House of Commons

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Commons Chamber

Tuesday 13 March 2012

The House met at half-past Two o’clock

Prayers

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Business Before Questions

Transport for London (Supplemental Toll Provisions) Bill [Lords] (By Order)

Second Reading opposed and deferred until Tuesday 20 March (Standing Order No. 20).

Oral Answers to Questions

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

1. What plans he has to promote work in prisons.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

4. What plans he has to promote work in prisons.

[Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)]

6. What plans he has to promote work in prisons.

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

9. What plans he has to promote work in prisons.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

16. What plans he has to promote work in prisons.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

We have ambitions to deliver a step change in the amount of work done in prisons. By making use of the lessons learned from the prisons that are already delivering full working weeks, we will work with the public and private sectors—including commercial customers and partners—and through the prison competition system to make our ambitions real.

[Matthew Hancock]

The Secretary of State will know of the great work being done in Her Majesty’s prison Highpoint, in my constituency, which is one of our biggest category C prisons. Enabling third sector, private and other providers to work with prisoners before they are released has improved their chances of finding accommodation and work on release. What further action is the Secretary of State taking to ensure that that is replicated throughout the country?

[Mr Clarke]

As I have said, we are building on the great work that is already being done, not least in my hon. Friend’s constituency. The purpose of prisons, it seems to me, is first to punish for crime, and secondly to reform as many criminals as possible. The second aim has been neglected in recent years, but the kind of work that my hon. Friend describes ought to be replicated as much as possible throughout the system, and that is the end towards which we are working.

[Richard Graham]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s comments. He knows about the existing business in Her Majesty’s prison Gloucester, where prisoners repair bicycles which a charity then sends to Africa. It is a not-for-profit business. How does my right hon. and learned Friend think we could ensure that if the business were profitable it would not undercut businesses outside the prison, bearing in mind that paying the minimum wage might set a precedent in regard to other rights for prisoners?

[Mr Clarke]

One of the things about which we try to be scrupulous is ensuring that work in prisons does not undercut the work done by businesses employing honest employees outside. We would not be able to persuade organisations such as the CBI and our private sector partners to work with us if they thought that we were undercutting British competitors. We will not pay the minimum wage, because the taxpayer would find that he or she was footing the bill for it all. However, the costs of running a business in prison are considerable because of the security that is imposed. We intend to ensure, by means of a code of practice, that fair and proper competition is maintained and that we do not undercut ordinary honest businesses.

[Esther McVey]

Given that, at present, 47% of offenders are receiving out-of-work benefits two years after their release from prison, I fully support what the Secretary of State is doing. What plans has he to ensure that there is a smooth transition from work preparation in prison to actual work outside prison?

[Mr Clarke]

Along with the Department for Work and Pensions, we have just embarked on a system whereby people who are released from prison go straight on to the Work programme. Their receipt of benefits is tied to a programme aimed at getting them back to work if that is at all possible, as it would be for anyone else. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend: all the evidence shows that having a job is one of the main factors that determine whether someone stops returning to crime, and it also stops the taxpayer having to pay benefits to such a high proportion of ex-prisoners.

[Mr Evennett]

If my constituents are to have faith in work in prisons, it is vital that inmates not only learn to work, but learn to become used to the routine of work. How much time per week does my right hon. and learned Friend expect to be assigned to prisoners for work?

[Mr Clarke]

Just the routine of working is very important. I believe that 13% of prisoners have never had a paid job in their lives, and about half have not been in a paid job in the last month before they arrive in prison. We aim to have a 40-hour week whenever possible, consistent with the other demands of the prison regime. Apart from skills and training, just getting people used to the daily routine of a working day is good preparation for an honest life in the outside world.

[Fiona Bruce]

Many people hope that inmates will take advantage of work in prison so that they can pay something back to society and victims. What levels of compulsion will the work schemes involve, and what will happen if some prisoners choose to refuse to work?

[Mr Clarke]

Although some very good work is being done in prisons at the moment, and although there always have been one or two prisons in which a fair amount is happening, we will not be able to provide work for all prisoners for quite a long time. Our aim is to get a much higher proportion into work, and for that reason employees in prison will be volunteers. That is welcomed by private sector partners who like to have a say in their work force, and who want a properly motivated work force consisting of people who are trying to get themselves into a better state to go straight when they leave.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

The Lord Chancellor will know that 51% of those who enter the prison system have a drug dependency. What programmes to assist them will he have in place to enable them to undertake this work?

[Mr Clarke]

Actually, an even higher proportion than that have abused drugs in the month or two before they arrive in prison. We are currently opening the first drug rehabilitation wings in prisons, and we hope to have drug-free wings, too. We are upping the effort to deal with the drugs problem, which is a very large cause of the criminality of many of the people in our prisons. Obviously, it should be given a much higher priority than it has sometimes had in the past.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

How many companies on the outside does the Secretary of State expect to be linked to prisons in the next 12 months, so that those companies, such as Timpson and some utilities companies, that already have workshops and bases in prisons can help people through the door and into jobs on the outside?

[Mr Clarke]

There is growing interest, and I join the right hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to those companies, such as Timpson and one or two utilities companies, which have been pioneering this initiative for quite a long time. Shortly before Christmas, a letter was sent to the newspapers that was signed by companies including National Grid, Cisco and Marks & Spencer, and the CBI helped organise a day for us with outside companies. We have not put a target on the number of companies we want to be involved, but many companies want to demonstrate their corporate social responsibility by taking part in this programme, and some will find that it is a very useful way of recruiting and training staff for their businesses.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will know that many inmates have mental health problems, including schizophrenia, which can make work in prison and, importantly, the transition out difficult, especially if they do not have anyone to monitor whether they are taking their medicine at the appropriate time. What steps is the Department taking, alongside the Department of Health, to ensure that appropriate medicines, including longer-lasting medicines such as injections that last a month, are part of the process, thereby helping people to have a smooth transition phase?

[Mr Clarke]

The hon. Lady has listed almost all the measures to which we are giving the highest priority in trying to make prisons reforming institutions. We have addressed work and drugs. Alcohol has not yet arisen, but mental illness is also a very serious issue. We are well advanced, in co-operation with the Department of Health, in making plans for diversion services for those who ought to be diverted out of the criminal justice system and given secure treatment for mental illness elsewhere. Through the Department of Health, we are also greatly improving the treatment facilities for those who have to stay in prison. Mental health must be tackled, especially if it is the real root of the criminality of someone in prison—and, indeed, some such prisoners should not be in prison at all.

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

Does the Secretary of State have any plans to adopt the Policy Exchange report recommendation that prisoners should be paid, but in turn should use their wages to pay for perks such as televisions, Freeview boxes and gym equipment, just as the rest of us in the outside world have to do?

[Mr Clarke]

Prisoners pay for some of those things already, although the innovation we are putting in place is to make provision from the earnings of prisoners for payment to victim services and to dependants outside. I agree that we are not just giving prisoners pocket money. We are giving them money from which they should, perfectly properly, make payment for those things for which they ought to be paying, including some reparation to their victims.

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

We have only to look at the Order Paper to see how keen the Secretary of State is to talk about work in prison. It is a shame that the Government are not more interested in the benefits of paid work for those who have not committed a crime.

There are merely two paragraphs on women offenders in his “Making prisons work” report, and there is no detail whatever on how his initiative will make a difference to them. Is it not true that this Government are showing no leadership on women in the justice system, and that there is a very real danger that all progress will be lost?

[Mr Clarke]

It is my Parliamentary Private Secretary’s enthusiasm for the policy of work in prisons that is exemplified, in part, by the Order Paper, together with the enthusiasm of all my hon. Friends who have asked questions on this extremely valuable policy, which is an innovation compared with the neglect of this subject by the previous Government.

We are giving a high priority to the needs of women in prison, and we will continue to address the matter. The previous Government were doing quite good work on women in prison, and we have not reversed anything; indeed, we are building on the Corston report. On work in prisons, we certainly intend that female prisoners should have the same opportunities of work and training as men, and we are thinking of what special arrangements we should make to ensure that such facilities are available and suitable for female prisoners.

[Mr Speaker]

We are immensely grateful to the Secretary of State. I call Priti Patel.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

2. What plans he has to improve support services for victims of crime.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

13. What steps he is taking to promote and protect the rights of victims in the justice system.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

15. What recent progress he has made on his proposed changes to support for victims of crime; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

On 30 January, in a statement to the House, the Justice Secretary launched a three-month consultation, “Getting it right for victims and witnesses”, on our far-reaching proposals to improve the support provided to victims and witnesses of crime.

In addition, as was enthusiastically pre-announced by my hon. Friend the Minister for Equalities when responding to the debate on international women’s day, I can now formally announce the next five new rape support centres to be developed by the Ministry of Justice and the voluntary sector. Over the next 12 months, the MOJ will provide nearly £600,000 in funding to develop new centres in mid-Wales, Northumbria, Leeds, Southend and Suffolk.

[Priti Patel]

I thank my hon. Friend for that reply and I welcome the focus that the Government are putting on victims. Will he join me in paying tribute to the excellent charities that help victims of crime and their families, including Victim Support, the National Victims Association and Support After Murder and Manslaughter Abroad? Importantly, will he ensure that their representations on the victims strategy will be fully considered by his Department?

[Mr Blunt]

Yes.

[Bill Esterson]

Government cuts have hit women and children harder than any other group. Fiona Weir, the chief executive of Gingerbread, has warned the Government that, as a result of their changes to legal aid:

“The majority of domestic violence victims will not be able to provide the evidence required to access legal aid.”

Will the Minister ensure that cuts to legal aid are not another cut that hurts vulnerable children and women more than other groups?

[Mr Blunt]

Far be it for me to suggest that the hon. Gentleman might be leading the House in the wrong direction, but all victims of domestic violence will remain entitled to legal aid in respect of the domestic violence.

[Helen Jones]

Does the Minister accept that moving from a national system of provision for victims to one of local commissioning, as he is suggesting, will have a particular effect on vulnerable victims of crime, who often have to move home? What does he intend to do to protect them in the new system he is introducing?

[Mr Blunt]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question, because she raises an issue of considerable importance to Victim Support, the principal organisation providing victims services at the moment. Of course it is the Government’s view that these services would be better commissioned locally by the new police and crime commissioners. We are consulting on our proposals, and I will take her views into account as we consider the responses to that consultation.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

May we have a positive drive from the Ministry of Justice to ensure that, for as many victims as possible, both victim impact statements are completed and compensation orders are lodged with the court, so that victims can get the redress due to them?

[Mr Blunt]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. He will know that we have strengthened the duty on those sentencing to consider a compensation order as the first point of departure when they come to sentence people. I have now forgotten the first point—

[Mr Hollobone]

Victim impact statements.

[Mr Blunt]

We want victims’ personal statements to be living documents that will play a full role, particularly in advising the courts on the sentence following the consequences of the crime.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

Once police commissioners are in place, we could have 41 different standards of victim support across the country. The service that someone living, working and travelling across the midlands receives could depend on one of four or more areas, depending on where the crime is committed. Given the real concerns being raised by victims groups about the potential mess that could arise as a result of the Justice Secretary’s policies, will there be an individual—[Interruption.] Perhaps the Minister would care to listen to the question before deciding to heckle from the Front Bench. Given the real concerns being raised by victims groups about the potential mess, which he should be aware of, will an individual or an organisation be charged with enforcing a minimum standard that victims of crime can expect, regardless of geography—a newly appointed victims commissioner perhaps?

[Mr Blunt]

The hon. Gentleman has pointed out the problems that can come with enfranchising people at a local level, but the Government believe in localism and it is our view that police and crime commissioners will have the best appreciation of the victim services that are required in their local area. We look forward to the hon. Gentleman’s contribution to the consultation to see precisely what his view is. We have noticed that he is against a localist approach, but this Government are not.

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

3. What his proposed timetable is for legislation to allow broadcasting of selected court proceedings.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)]

We are planning to legislate as soon as parliamentary time allows to permit broadcasting of selected court proceedings as part of our commitment to increasing transparency in public services. Initially, we will allow broadcasting of judgments in the Court of Appeal, and we expect to extend this to sentencing remarks in the Crown court in due course.

