece of evidence, and a complex crime scene had 100 pieces of evidence to be submitted, it might think, “Do we really need to submit every piece of evidence?” Perhaps the police are not expert enough to make those decisions and the systems works well, even if it produces a notional deficit for the FSS.

If that is also right, and the service is running at a deficit now, will commercial companies be prepared to allow such a situation to continue? Will they not renegotiate contracts with police forces over time that ensure that they not only cover their costs but make a profit? At least one Government Member has said, “Good luck to forensic scientists if they go off and earn more money in the private sector.” If that is right, who is going to pay for it? If, instead of working in the FSS, former senior members of its staff are hiring themselves out as consultants at a substantial daily rate, that sum will be picked up by the police and by the taxpayer. The argument about finance really does not hold water.

Let me pick up on the point made in the intervention by the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart). Dependability and expertise do cost money, and without them in criminal justice we would be in the realm of appeals and retrials, which also cost money. We have all received briefing notes detailing the many criminal cases in which the FSS has made a real difference, but the Minister has given us no reassurance that the new arrangements will produce the same essential level of dependability.

Let me set out the practical problems, in terms of criminal justice, with what the Government have proposed. First, although we are told at the 11th hour that the archives have been saved, they are now detached from the FSS—or what will replace it—as indeed is research. We used to have a unitary body that had its expertise not only in its written archive but in its expert staff. It would also have its research arm, and its investigatory and reporting arm. That is the right way to go about things.

Secondly, we must deal with the non-applicability of section 17 powers. Under section 17 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995, the Criminal Cases Review Commission has the power to obtain material held by public bodies. It has requested material at least 150 times from the FSS since 2005, and has indicated that the contractual power to obtain material that will be included in contracts for the provision of private forensic science services is clearly not as satisfactory as a statutory power.

Thirdly, there is the potential for loss of expertise as top scientists exit the profession. That, and the loss of Government funding, will mean a major loss for research and development. Some 75% of forensic scientists have said that the new arrangements will lead to more miscarriages of justice, and there is the potential for that. The Government have provided no reassurance whatsoever on that point, so I hope that the Minister will do so.

[Andrew Miller]

On my hon. Friend’s point about the skills base, Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys said in his evidence to the Committee that the closure

“will scare off the new people coming into the field…So, yes, I think it will choke off opportunities and developments in forensic science in the future.”

[Mr Slaughter]

I can only agree.

The Government say that police labs can pick up the slack, but even if the police behave with complete propriety there will be scope for defendants, through counsel, to allege that pressure could have been brought to produce certain results. The Home Office Forensic Science Service was set up as a successor to the Metropolitan police forensic science service, in part for that very reason. Miscarriages of justice—not necessarily in the Met area—in the ’70s and ’80s were the reason why there was seen to be a need for an independent forensic science service. In the Library debate pack there is a quotation from an expert in cognitive behaviour at University college London, Itiel Dror, who says:

“The fact that more forensic work is going to be done by police doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad, but it means you have to take extra measures such as buffering examiners from police detectives, so they are not breathing down their necks saying ‘we think it’s this person’”.

What assurances will the Government give today that such protection will be in place?

Then there is the question of disparity between the resources of police forces. The Met probably will have the resources, given its size, but will Cumbria? Will Suffolk, or Devon and Cornwall, have the ability to run the same sort of operation? I doubt it. We are losing a comprehensive service that is serving the police, the courts and the public well. The FSS does painstaking work in ensuring that perpetrators of serious crimes are brought to account.

I am sorry that we had to wait for my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell) to hear proper tribute paid to the people in the FSS—although, of course, my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston paid such a tribute too. That, essentially, is what this debate should be about. In terms of reputation, independence and the flexibility and ability to deal with everything from major complex cases to routine work, as well as the comprehensiveness of the service they can offer, we are losing key points. What are we losing? Expert staff and continuity. It is not even certain whether, from next month onwards, forensic scientists who have gone abroad, left the profession or retired, as a consequence of the break up of the FSS, will be available for ongoing cases. We are losing that continuity in the archive and research facility as well as in the operational service. We are losing a huge body of knowledge, and we are wasting equipment as well as human resources, by closing down the service so quickly in such a short space of time.

What is the alternative?

[Bob Stewart]

I think we might also be losing the ability to have seriously world-beating research and development in FSS-type matters. That is what worries me; we must not lose that R and D ability. If we are going to change, things must be just as good as they were before. If they will not be, we should leave them as they are.

[Mr Slaughter]

I wholly agree, and I ask the Minister, even if he is going to rely on the argument about money, to balance that consideration against the opportunity cost—the risk of losing the services that the FSS provides, which are in some cases easily quantifiable but in others are intangible, in terms of both its archives and its research and development.

I am not going to fall into the trap that some hon. Gentlemen on the Government side have fallen into, of playing the private and public sectors off against each other. I regret that one or two Government Members denigrated the FSS, saying that it was not working, and had to go for that reason. They implied that Opposition Members do not see a role for the private sector, but on the contrary, as the Select Committee report—and, I think, every Opposition Member who has spoken—has emphasised, there can be individual scientists and levels of expertise in the private sector. However, private sector companies are profit-making and will have to look at their bottom line. The way in which the changeover is happening means a mass outflow of experienced staff—often near to retirement age, often on a higher grade and often higher paid—who will be replaced, if at all, by the lower-paid and less experienced staff who come into private companies. That process might possibly work over time, but if it happens in a period of months, that will set up real problems in terms of the confidence that the criminal justice system can have in the quality of advice that it is getting.

We are going from a system in which we have a world-respected organisation to one with a very fragmented system made up partly of private sector organisations of different sizes. We have mentioned one of those, LGC, because it is the biggest, but not others that might be taking over some staff or resources from the FSS. On the other hand, we have the 40-plus police authorities that will each run, to a greater or lesser extent, their own operations, no doubt to different standards and with different ambitions and intentions. We are asked to believe that that system will provide the same quality and level of consistency of service as now. A recent survey by the New Scientist showed that more than 90% of forensic scientists, including those in the private and the public sector, thought that the abolition of the FSS would have a negative effect. Also, more than 75% thought there would be an increase in miscarriages of justice. The New Scientist also said:

“forensic science is not so much a coherent discipline as a collection of science-based techniques brought to bear on idiosyncratic questions of guilt and innocence. Since crime scenes are the very opposite of controlled environments, the answers provided by these techniques inevitably require interpretation.”

That is saying, in effect, that forensic science is sometimes as much an art as it is a science. That means—I think this is the point that the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) was making—that when someone, whether they are appearing for the prosecution or the defence, is trying to talk to a jury and pull out of very disparate and sometimes contradictory pieces of information the best case that can be made, in fairness, in looking for a way towards the truth, the more expertise and experience that can be brought to bear on doing that, the better. That is what I fear we are losing with this precipitous and hasty measure. We are also losing a service that has been respected around the world, and has built up its reputation over many years. It is irreplaceable. For that reason I ask the Government to think, at this stage, about what they are putting in place instead of the Forensic Science Service that has served the country so well for so many years.

20:54

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Let me start by making a declaration that for the best part of 21 years I was a criminal barrister. In that time I prosecuted about nine murder cases, was involved in the defence of certain cases, and prosecuted and defended well in excess of 150 Crown court trials. Certainly, I will have done 30 to 50 forensics-based cases and worked with the Forensic Science Service a great deal. Like others, I praise the Forensic Science Service as a large body of individuals who work very hard, sometimes for long hours to keep to their deadlines. We have to acknowledge, though, that the system that has developed—I will not play the blame game—is such that there are financial and logistical difficulties that any Government would have to resolve.

I urge the Minister to take on board one point. As one who has studied the work done in the Birmingham six case and the famous Griess test that never was; as one who worked on the great Guildford cheque fraud that never was, when I learned to my detriment while trying to prosecute a case that people sign their name very differently when drunk than they do normally; as one who successfully prosecuted the bigfoot burglar of Blunsdon—I am pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) in his place—who was apprehended thanks to the good efforts of the FSS and his size 12 boots, whose prints were identified in a large flower patch; and as one who has prosecuted many cases where hair and fibres, especially in sexual offences, as well as drugs and human anatomy, were relevant, I share Opposition Members’s concern about what assurances can be given on pressure brought to bear and on the transfer of exhibits, so that in future no shadow of a doubt can be cast, by those who defend, on the propriety of the process. I do not believe that such difficulties will arise, but it is vital for the Minister to give such assurances and explain how he will deal with that significant concern, which it is legitimate to raise.

I share that view because in the time I spent at the criminal Bar—from about 1989 onwards—I saw the development post-1990 of private contractors’ involvement. It is well known that the killers of Stephen Lawrence, Joanna Yeates, Milly Dowler, Vikki Thompson, Colette Aram, Rachel Nickell and Damilola Taylor have one thing in common: all were convicted with the help of evidence provided not by the police but by scientists working for privately owned suppliers of forensic services. Commercial companies have been providing the majority of the UK’s forensic science services for a considerable time, and I see no difficulty with the quality of their work. Even when, as a prosecution service, we were using the Forensic Science Service—and certainly on every occasion when I was a defence counsel—we would also commission a private report, authorised by the legal aid board, whereby a private company did exactly the same assessment. I see no reason why that will not continue.

[Andrew Miller]

I did not catch all the names that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, but the ones I did catch were all cases in which the service was provided by accredited laboratories. Does he agree with me that that is an important factor?

[Guy Opperman]

I accept that accreditation is important, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about that, but to a certain extent the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Prosecution teams and police teams will go to organisations that have proved their worth in past cases, but that is not to say that such organisations will always get it right. We have all seen, whether in shaken baby cases or in other cases where there is alternative forensic evidence, how the fact that an organisation may have performed perfectly in a previous case does not mean that it cannot make a mistake in the current case.

I will move on from the Forensic Science Service itself to give a topical example; I ask you to indulge me for a couple of minutes, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have a constituent, Tony Pickering of Haydon Bridge in Northumberland, whose son, Aidan, died in Delhi on approximately 8 March 2010. Aidan was only 24 and had only recently gone to Delhi. If there is an example of a forensic science system that is not working, where private organisations should be brought in, the Indian system is that example. A post mortem and toxicology tests were carried out in India in March 2010, and Aidan’s body was subsequently brought home. The coroner cannot carry out an inquest in Newcastle, however, because the toxicology results have not been assessed. I regret to say that it took more than a year for the samples to be sent from the local police station to the Rohini central forensic laboratory in Delhi. Another year has now passed, and the family of young Aidan Pickering still do not know what their fate is.