[Mr Buckland]

I thank the Minister for that answer. Will he confirm that information will be the watchword, not sensationalism, and that any conditions imposed will have that very much in mind?

[Mr Djanogly]

Yes, I can assure my hon. Friend that we will not allow our courts to become places of public theatre. Victims, witnesses, defendants and jurors will not be filmed.

[Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)]

The Minister just said something very important when he said that witnesses will not be filmed. Will he repeat that guarantee, because a court appearance is a very traumatic process for a witness or victim? We need a red line that cannot be crossed not only by current Ministers but by Ministers in the future, so that witnesses are protected.

[Mr Djanogly]

As I said, that is our position. We will be consulting—and are—with a wide range of stakeholders, including broadcasters, victims groups and others, to ensure that appropriate operational arrangements and safeguards are in place.

[Mike Weatherley (Hove) (Con)]

5. How many prosecutions have been brought in respect of illegal encampments involving vehicles on public parks in the last 12 months.

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)]

In 2010, there were 38 prosecutions for offences under sections 61, 62B and 77 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. Figures for 2011 are not yet available and the data do not show what proportion of these prosecutions related to unauthorised encampments in public parks or whether vehicles were involved in each case.

[Mike Weatherley]

Will the Minister consider a review of the powers of local authorities to prosecute trespassers effectively and/or to charge occupants fees so that there is an effective deterrent against uninvited encampments and so that some of the costs associated with unwelcome activity can be recouped?

[Nick Herbert]

I appreciate my hon. Friend’s concern, which is widely shared, about illegal encampments, whether they are on private land, thereby attempting to subvert the public planning process, or ruining people’s enjoyment of public parks. A range of powers are available to the police and agencies, and we are strengthening them through the latest legislation, the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011, to allow local authorities to attach the power of seizure to their byelaws. We want to ensure that the new powers are used effectively.

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

7. What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on the effect of his proposed changes to legal aid on the number of cases concerning benefits requiring early stage legal advice.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)]

No such discussions have been held, as the withdrawal of legal aid would have no impact on the number of cases concerning benefits requiring early stage legal advice. The need for advice will be determined by decision making at the Department for Work and Pensions, not the availability or otherwise of legal aid. Of course, I recognise that many people find that the type of general advice concerned is useful in resolving their problems, which is why the Government have announced additional funding for the not-for-profit sector.

[Jessica Morden]

Two people a day will become homeless over the next few months according to Shelter. Does it not now make sense to invest more in homeless advice, not less?

[Mr Djanogly]

As I said, there is a difference between legal advice and general advice. We are investing in general advice.

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

Charnwood citizens advice bureau works very closely with my office in Loughborough on benefits matters. Will the Minister, when he has such discussions, tell the Department for Work and Pensions that it needs to simplify the benefits system as that would be of great assistance in helping to keep some cases away from the legal system and administrative tribunals in the first place?

[Mr Djanogly]

I agree with my hon. Friend and can confirm that we are working very closely with the Department for Work and Pensions as part of its wider welfare reform programme to improve the quality and effectiveness of initial decision taking.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

Lord Newton of Braintree, who was the Secretary of State for Social Security in a Conservative Government in the 1980s and early 1990s—in the days when the Conservative party won elections in its own right—said last week that 81% of all cases heard in the first-tier tribunals relating to benefits are to do with disability benefits. In 2009-10 an appellant at the first-tier tribunal who received advice before going to the tribunal was 78% more likely to win their appeal than an unadvised appellant. The advice that citizens advice bureaux, law centres and advice agencies give to their clients is very important. These are not fat-cat lawyers or litigious clients. Will the Government now accept the votes passed in the House of Lords over the past week, which will not only save taxpayers’ money in the medium to long term but will also avoid unnecessary misery and suffering for some of the most vulnerable in our society?

[Mr Djanogly]

I have to say that the Government are disappointed by the position taken in the Lords and we will return to the issue when the Bill comes back to the Commons. We remain of the view that these cases are primarily about financial entitlement and as such do not raise the fundamental issues involved in cases concerning liberty or safety. I can say to the right hon. Gentleman that the user-friendly nature of the tribunal means that appellants can generally present their case without legal assistance.

[Sadiq Khan]

If that is the case, why is the success rate 78% higher for those who do receive advice before they go to appeal? We have said from the outset that we agree that savings need to be made to the legal aid budget. If we were in government, we would be making cuts as well, but our values and connections with ordinary people mean that our priorities would be very different. Figures from the Ministry of Justice say that by the end of this Parliament, criminal legal aid provided largely by well-paid QCs, barristers and solicitors will be cut by 6%, whereas family legal aid will be cut by 29%, but social welfare legal aid, which is delivered by CABs, law centres and small voluntary organisations, at which some of the lowest-paid advisers and lawyers work, will be cut by 53%.

[Mr Speaker]

The question mark is about to come upon us, is it not?

[Sadiq Khan]

Will the Minister explain why the cuts are being made to the most vulnerable instead of to areas where cuts can be made more fairly?

[Mr Djanogly]

We simply are not doing what the right hon. Gentleman suggests. Social welfare law will still receive £50 million in legal aid and we are redirecting the money we spend on legal aid towards helping the most vulnerable. When it comes to advice on benefits, people do not currently receive legal aid for representation. Before people go to appeal they will still be able to receive advice for many such cases from a general advice practitioner such as their local CAB.

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

8. What discussions he has had with the Lord Chief Justice on the potential effect of his planned changes to legal aid on the number of litigants in person.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

10. What discussions he has had with the Lord Chief Justice on the potential effect of his planned changes to legal aid on the number of litigants in person.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

Substantial numbers of cases already involve litigants in person, so the courts already deal with this situation. The Government recognise that the changes to legal aid are likely to increase the number of litigants in person. The evidence appears to show that some cases featuring litigants in person are resolved more quickly, whereas some cases take longer.

[Mr Watts]

I thank the Secretary of State for his answer, but does he agree with the Lord Chief Justice that the Government’s Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill will have a negative effect on the justice system—yes or no?

[Mr Clarke]

Well, we have just discovered that the Labour party’s policy is to make substantial cuts in criminal legal aid. If the Government had made that proposal, that would no doubt have led to amazing attacks on our disregard for the principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty and to comments about the high risk of injustice in criminal trials. On the savings we are making in the cases to which the hon. Gentleman refers, the fact is that courts already deal with litigants in person. Any judge or tribunal knows that they have to pay particular attention to make sure that people are not disadvantaged by not having legal representation, but as the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), has just explained, we have tried to identify cases in which the informality of the tribunals means that applicants should not be at any particular disadvantage if they do not have a lawyer there in any event.

[Heidi Alexander]

What assessment has the Secretary of State made of the additional cost that will be incurred by the legal system overall as a result of the increased numbers of litigants in person?

[Mr Clarke]

We are not persuaded that that will give rise to any increase in costs. Everybody accepts that cuts need to be made to legal aid. It is just that the Labour party is against every single cut that we suggest in particular. This cut is perfectly straightforward and will not give rise to the difficulties that the hon. Lady points out—[Interruption.] I can only say to the Opposition spokesman that he is obviously so discommoded by realising that he nearly gave out a policy on the subject a moment ago that he is getting rather carried away. We have carefully selected cuts in legal aid concerning less serious cases where cuts can be made without any risk to justice whatever.

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

The president of the family division gave evidence to the Justice Committee and said that he did not think that when a parent was disappointed not to have got legal aid for a contact or residence case, the parent should just say, “Well, never mind. Let’s forget about the child. I’m not going forward.” That person will go to court alone, taking twice as much time as a person represented. That will waste the judge’s and everybody else’s time, it will be hurtful for all concerned and it will damage the children as well.

[Mr Clarke]

In family justice we are placing much more emphasis on mediation, which should be much more comfortable for all the clients and will lead to a much easier and less traumatic resolution of many disputes. We are putting more money into mediation and more money into training for mediation. We should remember that the purpose of this public service is to resolve disputes with the minimum of cost and time and to take all the emotion out, so far as is possible, of these difficult family cases. Access to justice is access to the most civilised way of resolving disputes. Access to justice does not depend only on how many lawyers the taxpayer pays for to go into adversarial litigation on every such issue.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

11. What recent representations he has received on the treatment of victims of domestic violence in the criminal justice system.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

Improving the treatment of victims of domestic violence is a high priority for the Government, and I encourage organisations providing support to victims of domestic violence to give us their views in response to our consultation document, “Getting it right for victims and witnesses.”

[Mr Cunningham]

Does the Minister agree that victims of domestic violence need safe refuge, an effective non-privatised police response and access to free legal aid advice? Are not his Government failing on all three?

[Mr Blunt]

No, they are not. Victims of domestic violence will continue to receive civil legal aid in order to apply for protective injunctions, and we will continue to waive the financial eligibility limits in those cases.

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

12. How many people in the London borough of Havering have been convicted of offences in connection with the public disorder in August 2011.

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)]

Data available on 1 February show that six people from Havering were convicted for their part in the public disorder of 6 to 9 August last year.

[Andrew Rosindell]

As the Minister knows, many of our courts worked extra long hours last August to ensure that many of those who engaged in the riots were dealt with very quickly. What lessons have the Government learned from that to ensure that our courts are more efficient in future?

[Nick Herbert]

We certainly were impressed by the speed with which the criminal justice system responded to the disorder, and we are grateful for the efforts of those working in it. Cases were dealt with in a matter of hours and days, rather than the routine, which can be weeks and months. We seek to learn the lessons from that and we will shortly come forward with proposals for how we can ensure that we have a justice system that is swifter and more sure.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

14. What recent assessment he has made of the potential effect of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill on victims of domestic violence.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)]

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill is designed to protect victims of domestic violence. It protects funding for advice and representation in private family matters for victims of domestic violence, as well as public funding in respect of protection orders for victims of domestic violence. We will also continue to waive financial eligibility limits in these cases.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I thank the Minister for that response, but he will be aware that when the matter was debated in another place, serious concerns were raised that genuine victims of domestic violence would not receive the legal aid support and ability to take action that they need, because of the legislation that the Government are bringing through. Organisations such as Refuge have expressed similar concerns. Will the Minister assure us that all victims of domestic violence will receive the help and support they need?

[Mr Djanogly]

Again, the Government were disappointed by the position taken by the Lords and will return to the matter when the Bill comes back to the Commons. We are very concerned about the victims of domestic violence. Indeed, it was because we are removing legal aid for private family law that we realised there will be certain categories, such as domestic violence, that will not be suitable for mediation, which is why we are concentrating on that area.

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

It is widely recognised that specialist domestic violence courts have been very successful, but 23 of them are due to close. Will the Minister assure me that the expertise and multi-agency working that have been a feature of their success will continue in this changed landscape?

[Mr Djanogly]

It is important to point out that those specialist domestic violence courts are closing not because of what they do, but because the courts in which they are based are closing. I am pleased to say that those specialist courts will be moving to other courts, so no specialist domestic violence courts will be lost.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

17. What recent progress he has made on his plans to reform libel laws; and if he will make a statement.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

The Government’s response to the report of the Joint Committee on the draft Defamation Bill was published on 29 February. It set out the Government’s position on all the key issues. A substantive defamation Bill will be introduced as soon as parliamentary time allows.

[Dr Huppert]

I thank the Secretary of State for that answer and hope that there will be time for the Bill in the Queen’s Speech. The Joint Committee recommended that qualified privilege should be extended to

“peer-reviewed articles in scientific or academic journals.”

Does he agree that it is in the public interest that scientists and other academics should be able to publish bona fide research results without fear and that, unless their publication is maliciously false, they should be protected from defamation actions?

[Mr Clarke]

One of the main reasons for publishing the draft Bill and looking at the law in that area was the fear that genuine academic and scientific debate was being stifled by the use of the defamation laws. We propose that peer-reviewed research should be protected and are now considering the draft of the final Bill in the light of the Joint Committee’s report. I will not anticipate the Queen’s Speech, but if we can include a defamation Bill, one of its principal objectives will be to deal with the very serious problem that the hon. Gentleman has identified.

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

18. What his policy is on reform of the European Court of Human Rights; and if he will make a statement.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

When the Prime Minister addressed the Council of Europe in January, he set out our priorities for reform and how we intend to achieve them. We want reform to allow the Court better to fulfil the purpose for which it was intended: upholding human rights under the European convention on human rights and tackling serious violations of human rights across Europe.

[Simon Hughes]

I declare an interest, as I used to work for the Council of Europe and trained there. The coalition Government are absolutely right to prioritise reform of the Court’s procedures, because the backlog of cases and the skills of the Court need to be dealt with, but does the Secretary of State agree that we must continue to say that it is vital for this country, and all European countries, that we have a strong Court which can ensure that the rights of all European citizens are upheld, and upheld outside their own countries as well as within?

[Mr Clarke]

The convention applies, and the jurisdiction of the Court extends, to 47 member states, where we want to entrench the principles of liberal democracy, and it is in all our interests that we do so. The aim of our proposed reforms is to strengthen the Court and enable it to concentrate on the most serious cases requiring adjudication at international level. At the moment the Court is not functioning well because it has 150,000 cases in arrears, it take years to get a hearing and it has to deal with cases that are trivial, repetitive or have been properly dealt with at national level.

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

I seem to remember promising the electorate that we would bring in a Bill of Rights that would enable us to disregard some of the more barmy decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. Would the Secretary of State like to update us on our progress towards fulfilling that important commitment?

[Mr Clarke]

Different Conservative candidates put forward the campaign in different terms at the last election, and not for the first time, as you will know from your experience, Mr Speaker, and as I do from mine. As usual, I am sticking firmly to the policy of the Government of whom I am a serving member. The reasons we are reforming the Court were set out clearly in the terms of reference of the commission looking at the matter and in the Prime Minister’s speech to the Council of Europe, which I think coincide with my own views.

[Mr Speaker]

We are grateful to the Secretary of State, as always, for telling us what he really thinks.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

19. What his policy is on prisons being run by a charity; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

Charities can apply to qualify as tenders in prisons competitions, but it is unlikely that they will have the financial strength to take the legal and commercial risks of running a prison. None is on our current list of framework providers.

We are actively encouraging the participation of subcontractors, small and medium-size enterprises and voluntary and community sector organisations within the supply chain of custodial services. Fifteen such organisations attended the launch of the current round of prisons competitions.

[Guy Opperman]

I thank the Minister for his answer. Clearly, there are very good examples of charities working within prisons, and I urge him to work with some of them to see whether it is possible for them to take over a community-run prison that provides a local setting and a local response to offenders’ needs.

[Mr Blunt]

I am obviously delighted to recognise the valuable work of charities and of the voluntary sector in supporting the rehabilitation of offenders. It is the area of our society in which, if we can engage the voluntary sector in such work, we will find that there is significant extra capacity for people who want to do the right thing to help some of the most damaged and damaging people in society to go straight. We have to ensure that those links work and that people can do the work. As I have said, there will be concerns about whether a charity has the financial resources to underwrite the running of a prison, given the commercial and other risks concerned, but I welcome the general tenor of my hon. Friend’s remarks.

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

20. What his policy is on the use of community service sentences; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)]

It is for the court to determine whether an offence is serious enough to warrant the imposition of a community sentence. When a community sentence is imposed, we want to ensure that it is effective in stopping offending behaviour escalating to the point at which prison becomes the only option.

[Diana Johnson]

Hull Crown court recently found Lee Bates guilty of illegal moneylending, or loan sharking as most people call it. At least 17 victims and their families suffered from his exploitation, and he got 180 hours’ community service for pleading guilty, but surely such criminals should go to prison, should they not?

[Nick Herbert]

I cannot comment on that particular case, but in general we certainly believe that serious offenders—those offenders who have committed repeat offences—should be sent to prison, and that option remains for the courts. We believe also, however, that community sentences, when they are imposed, should be more rigorous and have a more punitive element, so that we can stop the escalation of offending which results in a custodial sentence. It is that escalation that we seek to avoid.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

21. What assessment he has made of the deterrent effect of sentencing on the incidence of metal theft.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

We have not concluded a specific study on the deterrent effect of sentencing on the incidence of metal theft, but on Report in the other place we will table amendments to the Legal Aid, Punishment and Sentencing of Offenders Bill which would see unlimited fines for the more serious metal-dealing offences and raise the maximum penalty for more minor offences from level 1 to level 3. We also propose to prohibit cash payments for scrap metal.

[Mr Spencer]

I hope that the Minister is aware of the intensive campaign being run by Nottinghamshire trading standards and Nottinghamshire police to clamp down on metal theft, but can he reassure the House that he will take steps to ensure that the sentencing of those who deal in stolen metal is severe enough to put them off and reduce the market?

[Mr Blunt]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the advice on Nottinghamshire. I confess that I was not aware of that work, although I am aware of very good practice in the north-east, for example, and elsewhere in the country. But, of course, we do not propose those changes to the sentencing regime for that offence except to send a very clear message that it is an offence that can do very serious damage indeed.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

22. What discussions he has had with the Lord Chief Justice on the potential effect of his planned changes to legal aid on the number of litigants in person.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

I thought that I had already answered this question, which was grouped with Question 10. I said that a substantial number of cases already—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I just very gently say to the Secretary of State that he might have intended to group it but that, I am afraid, he neglected to do so? I know that the House will, however, enjoy hearing once again his mellifluous tones.

[Mr Clarke]

The courts already deal with litigants in person, and they are very used to dealing with that situation. We accept that the legal aid changes currently before the House of Lords will increase the number of litigants in person, but the evidence on the issue is very mixed, indicating that some cases are dealt with more quickly and others take longer. In fact, many such cases do not require legal representation at all.

[Mr Jones]

The Justice Secretary is clear that the number of litigants representing themselves will increase. In drawing up his cuts in legal aid, did his Department make any assessment of increased costs, given that the Lord Chief Justice is concerned that courts could be swamped and that the cost to the taxpayer could be higher as a result of those cuts?

[Mr Clarke]

We see no evidence at all that this would give rise to increased costs. It is extremely difficult to anticipate precisely the effect of there being more litigants in person because the evidence is so mixed. We are concentrating, particularly in the family division, on dealing with more cases by way of mediation. Adversarial litigation is not always the best way of resolving problems; there are many better alternative ways of resolving disputes in suitable cases. We are putting more money into mediation and less into taxpayers paying for lawyers.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

While I would like to argue that my right hon. and learned Friend owes a duty of care to our joint profession, does not experience tell us that people are not necessarily happiest when in the hands of lawyers?

[Mr Clarke]

I am sure that they are very happy when being advised by my hon. Friend or by me, but I have encountered examples of dissatisfaction in other cases. Most people dread a dispute in which they are involved having to go to court through the full legal process. Most disputes are settled by negotiation, but if the parties cannot do that, mediation is a very good way of resolving them, particularly in emotional family disputes. The whole justice system should be seen as a public service. We are seeking to resolve disputes in the quickest possible way at the least possible cost to the parties involved. It is too often thought that access to justice means that the taxpayer has to keep paying for more and more lawyers to take part in longer and longer litigation. That is not always the best way of resolving many things.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

23. When he plans to bring forward legislative proposals to allow television recording and broadcasting of court proceedings.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)]

As soon as parliamentary time allows, the Government plan to legislate to remove the ban on cameras in courts. We are working closely with the Lord Chief Justice, the judiciary and the broadcasters on achieving this.

[Henry Smith]

I very much support the broadcasting of court proceedings because of the transparency that it will bring, but will my hon. Friend confirm whether a fee will be charged to broadcasters for the use of the material so that the cost does not fall on to the taxpayer?

[Mr Djanogly]

I can assure my hon. Friend that the negotiations that are being conducted with broadcasters are taking place on the basis that they will be paying for the service.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

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

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

Today is the fifth anniversary of the Corston report, which called for radical change in the way that women are treated throughout the criminal justice system. I am sure that the hon. Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman) will be pleased to hear me say that there have been real improvements in the five years since the report, including significant investment in women’s community centres to address the underlying causes of women’s offending, such as drug and alcohol addiction, mental health issues, and often long histories of abuse. We are fully committed to addressing women’s offending, for their own good and that of the public. The National Offender Management Service has committed to an additional £3.5 million each year to continue to fund 30 women’s community services. Women offenders will also be included in two payment-by-results pilot areas to link productive work to reducing reoffending.

[Mr Ellwood]

In these tough economic times, more people are borrowing money, getting into debt and, sadly, having to deal with the bailiffs, who are, on occasion, aggressive and intrusive. What is being done to ensure that creditors and debtors are aware of their rights and responsibilities?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)]

The Government are clear that aggressive bailiff activity is unacceptable, and we are committed to bringing forward effective proposals that protect the public and ensure that such action is proportionate. We have made a start by publishing our updated national standards for enforcement agents, and we have followed that up with a consultation paper issued on 17 February on a new, legally binding regulatory regime for bailiffs.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Before the contract with Applied Language Solutions for court interpreting started this year, the Minister was warned that it would fail by almost every qualified interpreter, by Labour Members, by Back Benchers of all parties in a debate here last November, by the Lord Chancellor’s own constituents at his surgery—so they tell me—and even by ALS itself. The contract has failed, so why did he decide to risk £300 million of public funds with an untried, small-time company?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

Even in the spendthrift days of the previous Administration, it was noticed that there was something wrong with the cost of interpreters in the justice system. The previous Administration began the process that led to the contract being awarded to ALS. It is not a small company, because it is now backed by Capita. There was a pilot over six to eight weeks in the north-west, which gave no indication of the problems. Within two weeks of the national roll-out, when the problems became clear, the Ministry of Justice procurement people were across the problems at ALS and measures were put in place to put right the problems. Some of the problems, strangely enough, came from the interpreters who, on finding that under the new payment regime they could no longer earn six-figure salaries, as they could under the previous Administration, did not co-operate. They are now doing so.

[Mr Slaughter]

In his staggering complacency, the Minister fails to grapple with the fact that every day, when ALS interpreters fail to show up, defendants are being remanded in custody or released with no consideration of the evidence, trials are collapsing or being postponed, and the potential for miscarriages of justice is huge, as is the loss of public money, which dwarfs the alleged savings. Will he suspend the contract and order an immediate investigation into how this disaster happened on his watch?

[Mr Blunt]

I would be slightly more inclined to take lessons from the hon. Gentleman if he was even vaguely on the money. Within two weeks of the contract going nationwide, the Ministry of Justice was right across the problems and put in place an action plan to address them. The idea that we are not interested in the matter, when we are making £18 million of savings in the provision of interpreters under a process that was commenced under the previous Administration and after interpreters had been grossly overpaid and had taken advantage of the system that was in place under that Administration, is beyond belief.

[Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

T5. The Secretary of State will be aware that the Prime Minister said on 25 January of the European Court of Human Rights that,“we are hoping to get consensus on strengthening subsidiarity—the principle that where possible, final decisions should be made nationally.”Does the Secretary of State agree with me that subsidiarity should start and end with votes for prisoners in this country?

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

The statement that my hon. Friend just read out is the basis on which we are negotiating with the other members of the Council of Europe on reform of the Court in Strasbourg, which everybody agrees needs reform urgently. The principle of subsidiarity is very important. We are not negotiating on existing judgments on any subject. Obviously, we are trying to comply with the obligations of the European convention on human rights in a more effective manner, which I think the courts in this country usually do in their judgments.

Prisoner voting is an entirely separate matter, which the House has already considered. The latest stage is that the Attorney-General has been making representations on behalf of the British Government in an Italian case on which we are awaiting a judgment. The issue is therefore still under legal review.

[Naomi Long (Belfast East) (Alliance)]

T2. Will the Justice Secretary say when decisions on the Green Paper on justice and security are likely to be taken? Will he confirm that the devolved Administrations will be fully consulted on those decisions, particularly in respect of aspects that will affect devolved functions?

[Mr Clarke]

We will come forward with a Bill as soon as parliamentary time arises. We will, of course, respond to the consultation before that. We are liaising and consulting closely with the devolved Administrations, because there will be implications for them. We will make progress in the fairly near future.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

T7. There are considerable concerns about the proposals for elements of court hearings to be heard in private. Will the Secretary of State reassure the House that one of the reasons for that solution is that it will safeguard national security by protecting information that comes from our foreign allies?