Sadly, this is not an isolated example. The high commission in India tells me that as of November 2011, it had 64 cases awaiting toxicology and forensic analysis. I urge the Indian authorities to look into this matter. In the context of this debate, this is a good example of how the involvement of private organisations could be a good thing, and could have assisted. I shall be visiting India in April to raise that case personally, and I should say that I have been assisted in this by the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who has been an assiduous Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee. He has raised the issue of forensic science very successfully, not only here but in other places. He raised this particular case not only with the high commissioner for India but with the Home Minister of India, Mr Chidambaram, and I am grateful for his assistance.

I support the decision that has been made on the Forensic Science Service, although I seek certain clarifications that I hope the Minister will be able to provide. I urge him to move forward on this matter. I also urge him to enable the Home Office to assist in any way it can in the case of my constituents who are struggling with the forensic science laboratories in India.

21:01

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

Like all other hon. Members who have spoken in the debate, I want to congratulate the Chair of the Science and Technology Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller), and all its members on the report we are discussing this evening. It has been described by many as a comprehensive and accurate outline of the key issues relating to the closure of the Forensic Science Service. I believe that the report gives a fair account of the history of the FSS and of the background to the decision announced on 10 December 2010 to close it by 31 March 2012.

The Forensic Science Service has a world-class reputation and is recognised as a pioneering body, especially in the field of DNA. It has been responsible for the training of many scientists in other jurisdictions and other forensic science services around the world, as well as being noted for playing a vital role in national emergencies such as the 7/7 bombings. Professor Niels Morling, president of the International Society for Forensic Genetics, has said:

“'So many of us have benefited from the research, development and education offered by the FSS—a worldwide network of scientists is grateful to the FSS and to British society”.

Of course, the most important part of the FSS is its employees, who have a deserved reputation for excellence. Their skills and experience are second to none, and we should pay tribute to all the commitment and hard work of the scientists and staff of the FSS as it faces its final month in operation. I have had the privilege of visiting two of the FSS sites. I visited Wetherby last February, and the site at Lambeth just before Christmas. I met the chair of the FSS with representatives of the trade union, Prospect, which represents many forensic scientists. I have also met representatives of the Law Society in relation to this matter, and many forensic scientists who care about and are committed to forensic science.

As I understand it, following the decision to close the FSS, England and Wales will be the only countries in the world without an independent, accredited forensic science service. We will still have a centrally provided service in Northern Ireland and in Scotland. I am also aware that the United States believes that this decision to close the FSS is a backward step, as it starts to examine the creation of an independent forensic science service of its own. William Thompson of the University of California has said:

“At a time when the deficiencies in forensic science are increasingly apparent, to lose one of the major research institutes is not just a loss for Britain, it’s a loss for the entire world”.

Returning to the Select Committee report, it is clear that the history of the FSS has not been a happy one under successive Governments, and the Chair of the Committee set out that history in his opening speech. We heard a candid, powerful and well-informed contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell), who was a distinguished Home Office Minister with responsibility for the FSS. He talked, in particular, about the decision by the Government in 2009 to make a grant of £50 million available to the FSS to restructure the business so that it could modernise and become more competitive, for example by closing forensic science sites and laboratories and reducing the number of staff. However, it is now clear that before that transformation could conclude the Government decided to pull the plug on the FSS.

The decision seems to have been taken in a hurried way and with a failure to consult all interested parties. The Government seem to have been working on a set of assumptions that have little evidence to back them up, as the report confirms. I say to the Minister, for whom I have great respect, that that seems typical of the way they are making decisions at the moment. They are making decisions quickly and then finding that they have failed to consider all the issues they need to address as a responsible Government, as we are now seeing with the Health and Social Care Bill.

In the light of the excellent Select Committee report, I would like to draw out a number of issues and highlight the concerns of the Opposition and many others who care about forensic science. First, there is huge concern—it has been voiced this evening in the Chamber—about the way the Government decided to close the FSS when they did. The decision was of course announced in a written statement to the House and there was no opportunity at the time to question the Minister. It is clear from the report that only ACPO was consulted before the decision was made, and ACPO provided a report on the planned closure of the FSS to the Home Office through the work of PricewaterhouseCoopers. Unfortunately, the Government have blocked the public release of that report, which is extremely unhelpful, despite their claim to want open and transparent government and to allow proper and effective scrutiny of their decisions.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) said, a number of experts from the fields of forensic science and criminal justice have recently come forward to express concern that the closure of the FSS will lead to an increase in the number of miscarriages of justice and wrongful acquittals. Therefore, I would be grateful if the Minister explained why he did not consult the Director of Public Prosecutions, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service or the Criminal Cases Review Board before making his decision. Surprisingly, neither the FSS, nor its regulator, was consulted.

Like the Committee, I was astonished to read the evidence of the chief scientific adviser to the Home Office, who was also not consulted. However, what is even more astonishing in this case is that in his evidence to the Committee he did not seem to think that there was anything wrong with that. He said that the decision to close the FSS was about matters of finance and the FSS possibly going into administration and so apparently had nothing to do with him as the chief scientific adviser. I believe that he failed in his professional duty and agree wholeheartedly with the report’s scathing comments about his approach to his duties.

It is expected that the 60% of the market share that the FSS currently has will transfer seamlessly to the private sector. I am concerned that there appears to have been little attempt to obtain market intelligence about what private sector providers could provide if the FSS closes. The underlying assumption is that the market is fully elastic, which I argue is not the case, as can be seen when looking at the instability recognised by all parties in forensics at the moment. It is also unclear whether the private sector will be able to deal with the volume of work available or has the specialist techniques that the FSS has.

I shall highlight one area in which I think we are going to lose a particular technique. It is known as direct analysis in real time mass spectrometry, or DART-MS, and when I visited the Lambeth site in November I was shown how the FSS uses it. The technology allows chemicals to be analysed very quickly—indeed, it was used in the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings—and substances to be identified within hours instead of days. The FSS was the only UK provider able to do that analysis, and no private provider has come forward to pick up the process.

When I asked a written parliamentary question about the matter, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone), stated that it was

“not stipulated in any of the work packages of the National Forensic Framework Agreement”—[Official Report, 5 September 2011; Vol. 532, c. 237W]

so no information was held on what would happen to it. Does the Minister before us, in his role as the counter-terrorism Minister, feel comfortable with that important technology being lost to the UK?

It is not clear whether the Minister, when making his decision, gave any thought to the broader issues regarding the FSS. They include the research and development for which the FSS is world-renowned, the role of the archive and how important it is to the criminal justice system.

It is generally accepted that the forensics market is currently unstable, especially when police budgets are being cut by 20% and there is the knock-on effect of the police choosing to commission forensics services in-house. The spend on forensics is costed at about £150 million but is mooted to decrease to £110 million by 2015. That might happen much sooner, however, with the police in-sourcing forensics. The budget is being distorted by the police customer becoming increasingly the competitor, so what modelling has been done on the effect of such in-sourcing and on the establishment of a stable market?

The Minister is committed to opening up the market in forensics, but how will that happen in practice? Owing to instability in the marketplace, it is difficult for new providers to enter, and there is no targeted support for new entrants. LGC and Cellmark dominate the market, and LGC, because of the additional work it has been able to attract, has subcontracted some to Key Forensics, but owing to market instability that is unlikely to carry on for long. Key Forensics has had to expand quickly, but that work might dry up just as quickly. That leaves companies with a difficult position in which to operate.

Businesses throughout the economy are finding trading hard, and investment is even harder to come by, so it seems to me that the Minister’s hopes of being able to provide forensics services seamlessly after 31 March are pinned on a very unstable position. Has he given any thought to what would happen if there was a change in the forensics market with, perhaps, one main supplier withdrawing? How would the Government be able to protect the supply of forensics to the criminal justice system?

We all agree that forensics plays a very important role in the criminal justice system by ensuring that bad people are brought to court and convicted. A forensic scientist told me:

“The FSS has always proudly provided all types of forensic discipline in order to best serve the criminal justice system, whether profitable or not. Private sector providers have however carefully selected only profitable areas of forensic science and left specialist, costly disciplines to the trusty supplier of last resort, the FSS. Inevitably, the FSS has therefore suffered financially where other private companies may seem to have succeeded. Clearly, overall forensic science is not a profitable or sustainable business arena. It is an essential service, requiring government support, in order to serve its sole function: to contribute toward a successful criminal justice system”.

Finally in this section, I turn to the financial issues, which appear to have been the only matter that the Home Office and the Minister looked at when reaching their decision. There is some confusion about the rationale that the Government used to take the decision, claiming that the FSS was losing about £2 million a month and that, therefore, a decision had to be made urgently to close it.

The Science and Technology Committee queried that figure in the light of the changes that the service was undergoing as part of the £50 million transformational grant it had been given to reduce its costs. For example, were the savings resulting from the disposal of FSS sites factored in, and were the one-off redundancy costs of staff leaving the FSS treated as just that—one-off costs? The FSS has pointed out that, at the time of the decision, it was in the middle of restructuring, including a transition to a new computer system for processing and assessing work and the introduction of a new DNA analysis technique. Little consideration seems to have been given to the additional costs that the FSS carries in its budgets regarding the compulsory levels of accreditation that it must have, the cost of its archive, and its work in research and development. The FSS claims that its losses for 2010-11 were about £11 million. The Home Office has announced that, after the closure, it will continue to provide funding for the archive, which costs approximately £2 million a year, plus £1 million for drugs and explosives provision. The Home Office is also bearing the cost of the areas that it brought in-house, such as international co-operation on drugs profiling, and police forces are now likely to incur higher costs for complex cases.

The second issue is the employees of the FSS. It is often thought that equipment is the key thing for forensic science but, in fact, it is the analysis, interpretation and contextualisation provided by expert forensic scientists. Many people at the FSS have had decades of experience. I am sure that the House will recognise that forensic scientists cannot be trained overnight. It takes five years to become a fully accredited fingerprint expert and approximately five years to be able to carry out crime scene investigations of serious crimes such as rape and murder. A key recommendation of the Committee was that the Forensic Transition Board must ensure that forensic scientists employed by the FSS are retained within the profession, yet the Government did not introduce any measures to help staff to stay in it, and evidence suggests that up to 90% have left. Does the Minister regret that loss of expertise to the forensics market? Will he update the House on the numbers of people with many years of experience who are leaving the FSS? It is estimated that the redundancy costs are between £100 million and £200 million. Will he update us on the budget for those costs?

I want to highlight a couple of matters that have come to my attention during the transition period in which staff are being TUPE-ed over to other positions or leaving the profession. In Yorkshire, 147 staff were aligned to LGC under TUPE, but in the end only 44 people transferred to LGC under different pay and conditions; the rest took redundancy and were then invited to reapply for their jobs. Can the Minister confirm that the Government, and not LGC, ended up paying for these redundancies? I have been contacted by many employees of the FSS with concerns about what is happening and about the protections that are offered by TUPE, which are apparently being sidestepped. In particular, what pension provision has been given to those who have been TUPE-ed to other companies? My hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth asked about the Government’s ongoing pension liability, and I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to that.

The Metropolitan police service TUPE-ed in hundreds of staff from the FSS but says that it will still outsource its analytical work. That means that it will have taken on highly qualified staff who are on higher salaries but whose skills are not being utilised. Does the Minister think that that will improve efficiency? In addition, the sexual offences team from the FSS has been excluded from employment by the Metropolitan police service, which has decided to outsource that work. That loss of very skilled scientists is a worrying development. Will the Minister comment on it? I know that his Secretary of State is greatly concerned to ensure, particularly in rape cases, that more perpetrators are brought to court and convicted. I wonder whether getting rid of these experienced people will assist in that aim.

The third issue that I want to raise is about the police. As we all appreciate, the police are the pre-eminent customer who control the market in forensics. We also know that they face cuts to their budgets of 20%, meaning that their spend on forensics will reduce. Alongside that, there is an expansion in the internal provision of forensic science services by police forces that are banding together. That will mean a loss of access for non-police organisations that in the past could access the FSS. While I have the greatest of respect for the work of the police, there are genuine concerns about criminal justice that have to be addressed. There must be impartiality and the perception of independence in the forensic evidence that is presented to the courts.

The main concern about the Government’s approach, with the new forensics world and the idea of police commissioning, is what it will all cost and whether we will get value for money. It is difficult to get a national picture of what the police are spending, in terms of both revenue and capital. As the Chair of the Select Committee said, my freedom of information request on this issue resulted in a lot of very confusing answers. As the Select Committee report pointed out, it is regrettable that the Home Office does not collate spending on forensics by police forces centrally, because there is no way of knowing what is happening up and down the country. The budget being spent by the police is an important part of the forensics jigsaw puzzle. It would show how the forensics market fits together and what the total cost will be to the taxpayer. I was asked by an FSS scientist whether the money that the Home Office pays for the FSS is different from the money that is paid by the police. The answer is that it is all taxpayers’ money and so needs to be looked at together to get a complete picture of the total spend on forensic science services.

I will now turn to the concern over accreditation in relation to the police, which has been raised by many Members. In the main, the laboratories that have been created by the police do not have accreditation. As we all recognise, accreditation is designed to ensure that all forensic science providers operate to agreed standards and with agreed methods. Of course, all the leading players such as LGC and Cellmark have labs that have been accredited or subcontract to labs that have been accredited. The vast majority of police labs do not have ISO 17025 accreditation, which is the kitemark for standards in forensic science. It is worrying to think that police labs are not at that level. I understand that the Minister has said that four police forces have that level of accreditation. I would be grateful if he confirmed whether that is true of every science lab in each of those four force areas. Will he also confirm that all private sector and police crime scene investigators have ISO 17020 accreditation?

The Minister has said that the 60% of the market that the FSS has will all be transferred to accredited labs. I hope that that is happening. I am concerned about the attitude of the Government, who appear to be relaxed about getting accreditation for police labs before 2014 or 2015. I was told recently that the Metropolitan Police Service was one of the few police forces that had accreditation, but that it relinquished it voluntarily when it moved the lab to the Lambeth site. Why will the roll-out of accreditation for police forces occur after the closure of the FSS? Would it not have been more sensible to ensure that the police labs had accreditation before closing the FSS?

The fourth issue that I will raise is about the Forensic Science Regulator and his role in accrediting labs. As many Members have said, the regulator is powerless to enforce any codes of practice or standards as he has no statutory powers. The Science and Technology Committee report called for the Forensic Science Regulator to be given statutory powers to enforce a code of conduct. Nearly 80% of forensic scientists surveyed by the New Scientist magazine did not feel confident that the regulator had sufficient resources to ensure that standards were adequate and consistent between providers. Although the regulator was content with that situation, he has now changed his mind and wants powers to allow him to do his job effectively. I understand that he has little staffing support. How will the regulator adequately address accreditation with this huge upheaval in the market? Will all providers be accredited, and by when? Will that include independent specialist firms and sole traders, and how will it be funded?

I wish to make two other points about the role of the regulator. First, what role will he play in dealing with the real concerns that have been raised today about the fragmentation of forensic science? My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner), in particular, set out his concerns about that. One example of which I have been made aware is a recent stabbing. Blood pattern analysis was sent to seven different analysts in four different organisations. That evidence should have been analysed by one individual who could contextualise it, interpret it and present it in court. Instead, the jury will have to piece together a narrative from seven different expert witnesses. Does the Minister accept that that has made a conviction much harder to achieve? Would it not be appropriate to give the regulator powers to address fragmentation? An anonymous response to the New Scientist survey from a forensic scientist at a private lab said:

“More and more cases are being broken into component parts and incomplete examinations are requested of private laboratories because in-house police laboratories believe they are saving money…This makes the interpretation of the evidence within the context of the whole case very difficult because the scientist does not have a complete picture.”

Secondly, what will happen if a whistleblower comes forward? What procedures are in place to deal with that, and would the regulator take responsibility for dealing with the concerns of whistleblowers in either a private provider or a police force provider?

I turn to the FSS archive. We have heard about the importance of the national archive and how little thought seemed to be given to it when the decision to close the FSS was made. For many victims of crime and families who have lost a loved one, the Government’s cavalier attitude to the archive is frankly shameful. We know that, with advances in forensic science, there have been cold case reviews and, thanks to the integrity of the national archive, opportunities to bring to justice those who have committed horrific murders and rapes.

The president of the Law Society wrote to the Home Secretary on 21 December expressing concerns about the closure of the archive and what would happen to its funding. I now understand that funding of up to £2 million has been made available, but the Minister has indicated that the business case is still being examined. There is no clarity about how the archive will operate, despite his saying to the Select Committee in December that he would write with full details in the spring.

The FSS closes on 31 March, just over a month away, and we are still none the wiser about what will happen. For example, will all forensic providers be able to contribute to the national archive in years to come? That is a really important issue that needs to be addressed by 1 April. Does the Minister recognise that particular skills are needed to run a national archive properly, which need to be factored into the budget?

Perhaps the Minister could spell out his thoughts on the value of the archive in general. Does he not think that a statutory power needs to be introduced for the Criminal Cases Review Commission to obtain files from private forensic providers? At the moment, it has the power to get files only from public bodies.

Finally, I turn to research and development. I noted from reading the Select Committee report that that seemed to be considered only after the decision on closure had been taken. A month later, a review was set up asking for some analysis of what would happen to research and development in forensics with the closure of the FSS. I understand that the regulator believes he has an agreement that if a private company produces some new advancement in forensics, it will share it. I am sceptical about that, because in a commercial environment any investment that a company makes will surely be on the basis that it will be in a position to reap the rewards of innovation.

My hon. Friend the Chair of the Science and Technology Committee asked the Minister to address whether there will be a strategy for forensic science in the UK, and whether it will be in place before the election of police and crime commissioners in November. He also asked him to put the delivery of justice at the heart of that strategy. I hope the Minister will address those points.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth that the Government’s decision is very risky. Coming alongside the changes to DNA retention and the cuts to the police budget, I believe it was hurried and ill considered. It will mean that we may well see miscarriages of justice and cold cases not being effectively reviewed in future. We are also losing the hugely experienced staff group at the FSS. The Government may well come to regret their decision.

21:30

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Brokenshire)]

I welcome the opportunity to wind up this debate and I welcome the introduction to it by the Chair of the Science and Technology Committee, the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller).

This has been a wide-ranging debate on a number of issues. Clearly, there is not agreement across the House on some aspects, but one note that we can agree on is that forensic science is an indispensible tool in fighting crime. It is the means by which physical evidence finds a voice. In some cases, forensic science is the only source of information on which a court can rely to ascertain guilt or innocence.

At the outset, and in the context of a number of points that were made, I should say that the Government are absolutely committed to safeguarding that central pillar of our criminal justice system. I underline that clearly, and I want to put on the record, in response to a point that was made, that we fully recognise the importance of a healthy forensics situation for the criminal justice system, which is not limited to the police.

[Michael Ellis]

Does my hon. Friend agree that forensic science is important because it can exonerate the innocent as well as prove the guilt of the accused?

[James Brokenshire]

Learned Members of the House have made various contributions on the relevance and significance of forensic evidence. Each has underlined that forensic science is an important and effective tool in seeking to prosecute and convict, but that it is equally important in analysing evidence to ensure that those who are not guilty of crimes are exonerated. That is an important part of the Government’s approach in ensuring that there are clear safeguards and quality thresholds, which I will come to in a moment.

I was struck by a number of hon. Members’ contributions because they almost implied that there had been no competitive market in forensics prior to this Government’s decision. To be clear, there has been a competitive market in forensic science for a number of years. In some ways, the creation of the forensic science market has been a success. Turnaround times have been faster, prices have been lower and quality standards have increased, I believe because of the competitive tensions that have been created, which some hon. Members sought to highlight.

I hope I can say with confidence that hon. Members on both sides of the House agree that there is an important role in forensics for private sector providers, although there has been a debate on the role and function of such providers. However, it is fair to say that the creation of a market created problems for the FSS. The Committee recognised in its comments that the problems for the FSS did not suddenly appear on the horizon on the arrival of this Government.

In recognising why the Government had to act as they did, it is important to understand the context. Several hon. Members referred to the McFarland review, which recommended that the FSS should become a Government-owned, contractor-operated company, as a staging point to becoming a public-private partnership. The previous Government accepted the McFarland review and sought to establish the FSS as a Government-owned company as part of a transition towards a more fully commercialised situation. Even the previous Government, in accepting the review, did not see the GovCo arrangement as an end in itself.

The plan was to take the FSS down the path to being a GovCo with the intent to take it to a more commercialised basis. In many ways, the decision in November 2005 not to proceed and, in essence, to say, “So far but no further,” led to the fundamental problems and challenges that the FSS has faced. It was left in a halfway house, having been taken down a path to market but then stopped in its tracks and left in an extraordinarily difficult situation. I respect the contribution from the hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell). He and I have debated this issue before, and I remember the Westminster Hall debate to which he referred and from which he still, I think, nurses a few scars on his back. However, the investment made was never going to fulfil the FSS’s full potential because it was stuck in this stasis.

When the FSS was transformed into a Government company in 2005, it was left with higher costs than its competitors as a legacy of its previous status as a Government agency. Clearly, as a result, the company’s ability to compete was hampered. It is important to note that the FSS’s share of the market reduced with every tender held to provide forensic science services to the police. The previous Government were tendering out these services as part of a continuing process, but the FSS was, in essence, left at a competitive disadvantage as a consequence of its structure.