[Mr Clarke]

Yes, I can. The aim is to combine that purpose with getting a proper judicial decision on disputed cases, in which allegations or claims are made or in which matters have to be inquired into, that is better than the conclusions that we get currently. There is no system in the world in which spies give evidence in open court, naming their sources, describing their techniques and giving the full facts that the intelligence service has at its command to the public at large. At the moment, all that happens when such evidence is relevant is that it is not given and no satisfactory conclusion is ever reached. We have addressed that in the Green Paper that we have published.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I ask the Secretary of State to face the House.

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

T3. The Lord Chancellor will know that the ALS interpreters’ contractor has been an unmitigated disaster, and I can provide specific examples of cases in my constituency. If it is about saving money, will he tell us how many hearings have had to be adjourned or postponed due to the fiasco?

[Mr Blunt]

There will be a full presentation of all the statistics and evidence relevant to the matter. I assure the hon. Gentleman that matters are in hand and that ALS’s performance is improving significantly. Particular problems remain with two nationality groups of interpreters, who are causing difficulties, but plans are in hand for them, too. [Interruption.] I do not wish to name them at the moment. The matter was in hand within two weeks of the system’s going live. There are weekly reports to me and daily management oversight from the Ministry of Justice. The matter is improving.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

T8. Until now, prisoners who were on the run often managed to stay on the run because the authorities were unable to name them. That is an obvious barrier to their recapture, so will the Minister outline his plans for improving that state of affairs?

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)]

We were concerned that there was a belief that it was not possible to name offenders on the run for reasons of, for instance, data protection or human rights. When offenders are unlawfully at large, it must make sense for there to be a presumption that they can be named by the authorities. The Government will take steps to ensure that that is made clear and that there will be such naming unless there are specific operational reasons why that would not make sense.

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

T4. The Office for Judicial Complaints has been investigating the poor performance of the Teesside coroner since August but, seven months on, we still have no indication of when the investigation will conclude. Has the Minister set a finish date for the investigation? When will matters improve? Has he merely kicked the subject into the long grass?

[Mr Djanogly]

I can assure you, Mr Speaker, that we have not kicked the matter into the long grass. It is a judicial investigation and it must take its course.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

T10. Last year, the Government found it necessary to close several smaller courts because of low utilisation rates, particularly in rural areas such as Norfolk. Will the Minister update the House on the effect of those closures on court efficiency in the remaining courts?

[Mr Djanogly]

The efficiency of the courts is being improved because of the closures. We have now closed 130 of the 142 that were on the closure list. In all cases, the closures have gone very well and magistrates have all transferred to local, surrounding courts.

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

T6. It is clear that the ALS contract is a disaster, but I would like to question the Secretary of State and Ministers about the impact on the deaf community. The resulting poor employment conditions have forced British sign language interpreters into other work, contributing to a trend of recruiting BSL interpreters who may not be fully qualified, which may lead to a miscarriage of justice. What safeguards are in place to ensure that deaf people—a protected group with protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010—and their officially recognised language, BSL, are afforded proper regard, enabling them to have fair and proper access to justice?

[Mr Blunt]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right, and I undertake to look into any actions that are happening with regard to deaf people. However, there are not necessarily comparisons and precise parallels to be drawn between ordinary language interpreters and translators for the deaf. I will consider her points and come back to her.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

With a senior CIA official stating that there has been no drop in the intelligence exchange between the US and the UK, with the current inquest system providing greater certainty than the proposed alternative that families will find out why their loved ones died, and with closed material proceedings introducing, according to Lord Kerr, untested evidence into court, will the Secretary of State explain why we need the Green Paper on justice and security?

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

When we share intelligence with other friendly countries, we do so on the basis that we will not disclose that intelligence to the outside world. The moment doubt is aroused about whether or not intelligence remains secure once it is given to the British intelligence community, there is a damaging effect on the willingness of other intelligence communities to share information with us. I have no control over the American intelligence service or any other, and we have to respond to reality in this extremely difficult world. As I have already said, in the case of inquests or civil courts and sensitive material that cannot be given in public, the alternative is that the evidence is not given at all, and everybody remains dissatisfied by the outcome.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. It is always a pleasure to hear the Secretary of State, but on account of the level of demand, I am afraid that he has to be subject to rationing.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

T9. I am sure I will not be the only Member of the House to have been dismayed by the Secretary of State’s last answer. Yet again the Government seem to think they know better than the Royal British Legion and service personnel on this matter. Service families want justice done in the open for loved ones killed in action. Why will he not listen to their rejection of the secret inquests he has proposed in the justice and security Green Paper, or will he answer again that the Government know best?

[Mr Clarke]

I am sorry that the British Legion seems to be getting carried away with another campaign, this time based on “secret justice” conspiracy theories that are being put around. I am not normally attacked by people for, or accused of having, an ill-regard for the principles of justice or for my reactionary views on closing things off from the public. The fact is that military families, like everybody else, understand that military intelligence officers, for example, cannot always give full evidence in open hearing about all their activities. However, the particular difficulties of inquests and other hearings are addressed in the Green Paper on which we are now consulting. We must strike the right balance in the very rare cases in which intelligence that puts national security and individual safety at risk is involved. One part of that balance is the undoubted needs of open justice, which should be done wherever it is remotely possible.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

This splendid Secretary of State has always been open to novel ideas to solve important problems. Has he looked at my Bill that would allow us to withdraw temporarily from the European Court of Human Rights to deport terrorists? Does he think it might have some merit?

[Mr Clarke]

I am glad to know that my hon. Friend is, as ever, on the side of moderation—he suggests not necessarily leaving or remaining, but temporarily withdrawing, which is obviously in his opinion the middle path. I am awaiting the advice of the independent commission that we have appointed, which I have not interfered with at all, and which is seeking to get to some conclusions. I am also awaiting the results of negotiations with 47 other countries that are signatories to the European convention on human rights.

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

Does the Justice Secretary agree that, no matter how much sympathy we have for the personal suffering of our fellow men and women, only Parliament can change the law of murder and permit someone to take their own life by their own hand or to be assisted in doing so by doctors or others?

[Mr Clarke]

That is rather relevant to a case that is currently being heard and I do not think I can possibly comment on it. I await with interest the judgment, as the case has been allowed to be taken to the High Court of Justice.

Hostage Rescue Operation (Nigeria)

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Commons Chamber

15:33

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Hammond)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I wish to make a statement about the attempted rescue of Chris McManus and his colleague, the Italian national Franco Lamolinara, who were, very sadly, killed by their kidnappers during the operation on Thursday 8 March. I will give the House as much information as I can on the background, the events leading up to the rescue attempt and the operation itself. However, the House will understand that I will not be able to say anything that might compromise intelligence sources or jeopardise future operations. I should also inform the House that there will be a coroner’s inquest into the cause of death of Christopher McManus, and my statement today must not in any way prejudice the course of the coroner’s inquiries.

But first, Mr Speaker, I am sure the whole House would wish to join me in expressing utter condemnation of the murder of these two innocent people, and in offering my heartfelt condolences to the families of both Christopher McManus and Franco Lamolinara.

Chris McManus and his colleague were kidnapped by armed men from Birnin Kebbi, in north-west Nigeria, on the night of 12 May 2011. In the early days of the kidnap, it was not clear who had taken them or what their motives were, but as the days passed and no demands were received, and as the tempo of terrorist activity in Nigeria increased, we concluded that, unlike other kidnap cases in Nigeria, this was not a straightforward criminal kidnap, and that Chris and Franco had most probably been abducted by terrorist extremists linked to Boko Haram and calling themselves AQ in Nigeria.

Boko Haram was founded in the early 2000s. From 2010, the group launched an increasingly aggressive campaign of violent attacks. The House will be aware of the appalling toll that the group has inflicted on Nigeria over the past year or so—through attacks against churches on Christmas day 2010, with over 30 deaths, to the co-ordinated attacks in Kano on 20 January 2011 that resulted in nearly 200 deaths. Boko Haram has murdered hundreds of Nigerians over the past two years. Attacks have also been launched against international targets. In an attack on the UN building in Abuja on 26 August 2010, 23 people were killed. Sadly, the violence continues. Attacks against a church in Jos and police stations in Kano and Maiduguri over the weekend have added to the terrible toll.

Following the kidnap, cross-Government crisis management teams were established in our high commission in Abuja and in London. They began work to identify who had taken Chris and Franco, and to locate them. The Nigerian Government have supported our efforts throughout and worked closely with us. We also worked closely with the Italian Government throughout the period through intelligence and diplomatic channels in order to keep them abreast of developments and informed of our efforts.

From the outset of the effort to find Chris and Franco, our objectives were clear and focused: to secure their safe release while continuing the long-standing policy of successive British Governments not to make concessions to hostage takers or to pay ransoms to terrorists. To do otherwise would serve only to increase the threat to UK nationals. Where terrorists are involved in kidnapping, payment of ransoms is illegal under UK law.

During Chris and Franco’s captivity the Government’s emergency committee, Cobra, met regularly to review progress and discuss steps to secure their safe release. During their captivity the kidnappers made threats, through a video and by direct contact with Chris’s family, that they intended to kill Chris and Franco, but at no time during their captivity did the kidnappers make any coherent demands.

Throughout the 10 months of Chris and Franco’s captivity, we worked very closely with the Nigerian Government to track down their kidnappers and identify the location where they were being held. The close working over that period included preparation for the possibility of a hostage rescue. The Prime Minister discussed the case with President Jonathan during his visit to Nigeria in July 2011, and as a result agreed a package of UK support for Nigeria’s counter-terrorism efforts. As part of that package, a sustained operation was conducted to identify members of the group responsible for the kidnapping. Earlier last week a number of them were apprehended, and during debriefing late on 7 March, credible intelligence was obtained identifying the probable location of the hostages at a house or compound in Sokoto, northern Nigeria.

The Foreign Secretary briefed the Prime Minister that evening, and at his request chaired a meeting of Cobra at 8.15 on the morning of 8 March to assess the situation. Following that meeting, the Prime Minister received a full briefing. In the hour or so that followed, the location was confirmed, although we still did not know if the kidnappers and their victims were inside. On the ground, the Nigerian army had secured a cordon some distance around the property and an assault group, including UK support, was in place.

The assessment on the ground was that there was a significant possibility that the kidnappers, if present, were already aware that their security had been compromised, and if not, that the level of military activity in the town meant that there was a real risk of them developing that awareness. The military judgment was that the hostages were facing an imminent and escalating threat and that, although an immediate rescue attempt would inevitably involve risk, it represented the best chance of securing the release of Chris and Franco alive. The Prime Minister was briefed by military and national security advisers, and gave his authorisation for an operation to release the hostages to go ahead with UK support. As soon as possible afterwards, our ambassador in Rome informed the Italian authorities that an operation was getting under way.

The Nigerian security forces, with UK support, launched the assault on the compound last Thursday at 10.58 am London time. UK personnel encountered and killed one armed kidnapper almost immediately on entering the compound. As the assault teams moved into the compound, UK personnel found the bodies of Chris and Franco, already dead, in a room at the rear of the compound. Early indications are clear that both men were murdered by their captors with automatic gunfire before they could be rescued. Three further guards of the hostages were killed by Nigerian forces during an operation that lasted approximately an hour and a half in total. None were taken alive.

Following the operation the Prime Minister called the McManus family to tell them how sorry he was that we had not been able to bring Chris home safely. He also spoke to Prime Minister Monti to pass on his condolences, and to President Jonathan to express his thanks for Nigerian support. This was a difficult operation that it was judged had to be carried out at speed, in view of the risk to the lives of Chris and Franco. One Nigerian soldier was wounded in the rescue attempt. I wish him a speedy recovery from his injuries, and I want to express our gratitude again to the members of the Nigerian forces, along with our UK personnel, who risked their lives in the attempt to rescue Chris and Franco.

The deaths of Chris McManus and Franco Lamolinara were a terrible tragedy. But let us be clear that the responsibility for their deaths lies squarely with the people who kidnapped them, held them, threatened them and then murdered them in cold blood. Terrorism and kidnapping can never be justified. Many of the group responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Chris and Franco, including its senior leaders, are either dead or have been detained—an important achievement in reducing the threat of future kidnapping. However, violent extremist Islamist groups remain active in Nigeria, and so long as they do, we will work with the Nigerians and other allies to fight the scourge of terrorism wherever it manifests itself.