[Michael Ellis]

Is it the Minister’s understanding that anywhere between 35% and 50% of forensics is now outside the control of the FSS?

[James Brokenshire]

I will update the House on the situation relating to transition, but when the decision was made in December 2010 about one third of the forensics market was in the private sector, and about 60%—[Interruption.] The Select Committee Chairman, I think, is querying those figures, but my clear recollection is that, when we were considering the matter, the figure was about 30% to 35%—unless he would like to correct me.

[Andrew Miller]

When the decision was made in December 2010, the FSS had about 60% of the market. There is no dispute about that.

[James Brokenshire]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that confirmation.

I hear some of the points that have been made about whether there has been a reduction in the overall forensics market as a consequence of police in-sourcing. Indeed, I remember the Westminster Hall debate in which the hon. Member for Tynemouth was clear that there was no evidence of a vast swathe of police in-sourcing. Even at that time it was being postulated that it was the cause of some of the challenges facing the FSS.

[Mr Alan Campbell]

Does the Minister not accept that since that debate—of which we both have memories, and certainly not fond ones—the context has changed? We were talking about the police making decisions when they had budgets that were rising year on year. How much does he believe the decisions that the police are now making about forensics are driven by the cuts they see coming down the line?

[James Brokenshire]

The police have been looking carefully at their forensics spend and how to ensure that it is used effectively. Indeed, I congratulate ACPO and a number of police forces up and down the country on how they have approached this issue, which in many ways is about the ability to focus on the delivery of forensics spend. It is also worth highlighting the fact that, I would argue, the market was stimulated to a huge extent by the DNA expansion programme and how it unwound over that period. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would accept that the impact that that had on the market was not sustainable. Indeed, the development of DNA technology has moved on further, and I am sure that it will continue to do so, with innovations such as the concept, even, of “DNA in a box”, as it is sometimes described, which enables people to undertake DNA testing immediately, at scene.

By December 2010 the FSS was in serious financial difficulty, with significant operating losses and the prospect of further shrinkage in demand for forensics services, as the police continued to drive efficiencies in their use of forensic services. We judged it vital to take clear and decisive action to protect the supply of forensic science services to the criminal justice system. Without funding from the Government, the FSS would have entered administration in early 2011—that was the clear statement that the company was making to us at the time, and that was the situation with which we were presented. That would have seriously damaged the forensics capability available to the criminal justice system. We were not prepared to expose the criminal justice system to that level of risk. I note that the Select Committee, while critical in other ways, agreed with the analysis that simply letting the FSS go into administration would not have been the right thing to do.

We maintain that the managed wind-down of the FSS was the right choice, both financially and for the criminal justice system. The orderly wind-down of the company ensures that the police and the criminal justice system as a whole continue to have the forensics capability that they need to protect the public and bring criminals to justice. The transition process has underlined how that has been achieved. The costs of closure are being carefully managed, and obviously this estimates day debate underlines the costs that have been provided for. We are clear, and we maintain, that costs are not escalating and will be delivered within the provision that has been made. The National Audit Office has reviewed the calculation of the Home Office’s provision and is content that it is reasonable.

[Mr Slaughter]

Will the Minister tell the House what he believes the total cost of the closure of the Forensic Science Service will be, including costs arising from any obligations for redundancies, pensions or other matters? If he cannot give a ballpark figure now, will he write to Members who have taken part in this debate to give them the figure?

[James Brokenshire]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be aware of the provisions made in the estimates. As we reported previously to the Science and Technology Committee, the likely total cost in cash terms is about £100 million, and this remains the position. In 2010-11, £28.7 million was provided to allow the FSS to continue to operate while the transition was managed, and for staff redundancies. Provision has been made subsequently for a further £71 million of costs. That has been clearly stated on the record.

[Mr Slaughter]

If that is right and the cost is £100 million, while I acknowledge that the Minister might not accept the FSS figure that the “lost losses”—to put in those terms—were about £11 million last year, does he accept that the £100 million would cover the current deficit for a number of years in the future, before the effect of other cost savings and contractions have been made? That being the case, does he still think that this is a sensible use of public money?

[James Brokenshire]

Yes, I do, for this reason. We considered the options carefully, and determined that allowing the FSS to go into administration was simply not acceptable. We considered the prospect of making a further capital injection to follow on from the £50 million injected a few years previously. Against the backdrop of the structure and the situation that we saw, however, we were not convinced that such an injection would prevent the FSS from being in the same situation 12 months, 18 months or two years later. We thought it was better to provide certainty for the criminal justice system, and to take the action that we did.

It is notable that although the Select Committee report made comments about process and timing, it did not criticise the decision itself or postulate that we should have made a different decision. I thought it was interesting to note that from the Select Committee report. I see that the Chairman of that Committee is seeking to catch my eye.

[Andrew Miller]

What concerns me about what the Minister says is that some of these costs are going to be borne by the public purse for some considerable time. Contrary to what was said earlier, the Crown Prosecution Service was not 100% happy with the situation. What it said was:

“None of the suppliers are…accredited in all forensic disciplines, and thus can only take on a limited range of forensic work”—

until, of course, they are accredited. The CPS went on to say:

“Gaining accreditation in these fields is a time consuming and potentially expensive process and the appetite of the suppliers”—

including the police—

“to undertake this exercise is not yet known.”

The regulators are going to have to make that happen. The point I am making to the Minister is that we need to keep an eye on those burgeoning costs, including in police forces, because we do not want money spent on this that could otherwise have been spent on front-line policing.

[James Brokenshire]

I do not accept the analysis relating to burgeoning costs. If the hon. Gentleman talked to ACPO about how the transition and retendering processes have been created, he would find that savings have been delivered through a real focus on the manner in which forensics are used. It is important to view the concept of further burgeoning costs in that light—by recognising that forensic providers are already accredited and by looking at the process undertaken by the police and at the clear statements made at the time that there would be no transfer of services to a non-accredited environment.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) talked about the Metropolitan Police Service handing back its accreditation. I tell her that this would happen to a commercial provider in that situation as well. It is not a reflection of any delinquency or limitation in the Metropolitan police’s standards, quality or approach; it is simply the fact that if new personnel and new arrangements are taken on, a process of re-accreditation has to be gone through, following on from all the processes and procedures that have previously been accredited. I wanted to give the hon. Lady that reassurance.

We have been working closely with key partners throughout the criminal justice system during the transition. A forensics transition board has been overseeing the process, and includes representatives from the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Crown Prosecution Service and the National Policing Improvement Agency, with a wider advisory group whose members include the forensic science regulator and the Ministry of Justice. The regulator has attended a number of meetings to offer his input.

I believe that, thanks to the hard work and commitment of FSS staff and partners across the criminal justice system, the transition has been successful. It has ensured the continued supply of effective forensic science services to the criminal justice system, and has created a stable and competitive market for forensics that will provide cost-effective and innovative forensic services to support the criminal justice system.

Over the past 12 months there has been a significant amount of work and operational planning to manage the transition of services from the FSS to alternative providers in a controlled way, in order to reduce risk and ensure continuity of service. The Association of Chief Police Officers and the National Policing Improvement Agency have re-procured forensic supply across the midlands and the south-east, and for the 14 forces making up the west coast consortium. The transfer of evidence recovery, interpretation and reporting of forensic science examinations from the FSS to the Metropolitan Police Service has been successfully completed, and in parallel the MPS has also re-procured its analytical forensics services.

It was suggested earlier that appropriate arrangements had not been made for the north-east. I think that that is partly because continuing contractual negotiations at the time of the publication of the report did not allow us to be entirely open. What I can say, however, is that there is a separate transition process in the north-east. Negotiations were concluded in December for a managed transfer of work to a new supplier for the north-east and Yorkshire. That followed close working between the FSS and the north-east forces. In the interim, the FSS has continued to provide forensic science services for the north-east forces to ensure that continuity of supply is maintained. The last new cases will be taken by the FSS on 1 March. That is the final part of the transition of its services to other providers.

[Guy Opperman]

Can my hon. Friend assure us that there is no fundamental difference between the situation facing the north-east and the situation facing the rest of the country?

[James Brokenshire]

I can say that one of the fundamental parts of the process, and one of the things on which I was absolutely clear throughout, was the need to ensure that there was continuity of supply of forensic services to the police and the criminal justice system, and I believe that that has been maintained throughout the process. I am hugely grateful for the considerable contribution of ACPO, the NPIA and the FSS to the reaching of these milestones, and for the way in which the process has been managed at national and local level. This has been a challenging time for FSS staff, who I believe have behaved with complete professionalism throughout. I want to record my, and the Government’s, appreciation for and recognition of their dedication and commitment throughout this difficult process.

The Government continue to support the orderly transition of work from the FSS. As part of that process, some of the current staff are moving to a range of other forensic services in the private and public sectors. We have pursued options to transfer elements of FSS business, including staff whenever possible. I have committed myself to providing an update for the Select Committee in June, following the completion of the process. We intend to conduct a survey of the private sector forensic service providers so that we can give a clear indication to the Committee, and therefore more publicly, in relation to the transfer of FSS staff from the FSS to other positions.

[Andrew Miller]

Will the Minister add to his list of commitments for that period the making of a clear statement on how the dialogue with the research councils and the Technology Strategy Board is progressing? We must ensure that the science base is protected so that we avoid the negative consequences that I described earlier.

[James Brokenshire]

I gave evidence before Christmas in conjunction with the Forensic Science Regulator and the chief scientific adviser at the Home Office, Bernard Silverman. He is an excellent CSA. He and I have regular meetings, not only about the FSS but on Home Office science issues in general. I want to put on record my appreciation for his work and expert input.

There are various recommendations on research and development in Professor Silverman’s report, one of which addresses questions to do with the various funding councils and the different available options. My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) highlighted interdisciplinary issues, and there might be a conference to address some of them. I will take on board the point made by the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston about providing updates and following through on Professor Silverman’s report. I will consider how best to do that for his Select Committee.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) highlighted a constituency case. I do not necessarily think there is a direct role for the Home Office in that, but I have no doubt that colleagues at the Foreign Office will have noted his comments.

Forensic findings can mean the difference between guilt and innocence. It is vital that forensic conclusions are reliable, error-free and beyond doubt. Forensic scientists must work to rigorous and robust scientific principles, methods and evaluations. That is why we have made sure that all new and transferred forensics work by commercial forensic service providers must be carried out by accredited laboratories.

Commercial forensic service providers have provided high-quality forensic science services for the criminal justice system for a number of years, and there is no reason why the closure of the FSS will reduce impartiality or affect the accuracy of their work. The extensive and detailed forensic work by LGC Forensics that formed the core of the evidence in the recent trial of Gary Dobson and David Norris for the murder of Stephen Lawrence is an example of the good work being carried out by commercial forensic service providers. My hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) made that point.