15:42

[Mr Jim Murphy (East Renfrewshire) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, a copy of which was handed to me as he started speaking, as he knows. Our thoughts are rightly with the families and friends of Mr McManus and Mr Lamolinara. Both were killed in cold blood, and those responsible for their abduction and murder, as well as those who provide support for them, must be pursued.

The Defence Secretary rightly paid tribute to the vital role that British special forces play around the world, and the entire country agrees with that sentiment. They are increasingly central to counter-terrorism operations. We rely on their expertise, discretion and courage. It is right, therefore, that we maintain the sovereign operational autonomy of our special forces in future. In that light, and in the light of everything we know about the operation, we believe that the Government took the right course of action in seeking to rescue two innocent captives.

It is, however, concerning that the Italian President—who is, by general agreement, a measured man—called Britain’s action “inexplicable”, while Prime Minister Monti has asked the UK Government for a “detailed reconstruction of the events”, and that the Italian Government have demanded the “utmost clarity”. Such discord suits no one other than our enemies. In the interests of that clarity, can the Secretary of State offer further details of the contacts with the Italian Government? The Prime Minister’s spokesman stated on 9 March:

“We contacted the Italians yesterday as the operation was getting under way,”

while the Foreign Secretary has said that the Government were

“constrained how much we were able to consult others”.

Downing street also stated that a possible rescue attempt had been raised with the Italian Government beforehand and no objections were raised. In what was a substantial statement, the Defence Secretary gave little detail of the interaction with the Italian Government. Will he detail his contacts with the Italian Government in advance of the operation? More widely, were assurances given to the Italian Government that they would have the right to sanction any rescue attempt of one of their citizens?

On the specifics of the rescue operation, the Ministry of Defence has said that this was a Nigerian-led operation with the UK Special Boat Service in support. Will the Secretary of State share with the House as much information as he can about the rules of engagement that were agreed with the Nigerian authorities, bearing in mind his earlier comments about the need to protect intelligence?

There have been various separate reports of ransoms being paid in full or in part to the hostage takers. The UK Government have a clear policy on ransom payments, as the Secretary of State has reminded us today. The reports claim that approximately £1 million was paid to the captors as a down payment on a potential £5 million ransom. I would like to give the Secretary of State the opportunity to confirm that no British official or Minister had prior knowledge of, or agreed to, any payment being made by a third party or foreign Government for the release of a British national.

Turning to the wider context, Nigeria is one of the countries not mentioned in the Government’s strategic defence and security review, but it is a nation that will require our collective attention. It is west Africa’s predominant power, Africa’s most populous country and the world’s 11th largest producer of oil. The UK has a positive diplomatic relationship with Nigeria, and a vibrant diaspora community that enriches our country. However, Nigeria is a country in which roughly two thirds of the people live on less than £1 a day, and in which one in five children die in infancy before the age of five, and 12 million are not in school. Those are the conditions in which radicalisation can fester.

The hostage takers, Boko Haram, have been referred to as the Nigerian Taliban and are accused by the head of Nigerian armed forces of having ties to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The group is particularly active in Saharan states and was responsible for the bombing of the UN headquarters. The US embassy recently warned staff about its activity, and the head of US military’s Africa command has said that Boko Haram might be expanding because of an alliance with al-Qaeda. What assessment have the UK Government made about the links between Boko Haram and al-Qaeda? It has been reported that the National Security Committee discussed the hostage crisis on 20 separate occasions. If that is the case, it is a welcome reflection of just how fiercely the UK Government focused on this crisis, but will the Secretary of State share with the House his assessment of the continuing threat to British nationals and interests in Nigeria and the wider region?

I look forward to hearing the Secretary of State’s response. This tragedy is another painful reminder that the UK must retain the ability to act across the globe. It is also a reflection of the vindictiveness of our opponents and the valour of our forces. My final request today is to ask the Defence Secretary to convey the appreciation of Parliament as a whole to the commanders of the Special Boat Service for their remarkable efforts and bravery.

[Mr Hammond]

First, may I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman for what turned out to be the non-delivery of my statement prior to my standing up to deliver it? I knew that he was going to get it late, but I did not know that it was not going to arrive at all. I apologise to him for that. I am also extremely grateful to him for his support. He and most of his colleagues on the Front Bench have been in government, and they understand the difficulty involved in making these fine judgments and decisions, often under extreme time pressure constraints.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about the information that had been given to the Italians, and about the nature of the contact with them. He will understand that the contact was not conducted by me; it was conducted through the Foreign Office. Throughout the process, a regular dialogue was maintained between the security services and their Italian counterparts, on a day-to-day, business-as-usual basis. Last Thursday morning, Her Majesty’s ambassador in Rome visited the Italian authorities as soon as he was able to do so after the completion of the Cobra meeting to pass to the Italians the information about the operation that was getting under way.

The right hon. Gentleman asked whether we had agreed that the Italians would essentially have a power of veto over such an operation. I find that question slightly strange, in view of his earlier remarks about the importance of retaining the sovereign capability of our forces. I have to tell him that we did not agree that the Italians would have any power of veto over a rescue operation involving a British citizen, but of course we consulted them throughout the 10-month period. They were well aware of the direction in which the operation was moving.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about the rules of engagement. Of course this was a Nigerian-led operation on Nigerian soil; the area was secured by Nigerian forces, and was under the overall command of a Nigerian commander. Appropriate arrangements had been agreed with the Nigerian authorities to ensure that any UK personnel involved in lethal activity would be protected from any redress under Nigerian law. I am happy to be able to reassure the right hon. Gentleman on that front.

I, too, have read the reports of ransom payments, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred. The UK’s policy is clear: we do not pay ransoms to terrorists; no UK officials or Ministers were involved in any discussions about the payment of ransoms to terrorists; and we are not aware of any ransom having been paid or indeed any ransom having been demanded.

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the importance of Nigeria as a country. When the defence engagement strategy is published—it will not be too far in the future —he will see that Nigeria plays a very prominent part in that document and in the agenda going forward. We have a strong relationship with Nigeria—a strong military to military relationship—and we provide ongoing counter-terrorism support to the Nigerians; and we have one of the largest bilateral aid programmes with Nigeria, precisely to address the underlying causes of discontent in the poverty to which the right hon. Gentleman referred.

The right hon. Gentleman is, of course, right to be concerned about Boko Haram and its links to al-Qaeda. Our understanding is that it is not directly linked to AQ in the Islamic Maghreb, but that factions of Boko Haram have started to refer to themselves as AQ in Nigeria. The linkages between the organisations are somewhat tenuous and not well understood by us, but it is absolutely clear that we should be concerned about this development.

To answer the right hon. Gentleman’s other questions, Cobra—not the National Security Council—met 33 times during the period of captivity to discuss this particular kidnapping. As for the threat to UK nationals, of course there is a threat to them and others from the ongoing extremist terrorist activity in northern Nigeria. I would say this to the right hon. Gentleman, however. While the action taken last Thursday did not, sadly, have the outcome we all hoped for in the safe return of Chris and Franco, it has undoubtedly reduced the threat to UK nationals by demonstrating to would-be kidnappers that the UK is willing and able to react robustly when our nationals are put at risk.

[Sir Menzies Campbell (North East Fife) (LD)]

It is the case, is it not, that the difference between success and failure in these operations is often a very narrow one? While it is the Government’s responsibility to ensure that those who may be asked to carry out such operations are properly trained and equipped, it is necessarily the case that when Government authority is sought for these operations, the Government have to rely on the advice, judgment and experience of those on the ground.

[Mr Hammond]

My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right. Throughout the critical period last week, we were being advised by UK personnel on the ground and UK senior military personnel here in London. The Prime Minister quite rightly challenged and questioned the advice he was given, but was of course strongly guided by the professional judgments.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Having, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), had to make similar difficult and urgent decisions in such dire circumstances—sometimes with equally unhappy consequences—may I fully endorse the decisions that the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister had to make in this situation? May I just press the right hon. Gentleman a little more on the position of President Giorgio Napolitano? I happen to know him, and have done since he was the Interior Minister when I was Home Secretary 15 years ago. He is extraordinarily cautious and measured in his language. It is plain that he felt blind-sided. Will the Foreign Secretary say what high-level efforts are being made to assuage his concerns at this stage?

[Mr Hammond]

I am sure that the Foreign Secretary could, but as he is not here, I will have a go instead. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that there have been extensive contacts with the Italian Government and authorities since the expressions of unhappiness that we heard on Thursday and Friday, and I think it fair to say that the situation has been clarified to the satisfaction of all parties.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

In these very difficult operations, surprise is vital. I have not yet seen the statement because it has not been distributed, but I believe that the operation began at 10.58 am, and that the area was secured by the Nigerian army. I do not know whether my right hon. Friend is allowed to answer this question, but was the timing of the operation precipitated by the fact that security had been breached and we were forced to go in? Will he confirm that the timing was not of our choice?

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend is right. The judgment was that, first because of the apprehension of members of the group earlier in the week and secondly because of the presence of significant numbers of Nigerian troops not very far from the compound in question, it would be taking too great a risk to defer the operation. The military judgment was that despite the risks involved, there was a greater chance of rescuing the hostages alive by acting immediately.

[Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

These are always the most difficult decisions to take. Our condolences must go to the families of the two men, and our profound thanks must go to our special forces, who acquire and are then prepared to use skill and bravery to carry out operations of this kind. We must be enormously grateful to them for doing so.

May I return to the issue of the unfortunate discord between us and the Italian Government? Is the Secretary of State able or prepared to say anything that would explain some of the complexities that would arise from a nation’s attempts to embed another in the kind of decisions that would be necessary to keep them completely and absolutely as one in such circumstances?

[Mr Hammond]

I think it fair to say that throughout the long months of captivity there were very good and full discussions and exchanges of views with the Italians, and that they understood very clearly our direction of travel and the way in which we sought to advance our understanding of the situation and then bring it to a close. The circumstances that arose on Wednesday evening and Thursday morning represented an accelerated closing of a time window which simply made it impossible to consult as fully as one might ideally have liked. I am assured that information was continually being transmitted between intelligence agencies, as is the norm between allied agencies, but that there was not enough time for the discussions at Government-to-Government level that we might have had if a further day, or even 12 hours, had been available to us.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

As my right hon. Friend and others have said, this was an extremely difficult operation, and one in which the odds were increasingly stacked against us. Does my right hon. Friend agree that while we commend the courage and professionalism of our special forces, it is extremely important that any examination of the details of what took place does not in any way compromise the necessary secrecy of the methods that they employ?

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The operational security of our special forces remains paramount at all times, which is why we never comment on their operations and, indeed, never confirm or deny their involvement in any particular operation.

[Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)]

Christopher McManus was one of my constituents. I have been in touch with his family regularly both before and after his untimely death, and I want to pay a very real tribute to their unceasing efforts to secure his release—in conjunction with the Foreign Office, which was extremely helpful—not just in the most recent period, but throughout nine or 10 nerve-racking months.

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, but may I ask him to say a little more about the exact nature of the intelligence that was collected in the raid on Boko Haram in Kaduna, which indicated that precipitate action was necessary to save the hostages’ lives? May I also ask why such expressly urgent action was needed that the Italian Government could not be consulted before a final decision was made, because the life of one of their citizens, as well as of Chris McManus, was at risk?

[Mr Hammond]

First, may I join the right hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to the McManus family? I attended a significant number of the Cobra meetings that have been held on this subject since October last year, and whenever there were reported contacts with the family, comment was made on how engaged they had been with the process and how focused they were on getting the result we all wanted. They were under tremendous pressure, but they conducted themselves with remarkable dignity and co-operated very well with the authorities throughout the process.

The right hon. Gentleman will understand that I cannot go into the details of the intelligence that was available, but what he has to understand is that there was a fast-evolving situation. On Tuesday evening, some people were arrested. During the course of their debriefing on Wednesday, several of them provided information that gave us a credible fix on where the hostages might be being held. Later, additional intelligence was available to corroborate that. So the level of knowledge and understanding was ratcheting up, and at the same time the deployment of Nigerian forces into the area in question raised a significant risk that the hostage-takers would become aware that the operation was under way.

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

As chair of the British-Italian parliamentary group, I have been closely following reports in the Italian press. Saturday’s La Stampa stated that the Italian secret services had been informed in the morning, and Saturday’s Corriere della Sera reported that the two countries’ secret services spoke to each other at 10.15 am on Thursday, when the operation was imminent. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we, and all our counterparts and friends in the Italian Parliament, should stand in solidarity in facing threats from terrorism, hostage taking and piracy, and that rather than allowing critics to divide us, we should continue to work together against terrorism and hostage taking?

[Mr Hammond]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend’s sentiment, and I can assure him that that has been the nature of the relationship between the UK authorities and the Italians throughout this process. We have worked closely together and it has been a relationship of close collaboration and close understanding. On the question of communication, I can only repeat what I have already said: my understanding is that there was regular, day-to-day communication between the intelligence agencies, including on the morning of last Thursday.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

Mario Monti and his Government are doing a tremendous and very difficult job in repairing the damage done by the Berlusconi regime, and they are our natural allies on many issues, not least in the European Union, so can the Secretary of State assure the House that he, the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister will make every effort to address the apparent grievance felt at the highest level in the Italian Government about some elements of the way in which this operation was handled?

[Mr Hammond]

I echo the right hon. Gentleman’s sentiments. We have extremely good relationships with the Italians, including on military and defence matters. I repeat what I said earlier: I believe that the conversations that have taken place over the weekend have very substantially defused the situation. On Thursday, there will be an operational visit to brief the Italians on military and intel channels, and I am told that the Foreign Secretary intends to visit Italy later in March.

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

For the reasons outlined by the Secretary of State, there can be no doubt in my mind that the Prime Minister took the right decision—the only question is whether that decision was communicated quickly enough to the Italians. According to what my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) cited from the Italian press, it would appear that the decision was communicated quickly but that it perhaps did not then reach up into the Government in Italy as quickly as it should have done. Will the Secretary of State confirm that we did convey the information about the decision as quickly as we could, and that there was no question of our deciding not to do that because of doubts about the information leaking, the Italians wanting to pay ransoms or anything of that sort?

[Mr Hammond]

I can absolutely assure my hon. Friend that there was no question of information being withheld. There were two clear, separate channels of information. The intelligence agencies were communicating on a regular basis, and the British ambassador in Rome went as soon as he practically could to deliver the information to the Italian Government, once the operation had got under way.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

As the Secretary of State will know, a number of foreign nationals are still being held as kidnap victims in Nigeria and many British citizens work in Nigeria. I hope that this is not seen as the end of support for the Nigerian Government. Will he confirm that if President Jonathan asks for more support to help with counter-terrorism, it will be forthcoming from us?

[Mr Hammond]

I thought that I had already said that the package of counter-terrorism support that we put in place after the Prime Minister’s visit this year will continue. So long as the Nigerians are facing a threat from extremist Islamist terrorists, we will support them, as we support other allies in the fight against terrorists.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

Members of this House who serve on the all-party group on global education for all spent half-term week in Nigeria, and the spectre of the burnt-out United Nations building in Abuja will stay in our minds for a long time. The question raised by the Chair of the Select Committee on Home Affairs is crucial, not least because we have so many excellent Department for International Development officials and people from the voluntary sector working in the sensitive area of education, particularly in the volatile northern states. What hope can the Secretary of State give those officials that sufficiently robust security arrangements are in place for those important workers?

[Mr Hammond]

The Under-Secretary of State for International Development, my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr O'Brien) tells me that we have taken all necessary steps to protect UK personnel in Nigeria who are working on aid programmes, and the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham) tells me that we have taken the appropriate steps to protect Foreign Office personnel, too.

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

The right hon. Gentleman has talked about the security support being provided to President Jonathan and the Government of Nigeria. Does he or the Foreign Secretary have any plans to visit Nigeria to cement that relationship further and offer any further support that the Nigerian Government may require?

[Mr Hammond]

The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk has just informed me that he will be in Nigeria next week. I am not aware of the Foreign Secretary’s forward travel plans, but, as I said to the right hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy) a few moments ago, when we publish our defence engagement strategy shortly, Members will see that we are placing very great importance on the defence relationship with Nigeria. Defence Ministers will be responding to that document by pursuing the deepening and strengthening of those relationships.

[Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

I join colleagues in paying tribute to not only our special forces, but our intelligence services, for their professionalism and dedication, and for the unique global security reach they give our country. In particular, I welcome the message that this operation sends—tragic though the final outcome was—which is that in such a situation, the UK leaves no one behind and leaves no stone unturned in looking after the interests of our citizens abroad.

[Mr Hammond]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s comments. That is absolutely our position: when a UK citizen is deprived of their liberty, wherever in the world, we will deploy all the resources available to us to seek their safe return.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

I worked as an engineer in Nigeria for several years, and I can only pay tribute to the courage of Mr McManus and his colleague in facing captivity for so long. I welcome the assurances about working with Nigeria to address the challenge of terrorism, but many British engineers do go abroad to work, partly because of a lack of opportunities in this country, so will the Secretary of State work with his colleagues across government to ensure that these people are well informed about the threats they may face, and that we are well informed of the numbers working abroad and the work they do? We must properly value their contribution.

[Mr Hammond]

The Foreign Office maintains travel advice to UK travellers in respect of all countries and will, of course, update it, but I take on board the hon. Lady’s comments about engineers and people working in similar professions, who of course play a very important ambassadorial role for the UK as they go about their daily business. We seek to understand where people are although, of course, we do not have formal registration requirements in any sense.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend suggested that the heightened level of military activity in Sokoto might have alerted the kidnappers that their security had been compromised. Was there any way in which that military activity could have been reduced or was it absolutely essential to the conduct of the operation?

[Mr Hammond]

The control of the wider area was under the command of the Nigerian military authorities and the approach that they determined was appropriate—they, after all, are in the best position to judge—was that a cordon at some distance needed to be placed around the area. Our concern was that a number of events, starting with the arrest of members of the group on Tuesday evening through to the movements of Nigerian military into the area overnight on Wednesday, could have given the kidnappers an increasing awareness of what was going on and therefore put at increasing risk the lives of the hostages.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

May I associate myself with what the Defence Secretary and the shadow Defence Secretary said about the operation itself? The Secretary of State gave us some detail about the timeline of events, but he did not give us the exact time at which our ambassador in Rome informed the Italian authorities that an operation was getting under way. What was that time?

[Mr Hammond]

I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman the exact time, but the Cobra meeting broke up just before 9 am and the responsible officials undertook to go away and contact the British ambassador in Rome immediately and to ask him to go as soon as was practicable to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome to provide the information to them.

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

Having established the absence of a power of veto in this case, what could Mr Monti possibly have said had he been consulted in advance, as apparently he wished to have been, that would materially have impacted on the decision matrix and, ultimately, the course of events?

[Mr Hammond]

I do not think that the course of events would have been changed in any way. In fairness, if the boot was on the other foot, UK Ministers would undoubtedly feel the need to know what was going on with an operation that would impact on the life of a UK citizen. I do not think that the Italians’ concern is in any way unreasonable, I just think they need to understand—I believe that they do, now—that, as regards the pace at which the operation developed, they were informed as expeditiously as possible. As I have said many times already this afternoon, the lines of communication between the intelligence agencies were pretty much continuously open.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

The House will recall the tragic cases of Kenneth Bigley and Margaret Hassan, who were killed by their captors in Iraq some years ago, as well as the steps taken by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) to ensure that the families received adequate ongoing support. May I press the Secretary of State to say what ongoing support will be given to the family of Mr McManus?

[Mr Hammond]

The Foreign Office has a well-established way of dealing with those issues after such an event. I know that Foreign Office officials have been in continuous contact with the family and will continue to provide support to them.

[Mr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

Last year, the Economic Community of West African States warned the international community about the amount of former Libyan weaponry that was crossing the border straight into the hands of Boko Haram, al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab. Given our financial interests in the area, what pressure are the Government putting on the international community to address that in order to prevent further UK kidnappings?

[Mr Hammond]

I am not sure that I see a direct link. There are two separate issues here. First, there is the lawlessness in Nigeria and the threat it represents in terms of the kidnapping of UK citizens, and I have outlined the support we are giving to the Nigerians to maintain their counter-terrorism effort. Secondly, there is a real and serious concern about unaccounted-for weapons, which tend to be heavier weapons such as shoulder-launched ground-to-air missiles. The UK has been involved with the US in a major operation in Libya since the end of the conflict there to try to identify, track down and secure weapons that have become unaccounted for.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I want to associate myself with hon. Members’ comments sending sympathies to the families of Christopher McManus and Franco Lamolinara. I also thank our British forces for their sterling efforts out on the field. Boko Haram is a ruthless, murderous terrorist organisation that kills at will—some 200 people have been killed, 400 churches have been burned down and thousands have been displaced. It is trying to create an Islamic state in northern Nigeria. What military and financial assistance does the Minister feel that the British Government and their allies could give to Nigerian authorities to rid Nigeria of Boko Haram once and for all and to enable Nigeria to be a stable influence in Africa?

[Mr Hammond]

As I have said, DFID is providing one of our largest packages of bilateral aid to the Nigerian Government. Following the Prime Minister’s visit last year, we are providing a counter-terrorism support package and will continue to provide that support to the Government of Nigeria in their struggle against Islamist extremism in northern Nigeria.

Point of order

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Commons Chamber

16:16

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The written version of the Minister’s statement was not available to Members until 24 minutes into the statement. Is it possible, through your good offices, to remind Ministers of the importance of providing written versions of their statements to Back Benchers in a timely fashion?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. I do not think we need to labour this point and I am sure that he would be the last Member of the House who would seek to take any opportunity to do so. The Secretary of State apologised for what I think was an inadvertent error in failing to supply the shadow Secretary of State with a copy of the statement until after he had come into the Chamber. I think that the general expectation that Ministers will do their best is understood and I feel sure that the Secretary of State is as assiduous in discharging his responsibilities as anybody else.

Football (Financial Transparency)

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Commons Chamber

Motion for leave to bring in a Bill (Standing Order No. 23)

16:17

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

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require a football club playing in the top four tiers of English and Scottish professional football to disclose the identity of its owner, the identity of the owner of its home playing ground, training ground, any intellectual property associated with the club or a third party stake in its players and the identities of outstanding creditors; to require all creditors of a football club to be compensated equally should the club go into administration; and for connected purposes.

I want to introduce this Bill to give the House a chance to have its say on the wide issues associated with the financial failure of many professional football clubs in England and Scotland. The Bill proposes measures that would provide an early warning to the football authorities to take action and stand up for the interests of the communities that the clubs serve. Some might say that that is all well and good but is surely a matter for football and not a concern for Parliament. I believe we should be concerned when communities have to stand by powerless when their club is stripped of its assets and left drowning in a sea of debt it can never hope to repay. I believe we should be concerned when taxpayers lose millions in unpaid taxes when clubs go into administration, and when local businesses are left out of pocket and at risk of financial failure as a result. I believe that we should be concerned when, in a global game, millions of pounds are passing in and out of this country to buy clubs and players and we cannot be sure of the source or destination of that money. I believe we should be concerned when players can effectively be trafficked around the world under the control of the third-party interests who control them.

Let me say a little more about each of the areas of concern I have outlined and how the Bill is designed to help address them.

First, fans should know who owns their club and that these people pass the fit and proper person test that has been designed by the football authorities. I have no problem with foreign ownership of clubs, but we need to know who the owners are. In the case of Leeds United, fans went six years without knowing, until Ken Bates assumed control of the club from the future sports fund trust, which was registered in Nevis in the West Indies and administered from Switzerland. We do not know how much he paid for it, or whom he paid, and if we believe his testimony, he did not know whom he had paid either. The sale of the club was not advertised—rather strange if one is selling an asset and trying to get the best price. Many people believe that the only way he could have pulled off this deal was if he or close associates or family members had effectively controlled the club all along.