I have made it clear from the outset that any FSS work taken in-house by police forces must be carried out to the same high standards as the work of accredited private sector laboratories. I utterly reject any suggestion that the closure of the FSS will lead to miscarriages of justice.

[Diana Johnson]

Will the Minister give way?

[James Brokenshire]

I have two minutes left and I want to address a key point about fragmentation, which both the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) raised. Dr Gary Pugh, head of forensics at the Metropolitan Police Service, and Chief Constable Sims of West Midlands Police said in their evidence to the Committee:

“it is not general police practice to send exhibits from the same crime scene to different providers. There are a very small number of exceptions in rare cases where a highly specialised piece of analysis is only offered by a niche provider. In such cases, care is taken to ensure continuity is maintained.”

Roger Coe-Salazar confirmed that if fragmentation were taking place,

“it is not creating an operational delivery problem”

from the CPS’s perspective. It is important to put that clearly on the record.

I also wish to highlight the work taking place on the archive. I have made clear all the way through this process, even before the publication of the report, the importance that I attach to the continued availability of the archive. That work is ongoing and is clearly being undertaken. We have made significant progress since the announcement in December 2010—

22:00

Debate interrupted, and Question deferred till tomorrow at Ten o’clock (Standing Order No. 54).

Business without Debate

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

Delegated legislation

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118 (6)),

Local Government

That the draft St Albans and Welwyn Hatfield (Boundary Change) Order 2012, which was laid before this House on 16 January, be approved.—(Mr Dunne.)

Question agreed to.

Committees

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

With the leave of the House, we will take motions 3 and 4 together, and I look to the esteemed Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) to move them.

Ordered,

Public Accounts

That Joseph Johnson be discharged from the Committee of Public Accounts and Mr Stewart Jackson be added.

Science and Technology

That Gavin Barwell, Gregg McClymont, Stephen McPartland and David Morris be discharged from the Science and Technology Committee and Caroline Dinenage, Gareth Johnson, Sarah Newton and Hywel Williams be added.—(Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.)

UK Aid

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

22:00

[Fiona O'Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)]

I am delighted to have the opportunity to present this petition on UK aid on behalf of my constituents. The signatures were gathered mainly through local churches, and I particularly wish to thank Rev. Robin Hill from Longniddry and Gladsmuir parish churches for his support.

The petition states:

The Petition of citizens of the United Kingdom,

Declares that while around the world UK aid has already made an enormous difference in helping people lift themselves out of poverty, we must not stop now.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to enshrine in law their commitment to spending 0.7% of national income on aid by 2013.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.

[P001009]

Printed Photo ID Market

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Bill Wiggin.)

22:02

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

I am particularly delighted to see the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) on the Front Bench, as he has been aware of correspondence from other hon. Members, as well as from me, on this matter, and an early-day motion. Although the subject looks obscure, it is of considerable importance to a number of MPs. Much of the correspondence has been between me and Department for Transport Ministers. As part of the complaint goes across government, I have initiated correspondence with Cabinet Office Ministers. To complicate matters, at least one letter from Ministers to me did not arrive.

As my hon. Friend will be aware, I am concerned that the Post Office is entering the commercial business of providing identity photographs for Government documents such as passports and driving licences. That is in direct commercial competition with the extensive UK printed photo ID market. In his reply tonight, I suspect he will repeat comments made in one of his letters, in which he states that

“the Department for Transport, in common with a number of other departments, has recent legal advice that suggests Post Office Ltd has to be treated fully equally with any other potential providers when bidding for government work, even though it is owned by the government. This is based on European Union Procurement Directives but since these are in place to promote competition and this is essential for us to maximise benefit to the public and customers, this is acceptable.”

If the Minister will permit me a slang phrase, may I say that I recognise that an argument on the directive is outside his portfolio and perhaps above his pay grade? Nevertheless, for me, this approach is an appalling creep back to the old days of the Callaghan Labour Government, when organisations owned by government or, even more so, by local government were able to bid for private sector work, often at a loss, supported by the taxpayer or the ratepayer, as it was in those days. Admittedly, this is narrower as we are talking here of bidding for Government work only.

I am seeking ministerial reassurance that as far as his Department is concerned there is no Post Office monopoly and the private sector can compete fairly for any contract with his Department in the UK printed photo ID market. In addition, it would be helpful if the Minister clarified why there must be a contract, which would obviously limit the outlets, particularly if the contract was won by the Post Office. Better still, in my opinion; there should be an open house on photo provision in co-operation with the Post Office to achieve the same ends.

I am sure that the Minister is aware of the commercial market’s deep concern that it will be locked out of a huge business serving the public in the provision of photographs for driving licences, possibly for passports and other photographs that might be required by the Government.

The issue has been bought to my notice by Mr Olivier Gimpel, chief operating officer of Photo-Me. The company’s headquarters are in my constituency—indeed, in my home village—and every MP will be aware of the firm as its ID photo booth is situated in the same short corridor as the cash machines, which are effectively one floor below us now. Photo-Me is not the only firm to be deeply concerned about this issue. There are 7,500 outlets in the UK providing ID photo services to the public, which include 6,600 photo booths.

The provision of ID photos represents the core business of about 900 retail outlets, including retailers such as Photo-Me, along with firms such as Jessops, Snappy Snaps and Timpsons. In addition, there are uncounted numbers of independent photographic shops and photographers. I was astonished to find the size of the market for official ID photographs: approximately 5 million to 6 million a year for passports; 2 million to 2.5 million for 10-year driving licence renewals and other new driving licence applications; and about 1 million a year for foreign residents. The market is worth £45 million to £50 million a year and it is estimated that ID photo suppliers derive approximately half of their turnover from the official ID market.

As the Minister set out in one of his letters to me, in 2008-09 the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency faced the prospect of processing an additional 2.3 to 2.6 million 10-year renewal driving licence transactions, which could have required capital investment and scanning as well as 300 to 400 additional staff. As a result, the DVLA decided to supplement the existing paper channel with two further ways of renewing photographs to provide customer convenience and to contain costs. The first was the development of a web channel similar to that already used for first driver applications, taking photographs from the passport database, which, to me, makes eminent sense. However, the second was the extension by variation of the existing Post Office check and send channel by adding the capture of an image to the six-step transaction already undertaken by the Post Office, which meant that it was acting as a face-to-face intermediary of the DVLA and taking the ID photos. That would have required vast sums to be spent by the Post Office combined with training to provide a service that was already and is available from the commercial printed photo ID market.

The check and send service provided by the Post Office before 2010 was charged at £4 to each consumer, whereas under the new service it will cost £4.50 to have both the check and send and to capture the customer’s digital ID picture and digital ID signature electronically. In order to deliver the service, the Post Office is investing £42 million of our money over five years with Cogent, a firm that is supplying the equipment and maintenance. The new service is to be charged to the consumer, as I have just said, at 50p. I recognise that my hon. Friend the Minister is exceptionally quick with mathematics—it is part of an Army training—but to save him the strain, my reckoning is that to generate turnover equivalent to the investment made by the Post Office would need 84 million transactions over five years, 100 times more than the demand estimated by the Department for Transport.

In effect, we therefore have a taxpayer-subsidised organisation providing a loss-making service. What makes that even more obnoxious is that the so-called efficiency plans could well run at a loss at the expense of the private sector, particularly at this difficult economic time. It is estimated that approximately 5,000 jobs are under threat and that hundreds of high street stores face partial or imminent closure if we cannot find a means of co-existence. I hope the Minister can help us with that tonight.

I am focusing on the Department for Transport because I understand that a contract is to be launched on 6 March. UK printed photo ID companies want to be assured that they will be able to bid openly, for which there must be a requirement in the contract specifications that printed ID pictures that can be scanned into a digital format may be used. The ID photo industry does not want a Government-subsidised organisation in the form of the Post Office to win a contract and continue to lose money on the provision of that contract at its expense. Furthermore, I, and I guess most people in the House, do not wish to have such a service running at a loss at the taxpayer’s expense.

If the Minister cannot reassure me and therefore the photo industry, which will be watching his response carefully, I ask him to delay the contract so that there can be further discussions. If it is not inappropriate because of the Department’s timetable I would be grateful for an urgent opportunity to meet the Minister face to face, quietly at the table, with one or two people from the UK printed photo ID market to discuss directly the opportunity of opening this market and perhaps saving me and every other taxpayer the prospect of funding the kind of losing service that I would have expected from the previous Government but not from this one.

22:11

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mike Penning)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) on securing the debate. This has been an ongoing campaign for him and other colleagues, to the extent that there have been something like 56 letters from MPs, which have been responded to by Cabinet Ministers, particularly my right hon. Friends the Transport Secretary and the Business Secretary.

I am more than happy to meet my hon. Friend and a delegation from the industry to discuss this matter, but that might be the only part of this debate in which he will smile at me, because I think we are going to disagree on some points. I apologise for that, but I have to do what I think is right. I am not going to get into a debate about the number of jobs that might be lost on the high street, which he discussed, but the figure seems to change with each letter on this issue. I am not deriding his mathematics, but the industry moves around on this point. As the Minister responsible to the public in relation to the DVLA, I have to look at several things, one of which is the cost to the public of something that they are required to have. The photo ID driving licence has been in place for many years—since 1998. We also need to look at the new technology that has come forward. One thing that my hon. Friend has not picked up on this evening is the issue of fraud with driving licences and passports, which I shall spend some time discussing.

Since 1998, image quality has become more and more important, particularly with digital technology. The police, the courts and the Driving Standards Agency, the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency and the DVLA in my Department have made it a priority to increase the quality of the photographs that are produced as evidence of someone’s ID when they want to procure, among other things, a driving licence with their photograph on it. As you may be aware, Mr Speaker, in recent years we have moved from black-and-white photographs to colour technology with driving licences, but technology continues to move forward. Digital photos are cheaper and much better in quality than they used to be and the secure management of such electronic technology becomes more and more important.

As my hon. Friend said, we have in recent years looked closely at how we can improve the quality of the photograph as part of the system of proving the identity of the person applying for the driving licence. Some 15% of this system is dealt with on the web, and it goes straight through to the DVLA on a regular basis, and that figure continues to increase. I shall come back to the significance of that figure in a moment.

In the past 18 months, the Post Office service—the contract is to be launched in March, as my hon. Friend said—has taken 35% of the market in photographs for driving licences. That leaves 50% still being done in the old-fashioned way, by capturing the photograph and the photograph then being used in, normally paper, documents.

Why are the Government doing this? As my hon. Friend rightly said, it comes down to cost. There are enormous savings for DVLA if the photograph can be captured and transported electronically on to the system immediately and in the most cost-efficient way. The DVLA is funded by people paying fees, and the fees charged for a driving licence or other DVLA service reflect our costs. Naturally, in these difficult economic times, we have been trying to drive down costs as far as possible. That is therefore a significant factor.