Last year I made inquiries with the Football League about the identity of the owners of Coventry City football club, and was told that it did not know who owned the club either. The letter that I received from Nick Craig, the director of legal affairs, went on to say:

“We have for some time expressed our concerns as regards investment vehicles (often offshore) and the issue of the lack of transparency surrounding ownership of them. Indeed we have previously sought assistance from DCMS”—

the Department for Culture, Media and Sport—

“and HMRC”—

Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs—

“in that respect but to no avail. We are left in a position where we can regulate and seek to require clubs to comply but are reliant on self-declaration with no official means of independent verification. The proliferation of offshore investment trusts means we will never always be 100% certain in all cases but we continually assess the appropriateness of our rules in a changing environment.”

How can we apply a fit and proper person test to football club ownership if we do not know who the ultimate owners are?

On Friday last week the football authorities published their joint response to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s report on football governance. The report proposed the establishment of a Football Association regulatory authority. The role of the authority would be to co-ordinate the enforcement of rules between competitions and to step in if it feels that the Football League or the premier league in particular are not following through on their duties.

This is a welcome step forward, and certainly the premier league seems to have taken a tougher stance on ownership issues than the Football League in the case of Leeds. However, I believe we need to go further by requiring fuller declarations on behalf of club owners, with the authorities having the right to check this information with the club’s bankers. That is why the Bill calls for a public declaration from anyone owning any stake in a football club and its major assets, such as its playing and training ground, and for the football authorities to have access to a full list of the creditors of the club. The authorities should have the right to determine the source of funds, as well as the legal entity responsible for them.

Also, as part of the football club licensing scheme proposed by the Select Committee and accepted in principle by the football authorities, there should be some oversight of a club’s financial performance to ensure that it has the funds it requires to complete the playing season. Early intervention should be normal when, for example, clubs fall behind with their tax payments. This is now a requirement for clubs playing in the English premier league. It should have happened in the case of Rangers, a situation that should not have been able to get as bad as is it did. The double tragedy here is that Rangers’ financial failure may take down other clubs, such as Dunfermline, which had entered into agreements with Rangers in good faith and is left being owed large sums.

These are issues of concern not just for football fans, but for the law enforcement authorities. A report published in 2009 by the Financial Action Task Force, based on research across 25 countries, including England, highlighted the fact that because football is an international cash business with many assets controlled offshore, it is vulnerable to approaches from criminal organisations. The desperate financial state of many clubs may also mean that an approach from a would-be sugar daddy could be too good to resist, and without too many questions being asked.

The report indentified more than 20 cases of money laundering through the football sector, ranging from simple cases of smuggling large amounts of cash that seemed to have been derived from illegal transactions, to complex international money laundering cases. The report noted:

“Football clubs are indeed seen by criminals as the perfect vehicles for money laundering.”

It went on to say that

“the targets are frequently clubs in financial trouble looking for ‘lifesaving’ sponsors”

and that

“the lack of regulation or control over legal structures and the ownership or control of football clubs means that they are easy to acquire.”

We have to ensure that the measures proposed in this Bill can be enforced to restrict these practices and send a message out to the world that the owners of a club in England or Scotland cannot hide their identity or the source of their funds.

I shall touch briefly on third-party ownership of players and the football creditors’ rule. Third-party ownership of footballers is banned in the UK, but not in many other countries in Europe and around the world. There is already an established practice of player ownership funds buying the controlling interest in a player at a club in, say, South America, and moving him on to a European club, with a view to a further transfer to a top club at a time of the ownership fund’s choosing. Even if third-party ownership is banned in the final destination country, this financial interest could be hidden by agreements to pay agents, or for payback clauses to the selling club and then back to the player fund, depending on the number of appearances a player makes, or indeed whether he is ultimately sold on again.

In a recent survey conducted among players in eastern Europe and the former USSR by FIFPro, 40% of footballers said that their salaries were not paid by the club they played for. That is why the Bill calls for a register to be available to the football authorities for any financial ties third parties have to players in a club. That is also at the heart of one of the big problems in football: some people make money simply from the margin they take on buying and selling the assets they control and the value they can get someone to pay. For those people, that is how they make money from the game and ownership of a club is simply a means of accessing and influencing the market.

Finally, the Bill would provide for the abolition of the football creditors’ rule. The rule means that when a football club goes into administration, people in football to whom it owes money, such as players and other clubs, receive their money in full but other creditors, such as a local printer who prints the match programmes, the St John Ambulance or a local builder who works on the ground, receive just pence in the pound. In the case of the administration of Leeds United, the club also left £6 million in unpaid taxes. Even the chairman of the Football League has admitted that he

“cannot defend the morality of it”.

I believe that getting rid of the football creditors’ rule would encourage football clubs to have greater openness in their dealings with each other, as there would be an element of shared risk. A club would really want to know if another club to whom it was selling a player could afford the transfer fees it was asking. Getting rid of the rule would also give the football authorities an even greater stake in ensuring that clubs do not go into administration during the season, which compromises the competition as they are forced to sell players and severely weaken their squad.

The issues I have touched on today affect English and Scottish football, but not exclusively; they affect football right around the world. In the absence of firm leadership from FIFA on these important matters, I believe that it is important that we take a stand and do our bit to clean up football in our country and give our fans a proper say and stake in how their clubs are run. These are the reasons why we need the Bill, which I commend to the House.

16:27

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

I rise to point out briefly a fundamental flaw in the Bill, but I commend the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) for the work he has done in this field and through the Culture, Media and Sport Committee—its reports are excellent and we look forward to the report on racism in football. He identified a particular problem that is dear to my heart: the opaqueness of the ownership of Leeds United football club, a club I have supported throughout my life. Indeed, I have attended many hundreds of the club’s matches over the seasons—I appear to be the only Member of the House who regularly attends. I therefore have a great deal of sympathy for the principles and detail of what he is putting forward.

However, we are coming to the end of a parliamentary Session and I know that the hon. Gentleman will be considering resubmitting the Bill in some way after the Queen’s Speech. The Bill’s fundamental weakness is the fact that it would deal only with the top four leagues. I have another love in my life, another football club, and the world’s fourth oldest: Worksop Town football club. As a non-league club, Worksop Town would not be covered by the Bill, yet the non-league clubs across England and elsewhere have suffered far more than the professional clubs as a result of the problems of opaqueness and the asset strippers who have come and taken the clubs away. Some 33 current English league teams of the 92 have been in administration since 1992 and the Sky deal and the establishment of the premier league. Far more non-league clubs have gone into administration, and a considerable number have been liquidated. Whether in Worksop, Halifax, York, Wrexham, Crawley, Salisbury, Boston or Lincoln, non-league football across the country has been plagued by the problem of people buying clubs, asset-stripping and attempting to develop the land. It is a fundamental problem.

I shall not push the Bill to a vote, but should the hon. Gentleman come back to the House with it after the Queen’s Speech, I urge him to incorporate non-league clubs into what is a very worthy proposal.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Damian Collins, Dr Thérèse Coffey, Philip Davies, Thomas Docherty, Paul Farrelly, Louise Mensch, Penny Mordaunt, Steve Rotheram, Mr Adrian Sanders, Jim Sheridan, Mr Gerry Sutcliffe and Mr John Whittingdale present the Bill.

Damian Collins accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 27 April, and to be printed (Bill 316)

Opposition Day

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Un-allotted Half Day]

Health and Social Care Bill

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We come now to the main business and to the Opposition motion in the name of the Leader of the Opposition. It might be helpful if I inform the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of Mr Andrew George.

Just before I call the shadow Secretary of State to move the motion, may I remind the House that in the light of the extensive interest in this debate I have imposed a five-minute limit on individual Back Benchers’ contributions? There is no formal limit on contributions from the Front Benchers, but I feel sure that the shadow Secretary of State and Secretary of State will tailor their contributions in order to facilitate their Back-Bench colleagues’ participation.

16:31

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes the e-petition signed by 170,000 people calling on the Government to drop the Health and Social Care Bill; and declines to support the Bill in its current form.

I do so on behalf of the 170,000 people who have signed the e-petition calling on the Government to drop the Health and Social Care Bill.

The petition was initiated by Dr Kailash Chand, a distinguished general practitioner in the north-west of many years’ standing, and I pay tribute to him today. He has united patients who depend on the NHS and professionals who have devoted their lives to it in this simple but sincere call on the Government: “Drop the Bill”. Today, their voice will be heard in this House, as it is entitled to be. We will not let them be silenced, even though attempts were made to stop this debate taking place.

That takes us—

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andy Burnham]

No. I have been listening to the strictures from the Chair, and I want to get into my speech so that Back-Bench colleagues have a chance to contribute.

That takes us straight to the heart of the predicament in which we find ourselves. There is huge concern in the country about the Bill, but the Government and Parliament—

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

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andy Burnham]

I will in a moment.

There is huge concern in the country about the Bill, but the Government and Parliament are seen simply not to be listening. I give way to the Secretary of State, and I hope that he might prove us wrong.

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, but before we move beyond that point will he confirm that Dr Chand is an adviser to the Labour party, which inspired the petition? Further, given that Dr Chand has called on the British Medical Association to take strike action against the Bill, does the right hon. Gentleman share that view, or will he disown him?

[Andy Burnham]

Dr Chand is not an adviser to the Labour party, and the Secretary of State, in seeking to inject that party political note so early on in today’s debate and to claim that the petition of 170,000 people is a political petition, continues, it suggests to me, to misread the mood of this country on his unnecessary Bill.

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

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andy Burnham]

No, I will not.

We have arrived at a dangerous moment, not only for the NHS but for our democracy. To recap, this is a Bill for which nobody voted at the general election and which does not have a mandate, a Bill ruled out by the coalition agreement, and a Bill that has been so heavily amended in another place that in effect the unelected Chamber has written a new legal structure for the national health service that we are being asked to rubber-stamp. Yet despite all that, it could be rammed through this House in just seven days’ time, in defiance of an outstanding legal ruling from the Information Tribunal and in the teeth of overwhelming professional and public opposition.

This is an intolerable situation, and it is no way to treat our country’s most valued institution. Far-ranging changes to the NHS of the kind proposed by the Secretary of State can be made only by public consent and professional consensus, and it is plain for all to see that the Government have achieved neither of those things.

[Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andy Burnham]

No, I will not.

To proceed as planned risks profound damage to the relationships of trust that underpin a successful health service and risks a further erosion of trust in our democratic process that this House can ill afford.

Today there is one final chance for this House to ask the Government to step back from this dangerous course and reflect the feeling that there is in every single constituency in England. In introducing this debate, I have a bigger responsibility than speaking for Labour Members. The call to drop the Bill is not a narrow Labour campaign, as was claimed just now and in Gateshead at the weekend—it is a new coalition for the NHS that has brought together patients, professionals and people of all political views, including, I dare say, some of those in the Secretary of State’s own party. People who have signed the petition will be watching our proceedings closely. They will be hoping against hope that somehow we will put the NHS first, put aside the customary clash of party politics, and find common ground that can help the NHS.

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

I have here a letter to the Prime Minister from Dr Clare Highton and Dr Haren Patel, the chairs of City and Hackney clinical commissioning group, who say that they want

“to add our voice to the call for the Bill to be withdrawn.”

Does my right hon. Friend agree that that underlines his point about the wide range of people who want it to be dropped?

[Andy Burnham]

I think that Government Members are misjudging the mood of the country, and particularly of health professionals, who have not given a knee-jerk political response to the Bill but have given it careful consideration since it began as a White Paper and then proceeded on its tortuous path through Parliament. They have come to the conclusion that it is better, even now, to abandon it and work back through the existing legal structures of the NHS rather than proceed with the new legal structure and all the upheaval that that entails.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

Yesterday I was at a meeting with people with diabetes who expressed grave concern that they do not know what services would be available if the Bill were to go ahead. Is not that another good reason to take a pause and decide to drop the Bill until all these problems can be resolved?

[Andy Burnham]

I am aware of the concerns expressed by Diabetes UK and, indeed, by many other organisations representing people with long-term conditions, who have not been given the clarity that they need in order to give their support to these changes. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State says “Rubbish”, but I am afraid that those questions have not been answered, and that is not good enough.