Another significant factor of which I was unaware until I took this job is fraud. Recently in the press I have stated my concern about fraud when foreign driving licences are exchanged for British driving licences, but when I went to the DVLA fraud unit in Swansea, on one of my first ministerial visits, I was amazed to discover the extent to which members of the public fraudulently try to obtain a British driving licence. I accept that a British driving licence is a valuable item, because it can be used as ID and for many different purposes. Even though it was not designed as a means of identification, it is often used as one—for example, a person needs a driving licence to hire a vehicle, because it is regarded as an entitlement to drive as well as proof of age and address.

There are frequent attempts—hundreds every day—by people to obtain a British driving licence using a fraudulent photograph. They employ a vast range of methods, of which cut and paste is only one. We pick up as many such attempts as possible—we cannot guarantee to get all of them—and one option for us is digital scanning. One of the great benefits we have seen in the past couple of months from having a direct link to web or being able to scan at a post office directly into the DVLA database is that very soon after the application has been made, particularly at night when we can use computer downtime, we can compare the scanned photograph with the millions of photographs kept on the database. We do that not because we suspect that everyone is attempting to obtain a driving licence fraudulently, but because we know that a large number of people apply using multiple names and addresses. We can do that with the new technology, whereas the older technology makes it very difficult.

Let me take this opportunity to say that we will pursue people who apply fraudulently for a driving licence through the courts, because making such an application is a criminal offence.

Even with the new technology, the market stands at 50:50. We have no intention of stopping people from choosing to use the traditional—I prefer to say old-fashioned—method. They can carry on doing that. Are we promoting the digital side of it? Yes, we are—of course we are—and that is why the contract is being issued. It is imperative that we are honest about that and that we ensure the public continue to have a choice wherever possible. There will be a market for both older technology and web facilities. All the evidence we have seen at DVLA, especially as we roll out the VED car tax arrangements, is that more is being done online and less in person.

My hon. Friend asked whether there will be a continuation of the older method. Yes. He asked whether I would consider delaying the bidding process in March. We have done a lot of work on that, and I do not intend to delay the March contract launch.

I was also asked whether it is open to others to bid. Yes, but only on a like-for-like basis, because this is an example of technology benefiting the public. My hon. Friend asked whether we could meet in the near future. He knows that my door is always open to him. If any Member wants to see me, it is always my honour and privilege to meet them.

The two-stage approach that has been highlighted—I nearly said “pushed”—by the high street photo industry would take away the two classic advantages that I have just described: those of cost and convenience. However, the most significant factor, which I have dealt with at some length tonight, is fraud. I desperately need to clamp down on fraud. It is one of the burdens that this nation suffers from in that people desperately want to get hold of a British driving licence or a British passport.

The technology is being rolled out across government, and it is important that that should happen. At the same time, however, we must endeavour to keep costs down so as not to impose a burden on the public purse. Similarly, we must be conscious of imposing a time burden. The post office process will now take about 3.5 minutes from the person standing in front of the camera to receiving their entitlement to proceed. I continue to say that we are keeping an open mind, and that there is a place for the traditional high street photo market. At the same time, however, the Government have to move on. We need to do our level best for the public in relation to costs, time and fraud. That is why we are going to push on with this project.

Question put and agreed to.

22:21

House adjourned.

Petitions

Monday 27th February 2012 Petitions

Monday 27 February 2012

HMS Concord

Monday 27th February 2012 Petitions

The Petition of William Leitch,

Declares that the Petitioner believes that it is a grievous injustice that the 1949 ship’s complement of HMS Concord were not recognised as a unit involved in the 1949 Yangtze campaign, due to what the Petitioner believes was a wrongful omission of important relevant documents relating to the role of HMS Concord between 28 and 31 July 1949, and declares that the Petitioner believes that those who served on HMS Concord between 28 and 31 July 1949 deserve justice, remedy and reparation.

The Petitioner therefore requests that the House of Commons sets up a Select Committee to conduct a comprehensive enquiry into the role of HMS Concord in the Yangtze campaign between 28 and 31 July 1949.

And the Petitioner remains, etc.—[Presented by Graeme Morrice, Official Report, 8 December 2011; Vol. 537, c. 5P.]

[P000987]

Observations from the Leader of the House of Commons:

It is for the House of Commons, and not the Government, to consider the creation of new Select Committees.

In considering the creation of any new Committee, the House will want to be mindful of approach set out in the First Report 2008-09 of the House of Commons Reform Committee, that

“The House must also seek to reduce the numbers of committees, ending overlapping or duplicate remits and rationing the scarce resource of Members time and commitment.” (Paragraph 55)

This is a view that the Government fully support.

It would be for existing committees of the House of Commons, such as the Defence Select Committee, to consider whether the issues raised by the petitioner are in need of inquiry.

Send our Sister to School Campaign

Monday 27th February 2012 Petitions

The Petition of pupils of Overfields Primary School, Middlesbrough,

Declares that the Petitioners support the Send our Sister to School Campaign which aims to give girls the same chance as boys to benefit from an education and that the Petitioners support the international agreement to get all children into education by 2015.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to raise the commitment to get all children into education by 2015 at the G20 summit in November.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.—[Presented by Ian Swales, Official Report, 26 October 2011; Vol. 534, c. 434.]

[P000972]

Observations from the Secretary of State for International Development:

It is a tragedy that 67 million children around the world are still out of school. Investing in education is very important, as education provides children with the best route out of poverty, giving them the power to improve their own lives and the lives of others in their community. This is particularly true for girls: educating girls in the poor world is one of the most transformative actions we can take.

The UK Government support work to achieve all the Millennium Development Goals and we will make sure that aid is spent wisely to ensure that new progress is made to give poor people better access to clean water, sanitation, healthcare and education. We are also committed to making sure that every pound we spend is used in the best way to benefit as many children as possible. All children should have equal access to a good quality basic education.

Following a root and branch review of all the UK’s aid spending we published our priorities for the next four years in the document “UK Aid: Changing Lives, Delivering Results”, which can be found on the DFID website at: www.dfid.gov.uk/aidreviews. In this document we promise to support at least 9 million children in primary school, over half of whom will be girls, and 2 million children in secondary school by 2014.

In addition, we announced a new Girls’ Education Challenge last September. This will focus on the poorest girls who currently do not get any support. Through this programme, we will work with charities and businesses to find new and effective ways to educate up to an additional million of the world’s poorest girls by 2015.

The UK Government are working hard to deliver a better future for every child but more needs to be done and this is a shared responsibility. In order to ensure that girls have equal access to education in the future it is vital that by 2015, the international community keeps its promise to achieve the internationally agreed target to support all children, boys and girls alike, to complete primary education.

Written Ministerial Statements

Monday 27th February 2012 Written Statements

Monday 27 February 2012

Classification of Colleges

Monday 27th February 2012 Written Statements

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

I am writing to inform the House that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has recently reviewed the classification of colleges and notified HM Treasury on 23 February 2012 that both further education colleges and sixth-form colleges will be reclassified to the private sector upon commencement, in April 2012, of the relevant parts of the Education Act 2011.

On 14 October 2010, I informed the House of the decision by the ONS to reclassify general further education colleges as part of central Government for the purposes of national accounts. FE colleges had previously been classified as part of the private sector. On the same date ONS announced that sixth-form college corporations were classified as local government entities for national accounts purposes.

Confirming the Government’s commitment to reduce burdens on further education colleges and to give them freedoms to make their own decisions on how best to manage their affairs for the benefit of learners, employers and wider communities, I pledged to work to challenge the original classification.

Through the Education Act 2011, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Education have removed a wide range of restrictions and controls on further education and sixth-form college corporations, putting them on a similar footing to charities operating within the independent/private sector.

Having reviewed the changes we have made, the ONS has concluded that they are sufficient to remove public sector control over these corporations, and they will consequently be reclassified to the private sector. This reclassification is provisional upon ensuring that there are no other public sector controls in other documentation, such as the funding agreements, and keeping under review the use of remaining Government powers within legislation.

I am today writing to the Association of Colleges to inform it of this achievement. Lord Hill is similarly communicating with the sixth-form colleges’ sector.

Apprenticeships

Monday 27th February 2012 Written Statements

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

Apprenticeships are now providing a record number of opportunities for individuals and employers, and the benefits that programme delivers can be felt across every community in our country and every sector in our economy. Apprenticeships deliver strong wage returns for individuals and boost their career progression; deliver higher productivity and a motivated workforce for employers; benefit communities by supporting social mobility and employment opportunity; and help to build a workforce equipped with the skills needed to compete globally.

Apprenticeships are delivering results, and the momentum that has been created will continue to reap rewards in terms of future growth in the programme. Delivering these results for individuals and employers depends upon ensuring that the value, impact and brand of apprenticeships remains strong and continues to be strengthened, raising the status of vocational learning and so for vocational learners. In this way the real and perceived value of apprenticeships impacts upon the self-worth of those that complete them and the view that others have of their achievement. So it is right that we now look to build upon this growth and momentum with a renewed and relentless focus on quality—to help ensure all apprenticeships are as good as the best, to identify and root out any instances of poor quality provision, and to raise the bar on standards.

Last year, statutory standards for apprenticeships came into effect for the first time. Following which I announced a series of further measures to improve the quality of the programme, and asked the National Apprenticeship Service to develop a comprehensive quality action plan. Now I want to direct you to the progress that has been achieved so far and the next steps.

In delivering these improvements, we will work closely with the FE and skills sector, who are best placed to drive up quality, and continue to strive to give the sector the freedoms and responsibility to tailor their provision to meet learner and employer need.

Short duration

First, an apprenticeship must involve significant new learning and time spent achieving competence and confidence in the job, which is why I am taking steps to ensure all apprenticeships are of a sufficient length to allow this learning to be embedded. Following my announcement in December, the National Apprenticeship Service will shortly publish the detail of a new 12-month duration requirement for all 16-18 year olds. This will come into effect for all starts from August 2012, although we expect many providers to change their delivery models before then.

NAS and the agency are pressing ahead with their comprehensive review of all short duration programmes:

87 training organisations providers, subcontractors and directly funded employers delivering apprenticeships of short duration (six months or less) warranted review by the agency and NAS.

29 cases have been brought to a satisfactory conclusion. These will continue to be monitored to ensure that issues do not occur and in preparation for the new requirements on duration from August 2012.

Where cases have been concluded, providers have changed their delivery models to be fully compliant or ended the delivery of frameworks that do not meet the requirements.

Most providers have revised their programmes to meet the challenge in quality standards that are required.

So far, the review has identified 10 primary contractors and three subcontractors where the agency and NAS have significant and unresolved concerns. NAS and the agency will work closely with these providers to conclude a full investigation of the specifics of the cases and identify suitable resolutions, including improving, adapting or, if necessary, withdrawing provision.

Following major reviews, in the case of three subcontractors, prime contractors have decided to end their contractual relationship.

At least one case has been referred to the agency’s special investigations unit.

It has been made clear to providers that contracts which meet funding requirements technically but fail to meet the more comprehensive quality standards we expect of apprenticeships are not acceptable. The agency will significantly tighten the contract and funding guidance from August 2012 to eliminate poor practice.

The reviews of the majority of the cases that remain will be finalised by April 2012.

Provider management and Subcontracting

Secondly, in order to ensure that all those who are being funded to deliver apprenticeship training are fit for purpose and fulfilling their responsibilities in a proper manner, I have asked the National Apprenticeship Service, working with the Skills Funding Agency, to strengthen monitoring, reporting and subcontracting arrangements to ensure quality concerns are thoroughly and systematically identified and managed routinely:

A new “enquiry panel”, which will report directly to me, will manage contractual and quality weakness as it is identified, outlining the shape and scale of any investigations being undertaken.

The agency will ensure that the contracting system is strengthened to remove any ambiguity and to protect the quality and standards of the apprenticeship programme through the funding rules, policies and contractual obligations of training organisations and employers.

A new contractual clause will be introduced to ensure training organisations and employers act within both the stated policy intent as well as the regulations of the system. Failure to uphold standards will constitute a breach of contract.

The agency will publish clear guidance on the funding that can be drawn down when an apprentice has prior learning—ensuring a clear link between delivery and investment by the Government. New funding guidance will clearly stipulate these requirements.

Effective immediately, all subcontractors over a value of £500,000 will be required from now on to pass the same due diligence test that we apply to lead providers; meaning that subcontractors will be regulated through the Register of Training Organisations. We will work to extend this condition to all subcontractors by December 2012.

From February, the agency will publish the list of all subcontracted provision that amounts to over £100,000.

The agency will publish the list of training organisations that breech its terms and conditions once all legal action and recovery of funds has been completed.

The agency will enforce minimum levels of performance on all apprenticeship providers. We are currently reviewing these to ensure that the thresholds that apply to apprenticeships are suitably rigorous.

Lead providers are now contractually required to publish details of subcontractors. We will withhold payments to any lead provider that fails to do so.

Wider next steps

Taken together, this strong and decisive action is already having a positive impact on the overall programme. But constant vigilance is necessary to ensure that every aspect of the apprenticeship programme is recognised as meeting the high quality standards I have set; to protect the taxpayer’s investment; and most importantly to ensure the greatest impact on young people, employers and the wider economy.

So over the coming months, still further measures will include:

Taking steps following our commitment to introduce minimum durations for apprenticeships for under 19-year-olds, to ensure adult apprenticeships are also of sufficient length to deliver and embed learning.

An NAS review of a number of apprenticeship frameworks and models of delivery which have been identified as needing quality improvements.

Published revised guidance on the application of SASE, and a commitment to review SASE periodically to ensure its currency and relevance

Publication of a revised quality delivery statement by NAS setting out how apprenticeship framework content should be delivered, and including final details on the new delivery and funding rules.

Confirmation of our commitment that all apprentices who do not have level 2 in English and maths should have the opportunity to progress towards this.

As these detailed measures set out, we will take every necessary step in the months ahead to protect and improve the quality of the apprenticeship programme, so that we can be confident that, as more people than ever have the opportunity to undertake an apprenticeship, they will receive the high quality training that learners and employers deserve.

Tax Measures

Monday 27th February 2012 Written Statements

[The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)]

The Government are fully committed to tackling tax avoidance and will take necessary steps to protect the Exchequer and maintain fairness in the tax system.

The Government are therefore acting today to tackle two aggressive tax avoidance schemes that have been disclosed by a bank to HM Revenue and Customs. By acting immediately, the Government will ensure the payment of over half a billion pounds in tax, protect further billions of pounds of tax from being lost and maintain fairness in the tax system.

Debt buybacks

The first scheme seeks to exploit corporation tax rules that apply to releases of debt. Normally a debtor company is taxed on the profit that arises when a liability is released for less than the amount borrowed, but special rules apply to connected companies. In such cases, a tax charge arises where a company connected to the debtor company buys the debt from the original creditor, or where debt is held between companies that become connected. These rules were amended in Finance Act 2010 to block schemes under which banks bought back their issued debt that was trading at a discount in the market. When closing these previous attempts by companies to profit from buying back their own debt without being taxed, the Government at the time made it clear in two written ministerial statements that they expected such profits to be subject to corporation tax.

Despite these clear statements, the bank has now entered into a scheme using contrived arrangements that once again seeks to ensure that the profit on a buyback of such debt is not subject to corporation tax and therefore that a substantial amount of tax, of around £300 million, is avoided.

The Government will amend these rules in Finance Bill 2012, effective from today, so that the legislation in question cannot be circumvented in future. It will also make retrospective amendments to the legislation in relation to debt acquisitions on or after 1 December 2011 to ensure the bank, and any other company that has engaged in a similar scheme in the same period, is taxed as it should be on this transaction. This is not action that the Government are taking lightly. But the potential tax loss from this scheme and the history of previous abuse in this area, means that the Government believe that this is a circumstance where action to change the legislation with full retrospective effect is justified to ensure that the system is fair for all and that those who seek to benefit from this aggressive avoidance do not get an unfair advantage.

The bank has adopted the code of practice which contains a commitment not to engage in tax avoidance. The Government are clear that this not a transaction that a bank that has adopted the code should be undertaking.

The protocol on unscheduled announcements of changes in tax law published by the Government at Budget 2011 states that

“changes to tax legislation where the change takes effect from a date earlier than the date of announcement will be wholly exceptional”.

The Government view the avoidance outlined here and the circumstances as being a “wholly exceptional” case as envisaged by the protocol.

The draft legislation, explanatory note and technical note published today will form part of Finance Bill 2012 and will be available on the HMRC website.

Authorised Investment Funds

The second avoidance scheme seeks to exploit provisions of the authorised investment fund (AIF) regulations to generate the repayment of tax (whether directly or through set off against other liabilities) that has never been paid.

Legislation to block this scheme, which is effective from today’s date, has been made by regulations and will be available at legislation.gov.uk.

The Government have acted on a number of occasions in the past to block avoidance schemes exploiting both these areas of the law. The previous action and this Government’s action in the present case makes it clear that the Government consider that certain contrived arrangements—these are arrangements involving financial products designed to create tax credits that can be repaid or offset against a bank’s other income where the tax in question has not been paid, or to avoid being taxed on profits on buyback of the bank’s own debt—are wholly unacceptable, against the intentions of Parliament and the spirit of the law.

Ministers will consider closing any future avoidance schemes involving such arrangements with full retrospective effect to ensure that the system is fair for all and that those that seek to benefit from this aggressive tax avoidance do not get an unfair advantage.

National Citizen Service 2012

Monday 27th February 2012 Written Statements

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

As previously published, the Government will deliver 30,000 national citizen service (NCS) places in 2012.

I am very pleased to be able to provide information about the location of national citizen service places available during summer 2012. Further places will be available in the autumn.

The places are listed by local authority, with the names of the organisations providing the places. NCS places are available in 95% of English local authorities.

These figures may be subject to amendment as preparation for delivery and recruitment progresses.

This information is included in the table below.

EU-Central America Association Agreement

Monday 27th February 2012 Written Statements

[The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)]

I wish to inform the House that the Government has opted in to the following measures:

(i) the Council decision relating to the proposal on the signature and provisional application of an association agreement between EU and central America.

ii) the Council decision relating to the proposal on the conclusion of the association agreement between the EU and central America.

The EU proposes to enter into an association agreement with central America. The UK supports the agreement, which covers all aspects of the bi-regional relationship. Its objectives are to strengthen political dialogue and co-operation on issues of common interest, and to boost respective trade flows and investments.

The agreement will contribute to UK security and prosperity, and to the further development of the UK’s bilateral relationships with the countries of central America and the region as a whole. Its measures are in line with the Government’s trade policy objectives on liberalisation of services and investment, as well as with the Government’s wider policy towards central America.

Following signature, those parts of the agreement in which the EU has exclusive competence will be provisionally applied. These areas are contained in part IV, the trade part. With regard to part IV, the agreement aims to eliminate high tariffs, tackle technical barriers to trade, liberalise services markets, protect EU geographical indications, open up public procurement markets, include commitments on the enforcement of labour and environmental standards and offer effective and swift dispute settlement procedures. Its measures go beyond WTO commitments and ensure a level playing field with competitors in the region. It includes robust clauses on human rights, sustainable development and international labour standards, any of which can be invoked as reason for suspension of trade preferences.

The Council decisions extend the UK’s commitments in mode 4, thus triggering the UK Justice and Home Affairs opt-in. The agreement contains obligations which fall within the scope of title V (Area of Freedom, Justice and Security) of the treaty on the functioning of the EU (TFEU), specifically those in article 49(4) on readmission. The provisions within this article, on the temporary movement of natural persons for business purposes (known as “Mode-4” trade-in services), trigger the opt-in. I believe it is in the UK’s interest to opt in to these measures, which are an integral part of our wider approach on trade and support our other commitments in services and investment liberalisation.

London Conference on Somalia

Monday 27th February 2012 Written Statements

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

This statement is also published in the names of the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for International Development. On 23 February the UK hosted the London conference on Somalia. When he announced this initiative in November, our right hon. Friend the Prime Minister spoke of the real and pressing need to pull together the international effort on Somalia. The conference brought together 55 delegations representing over 40 countries, the United Nations, African Union, Intergovernmental Authority on Development, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and other international organisations to discuss how the international community could reinvigorate its approach towards Somalia. Somali leaders, including President Sheikh Sharif, Prime Minister Abdiweli, President Farole of Puntland and President Silanyo of Somaliland also took part.

The conference took place at a key moment in Somalia’s history. Somalia is emerging from the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. African and Somali troops have pushed Al Shabaab out of Mogadishu and other areas. The transitional institutions come to an end in August 2012, and the people of Somalia want clarity on what will follow. The situation remains precarious, and in urgent need of support from the international community.

Decisions on Somalia’s future rest with the Somali people. The Somali political leadership must be accountable to the people. The international community’s role is to facilitate Somalia’s progress and development: our strength is in unity and co-ordinated support to Somalia. The conference noted the importance of listening to and working with Somalis inside and outside Somalia, and welcomed their engagement in the run-up to this conference.

The conference focused on the underlying causes of instability, as well as the symptoms (famine, piracy, and terrorism). The international community agreed: to inject new momentum into the political process; to strengthen the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and help Somalia develop its own security forces; to help build stability at local level; and to step up action to tackle pirates and terrorists.

More specifically, the conference agreed practical measures in seven areas:

Political process—Agreement that the transition must end in August 2012, and that the political process must be broad-based and inclusive, building on agreement at the Garowe consultative meetings; the establishment of a joint financial management board to increase the transparency and accountability of transitional federal Government, and future Government, spending.

Security and justice—Agreement to create a framework for international support to develop Somali security and justice capacity.

Piracy—Agreement on the need to address the causes of piracy on land, and to build judicial and imprisonment capacity in the region; welcome for the establishment of a regional anti-piracy prosecutions intelligence co-ordination centre in the Seychelles. Ministers also signed bilateral memorandum of understanding with Tanzania on transferring suspected pirates for prosecution, with the Netherlands and Seychelles on the regional anti-piracy prosecutions intelligence coordination centre, and a regional burden-sharing statement of principles. Our right hon. Friend the Prime Minister also announced the creation of an international taskforce on piracy ransoms and welcomed the announcement from the shipping industry of funding for the UN development programme (UNDP) coastal community projects in Puntland.

Terrorism—Agreement to build capacity to disrupt terrorism in the region, including disrupting terrorists’ travel to and from Somalia and terrorist finances.

Humanitarian—The conference was preceded by a separate meeting on the humanitarian situation, chaired jointly by the International Development Secretary, Baroness Amos (United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs) and the United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister. Prominent themes included the continuing fragility of the humanitarian situation in Somalia and the need to create the conditions for voluntary return of refugees and internally displaced people.

Stability and recovery—Launch of a new stability fund to channel development support, such as for basic services, jobs, security and justice, to emerging areas of stability across Somalia. Founder members are the UK, the Netherlands, Norway, the United Arab Emirates and Denmark. Agreement to a set of principles for local support.

International co-ordination—Welcome for the international contact group on Somalia’s decision to consider restructuring to improve its effectiveness, and a recommendation to establish working groups on the political process, security and justice, and stability and development. The creation of a core group of engaged countries to drive progress in support of United Nations, African Union and Intergovernmental Authority on Development efforts.

We have placed copies of the Communiqué agreed by international partners at the conference and the conclusions of the separate humanitarian meeting in the Libraries of both Houses.

Health Select Committee Report on Public Expenditure (Government Response)

Monday 27th February 2012 Written Statements

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

I have today laid before Parliament the Government response to the House of Commons Health Committee’s report “Public Expenditure: Thirteenth Report of Session 2010-12” (Cm 8283). The Committee’s report was published on 24 January 2012.

The modernisation and efficiency challenges we are seeking across health and social care are exceptional; ones that are vitally necessary to secure sustainable and improving services. They are also inextricably linked and mutually supportive. These changes are critical to bringing about a modern care system that is fit to deliver the high quality, responsive, personalised services wanted by people today. As a part of these reforms, we are protecting funding for the NHS and allocating additional funding for social care.

Passenger Name Records

Monday 27th February 2012 Written Statements

[The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)]

The coalition Government are firmly committed to protecting the security of UK citizens and to defending civil liberties. Our experience is that both security and privacy are possible. We must resist trading one off against the other as some would wish us to do.

We are firmly committed to consistency in our approach to civil liberties and will seek to translate our domestic agenda to the EU level—this includes purpose limitation; rigorous evidence-based arguments; the principles of necessity and proportionality; stringent data protection safeguards, especially when handling sensitive personal data; independent data protection oversight; and, of course, full compliance with EU law and the EU treaties.

We fully recognise the importance of working with partners outside the EU given that the threats we face are global in nature and, in common with other EU member states, we view the US as a key partner.

The UK, in common with many other EU member states and third countries, places considerable value on the collection and analysis of passenger name record (PNR) data (that data collected by carriers in the exercise of their business) for the purpose of preventing terrorism and serious crime. The appropriate use of PNR data is vital in keeping the public safe.

In line with this view, the Government continue to press for an EU PNR directive that includes provision for intra-EU flights. The Government also believe that clear PNR agreements between the EU and third countries play a vital role in removing legal uncertainty for air carriers flying to those countries, and help ensure that PNR information can be shared quickly and securely, with all necessary data protection safeguards in place. It is for this reason the Government have opted in to the EU-US agreement on the exchange of passenger name record data, notifying the President of the Council on 9 February 2012.

This agreement replaces the EU-US PNR agreement which has been applied provisionally from July 2007. The European Parliament postponed its vote on that agreement and asked the Commission to come forward with a single model for international agreements before it took a final vote. On 21 September 2010 the European Commission published a communication on the global approach to transfers of PNR data to third countries, together with a package of draft negotiating mandates for PNR agreements with Australia, Canada and the United States. In response to this, the Council presented a draft Council decision to authorise the Commission to open negotiations for PNR agreements with Australia, Canada and the US, together with draft negotiating guidelines (collectively referred to as the negotiating mandates). The UK opted in to these negotiating mandates in December 2010 and announced this decision to Parliament on 20 December 2010.

I listened very carefully to what hon. Members had to say during the scrutiny process and am pleased that the Committee agreed with the Government’s recommendation to participate in this agreement.

The agreement:

Restricts the purposes for which data can be processed to the prevention of and combating of terrorist offences and serious trans-national crime;

Makes express provision for data security;

Requires data to be masked after six months and transferred to a dormant database after five years. Data may be retained in the dormant database for a period of up to 10 years, during which additional controls will apply (including a more restricted number of personnel authorised to access it as well as a higher level of supervisory approval required).

Provides that masked data can only be re-personalised in connection with an identifiable case, threat or risk. After five years in the dormant database (10 years in total) data can only be re-personalised for the purpose of preventing and combating terrorist offences;

Provides that sensitive personal data must be filtered out and may only be accessed in exceptional circumstances where the life of an individual may be imperilled or seriously impaired;

Provides for independent review and oversight by departmental privacy officers with a proven record of autonomy, such as the Department of Homeland Security’s Chief Privacy Officer;

Sets out rights of access, rectification and erasure and redress;

Regulates the transfer of PNR data to other US Government authorities;

Only permits onward data transmission to a third country on a case-by-case basis and for the purposes outlined above.

The Council decisions to sign and conclude the agreement were deposited on 28 November 2011. These can be found at the following links:

Council Decision to Sign:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do? uri=COM:2011:0807:FIN:EN:PDF.

Council Decision to Conclude:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do? uri=COM:2011:0805:FIN:EN:PDF.

Northern Ireland Security Situation

Monday 27th February 2012 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr Owen Paterson)]

In July 2011, when I laid the final report of the IMC before the House, I made a commitment to provide twice yearly updates summarising the threat. This statement is the first such update and represents our assessment of the current position.

During the past six months all the dissident republican groups have remained active in Northern Ireland, and the threat level in Northern Ireland remains at severe meaning an attack is highly likely.

The threat level in Great Britain is substantial, meaning that an attack is a strong possibility.

There have been 13 attacks against national security targets in Northern Ireland since 1 August 2011. These have included attacks on police officers as well as small bombs deployed against a bank in Newry and the city of culture offices in Londonderry. The most recent attacks have included the attempted murder of a soldier on 5 January 2012, a pipe bomb recovered at the scene of a fire in West Belfast on 17 January 2012 and two pipe bombs set off in Londonderry on 19 January 2012.

Many other potential attacks have been prevented by the actions of security and law enforcement agencies on both sides of the border.

While there were fewer attacks in 2011 than in 2010, the intent and capability of dissident republican terrorists remains high. At present, the threat appears to have stabilised as a result of the activities of security and law enforcement agencies. However, there remains a high level of underlying terrorist activity and planning.

The most active groups at present are:

The Real IRA (RIRA);

The Continuity IRA (CIRA);

Óglaigh na hÉireann (ONH).

In addition, there are a number of unaffiliated terrorists who are also active. All of these groups are dangerous and pose a real threat—primarily to police officers but also, through their actions, to the wider public.

The UDA and UVF leaderships remain committed to their ceasefires, although there has been unsanctioned violent activity by members of both groups.

Both loyalist and republican groups continue to be involved in a wide range of acts of criminality. Both also continue to carry out paramilitary style assaults and shootings.

I am grateful to the Police Service of Northern Ireland, An Garda Síochána and the Security Service for their tireless efforts to address the real and severe threat posed by terrorists in Northern Ireland.

I am confident that the national security arrangements are operating in line with the principles set out in annex E to the St Andrew’s Agreement. As I informed the House on 19 December 2011, Official Report, column l45WS, Lord Carlile’s recent report on the operation of arrangements for handling national security matters in Northern Ireland expressed satisfaction that there are no difficulties of any significance in the inter-operability between the PSNI and the Security Service. He concluded that their sound working partnership should be commended. Lord Carlile said that he believed that, compared with 2010, 2011 saw more success in containing and stabilising the threat and noted that there were fewer incidents and fewer major attacks.

As this House is well aware, tackling terrorism in all its forms and within the rule of law remains the highest priority for this Government. We will continue to work as closely as possible with our strategic partners in the PSNI, Northern Ireland Executive and the Irish Government to counter this threat.

Government Car and Despatch Agency

Monday 27th February 2012 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mike Penning)]

On 16 January 2012, I announced the significant operating cost reductions we have made in running the Government Car and Despatch Agency (GCDA) since May 2010. The previous Government had ministerial cars for most Ministers, costing £6.8 million in 09-10. We are now spending just £3.8 million or 55% percent of that, and the number of Ministers requiring cars has reduced by around half

Today, I am announcing our plans for the coming year in which we expect to deliver further operating cost savings of around one third. This is part of our ongoing commitment to driving efficiency and improving value for money and transparency for taxpayers. It will also allow us to start to reduce the overhead costs associated with the service.

To reflect the Government’s approach to providing vehicles for Ministers’ official travel while maintaining adequate levels of security, I am taking this opportunity to identify a better taxpayer value service, reduce the vehicle fleet and maximise driver and vehicle utilisation. This approach will enable us to reshape the agency and its estate to deliver a leaner and substantially smaller organisation.

We are working closely with Departments to deliver the main elements of this efficiency and reform programme which are:

the phased closure of the Government mail despatch service by the end of the year. I expect current users to make alternative, cost-effective arrangements with their existing service providers or to utilise existing Government frameworks to secure new services from the private sector;

a 50% reduction in the GCDA fleet with a new approach that gives greater control over management of the resource to Departments;

a review of estate options;

a review of the GCDA’s agency status and whether, in the light of the much smaller scale of the operation, that continues to offer the best value for money.

The GCDA is working with Departments to help manage the transition to new arrangements. Subject to those discussions, I expect the changes to the car service to be fully operational by April this year and the transition to new mail arrangements to be completed by the end of the year.