[Sajid Javid]

rose—

[Andy Burnham]

I will not give way.

As I said, we need to see whether we can find common ground and put the NHS before party politics. That is the test that I set for the debate, and it is the spirit in which I wish to frame it. Today is not just an Opposition day but Merseyside derby day. Usually both occasions put me in a highly partisan mood, yet despite having double reason to be in tribal mode, I am going to take the unusual step of urging Labour Members not to vote for our motion but to consider the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) and his Liberal Democrat colleagues. We will listen with interest to what he has to say. The amendment sets out a sensible way forward that we can all unite around. It sends out the simple message that the importance of the NHS to us all and to our constituents should trump any tribal loyalty. It is important to say that, because I fear that sheer gut loyalty, political pride and the need to save face are the only forces driving a deeply defective Bill towards the statute book.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

I had the great privilege of working in biomedical research in and around the NHS for 15 years before coming to the House. Is it not the case that the challenges of an ageing population, the explosion of new biomedical treatments, diagnostics and devices, and the aspirations of modern patients demand reform? Did not the Labour party use to be the party of reform? Is not the right hon. Gentleman’s partisan posturing simply an illustration that Labour is no longer fit for Government?

[Andy Burnham]

Those factors demand service reform. I remind the hon. Gentleman that he stood at the election for a moratorium on such reform, which was a dishonest pledge that would have prevented the NHS from making the changes that it needs.

The NHS model that the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues seek to break with the Bill is judged to be the most efficient health care service in the world. The Secretary of State says today that that model is simply unsustainable in this century, with the ageing society and all the other pressures on it. I put it to the hon. Gentleman and the Secretary of State that that model is not the problem but the solution to the challenges of an ageing society, because it is proven to be the most fair and cost-effective way of delivering health care to the whole population.

We need to be honest with ourselves today. I mentioned the fact that it is just political pride and gut loyalty that are driving the Bill towards the statute book. Those motivations, however understandable and human they are and however familiar to politicians of every stripe, do not justify inflicting a sub-optimal legislative structure on our most cherished public service and making the already difficult job of health professionals even harder as they struggle to make sense of Parliament’s intentions.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is ideology, not evidence-based policy, that is driving ever greater competition in health care markets? Does he agree that the evidence suggests that that is the way to undermine our NHS, not to improve quality and equity?

[Andy Burnham]

I agree with the hon. Lady. It is that ideology that the NHS and health professionals are rejecting. They want to work in an essentially collaborative health service. They do not accept the vision that pits hospital against hospital and doctor against doctor.

Barely anybody has a good word to say about this busted flush of a Bill, which has lurched from one disaster to another. The unprecedented pause did not address the real concerns, but simply added bureaucracy and complexity. The 1,000-plus amendments are not a sign of improvement, but of confusion, complexity and contradiction. They have left a mess of a Bill that even the Health Secretary cannot recognise as his own. If that was not bad enough, an unfolding communications disaster has alienated the very people the Government are depending on to implement their Bill. A Downing street summit was called to discuss the implementation of a reform that is about clinical leadership, but doctors’ and nurses’ leaders were shut out of Downing street. It was hard to see how the situation could get any worse, but it just has.

First, on Friday, the Information Tribunal ruled against the Government and in favour of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey). I pay tribute to the assiduous way in which he has pursued his principled case. The tribunal ruled against the publication of the strategic risk register, but in favour of the publication of the transition risk register, vindicating our position and dismissing the Prime Minister’s claims against my actions as Health Secretary.

Let us be clear about what that ruling represents. It is an incredible state of affairs for any Government to suffer such a serious legal reversal at this stage of a protracted parliamentary process. It is an indictment of the judgment, or lack of it, of the Minister of State, Department of Health, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns) and others in the Department, in their handling of the Bill. Where is the Minister’s good grace in defeat? It is simple: my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne won and the Government lost. What are they waiting for? They must publish the risk register today and give Parliament the courtesy of knowing all the relevant information on Ministers’ plans before they ask us to approve them. Instead, what do we get? Silence and playing for time. They are hoping to string it out until after 20 March. That is simply not good enough.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is, as ever, making the case for the NHS, not for the privatisation that the Tories and their Lib Dem friends are pursuing. We are talking about the future of the NHS, so let me quote Victoria Roberts, a student nurse from Merseyside, who starts her training in two weeks. She says:

“I am a student nurse due to start my training in 2 weeks. This is not the NHS I want to serve or work in, but rather will help only those who can pay the most.”

Does my right hon. Friend agree with that assessment of where the Tories are taking the NHS?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We must have shorter interventions. A lot of people want to speak and we have got to get on with it.

[Andy Burnham]

I wish the Government would listen to voices such as the student nurse that my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) quoted—people who want to dedicate their lives to the NHS. Frankly, their views are brushed aside by an arrogant Government.

It gets worse as the Bill enters a new crisis, with one of the coalition parties formally withdrawing permission from its peers to support the Bill. It is not at all clear what happens now—whether Lib Dem peers will defy the wishes of their party or their leader. Given the developments of the last few days, it is simply inconceivable that the Government can continue on their current course and present the discredited Bill here in seven days. The only responsible thing to do is listen to what Lib Dem Members are saying and support what the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for St Ives seeks to do. I will deal with that shortly.

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

Just so that the right hon. Gentleman is clear, the motion that the Liberal Democrats passed on Sunday did not tell the Lords that they should or should not support the Bill. It simply reserved our party members’ judgment until we see the work that the Lords are continuing to do. That is our position. I think that that is sensible and fair for the NHS and our party.

[Andy Burnham]

I am afraid that I cannot read all the intricate smoke signals of a Lib Dem conference, but to my simple mind, removing permission from the motion for peers to endorse the Bill is a pretty clear signal that that permission has been withheld.

Before I deal with the amendment that the hon. Member for St Ives has tabled, I want to tackle directly the charge of scaremongering that has been levelled at Labour Members, and draw the House’s attention to evidence already emerging that supports our central concerns about the effect of the reorganisation. We have consistently said that it is the wrong time to reorganise the NHS—indeed, it is the worst time imaginable. The Government are asking the NHS to do too much. It is facing its toughest ever financial challenge. Combining that with the biggest ever reorganisation was a catastrophic misjudgment. The Government dismantled the existing structures of the NHS before the new ones were in place, leading to a loss of grip and focus at local level just when that was most needed.

We have now had two lost years in the NHS. When the system should have been getting to grips with the financial challenge, it has been distracted and destabilised by reorganisation. Information is now emerging that bears that out. The Nicholson challenge is a huge task for the NHS, but after only six months, we hear that it is already falling behind. New information provided from the Department to the Health Service Journal in response to a freedom of information request reveals how two out of three—68%—non-foundation trust acute trusts missed their savings targets for the first six months of the Nicholson challenge. At least five have made less than 20% of their planned savings for the year 2011-12. Overall, at the half-year point, the non-FT acute sector had a net deficit of £135 million. That is a real warning sign, which suggests that the Government are storing up huge problems for the future.

That is not conjecture. There is evidence that a destabilised NHS is losing its grip on finances and operational standards. For the tenth week in a row, the NHS last week missed the Secretary of State’s lowered standard for accident and emergency, with fewer than 95% of people seen within four hours. That is the main barometer of pressure on NHS hospitals. The figures clearly tell us that hospitals are not coping with the pressure that they are under, and that job losses and staff shortages are having a real impact.

[Sajid Javid]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andy Burnham]

I will not.

Rather than just reel off statistics about elective waiting times, I ask the Secretary of State today to address A and E performance. Why does he think the NHS is missing his relaxed target and what steps is he taking to address that?

Another of our central concerns—

[Sajid Javid]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andy Burnham]

Just one second. I have said that I want to give hon. Members a chance to comment in the debate, and that is what I am going to do.

[Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andy Burnham]

No.

The Opposition have said that the plans will bring huge variation and a postcode lottery writ large, which is what we are beginning to see, with random rationing decisions across the system. Minor operations are being restricted, generic drugs are being prescribed, and procedures, for instance to remove varicose veins, are being withdrawn from patients.

More worryingly, we have seen the emergence of a new trend: trusts are restricting access to treatment and surgery based on body mass index levels or lifestyle factors such as smoking. Those have been dressed up as initiatives to improve public health, but many people see them as crude attempts to save money. It seems to me that that is a straightforward breach of the NHS constitution, and indeed of its founding values. Treatment should be according to need, not according to judgmental decisions by unaccountable health professionals. I put it to the House that that is a dangerous departure. Treatment according to need must mean what it says. There is no sign of Ministers intervening to say that that is unacceptable and that they will reverse those decisions. That is a worrying glimpse of the future, in which the NHS becomes a huge postcode lottery and people have limited chance to challenge decisions, and it takes us to one of people’s central worries about the Bill: that there is no longer a duty on local commissioners to provide comprehensive health services.

There is other evidence around the system of the concerns that the Opposition have raised. There is evidence of fragmentation, not integration, as clinical commissioning groups are ordered to run an “any qualified provider” tendering process on three community services; of damage to the doctor-patient relationship; and of hospitals, such as St Helier, which is in the constituency of the Minister of State, Department of Health, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow), being destabilised by the effects of the emerging market, as clinical commissioning groups begin to withdraw services.

Those are not invented risks or scaremongering; they are there in black and white in local and regional risks registers, which Opposition Members have highlighted. We are now seeing those risks begin to materialise on the ground, which is why the difficult judgment that so many royal colleges have reached is that, even now, as difficult as it is, it is safer for the NHS to work back through the existing legal structures of the system than to proceed with the introduction of a new one.

I want to assure the House that “Drop the Bill” is not pure oppositional opportunism. I have always balanced the “Drop the Bill” call with the words, “And we will work with the Government to introduce GP-led commissioning.” I have never had any objection to doctors being more able to shape services, nor to more control and choice for patients, but the simple truth is that the Government did not need a new Bill to introduce those things. Indeed, the very fact that they have arrogantly already introduced those changes in advance of the Bill makes the argument that the Bill is simply unnecessary.

The Bill is a huge exercise in futility, but the reason we have one is that the Government want to go further on a misguided mission to rewrite the entire legal structure of the NHS to facilitate more competition and a market-based system. That, more than anything, is worrying people and why they are withholding support. That is the Government’s problem. They were not open and honest about those plans at the beginning, and have openly extolled the competition argument only in more recent weeks. That is why people are worried by the hidden agenda they see behind the Bill.

The amendment from the hon. Member for St Ives offers a way forward that can bring politicians and professionals back together, but, in urging the Opposition to support it, I wish to make something very clear: in supporting the amendment, the Opposition are offering no endorsement of the health policies in the coalition agreement. We are simply saying that if the Government were to stick to the precise terms of the coalition agreement, and specifically to the clear pledge of no top-down reorganisation, that would be a better position for the NHS and would represent real progress.

The talks could take as a starting point the stability plan proposed by the Faculty of Public Health. GP-led commissioning could be delivered by the clinical commissioning groups that the Secretary of State has created. Furthermore, to build confidence among clinicians, I offer to agree with him some principles by which important service change in the NHS could be introduced without every hospital being used as a political football at a local level. That is because the NHS needs service change, not structural reform. If we continue to play politics with hospital changes, we will do the NHS the ultimate disservice of condemning it to an outdated service model.

In conclusion, I am in politics to protect the things I care about, and the NHS comes top of that list. This is not about politics, as was claimed at the weekend. To be honest, it suits our narrow political objectives for the Government simply to plough on. The great irony is that dropping the Bill would be the right political decision for both coalition partners. Nevertheless, we desperately want them to do that, because if they do not, the damage to the NHS will be profound and possibly irreparable.

We have called this debate both to reflect the views of the e-petitioners and to try to find a way forward around which people can coalesce. We are ready to play a constructive part in that process. But I need to be clear with the Secretary of State: it would be a constitutional outrage were he to bring his discredited Bill back to this House in seven days. Put simply, he does not have the permission of the people of this country to proceed with his plans for the NHS. He is wrong to say that the NHS model we have known for 63 years is unsustainable in the face of the challenges of this century.

The NHS is the solution to those challenges, not the problem, having been judged the most efficient and fair system in the world. Those are truly great strengths, and my plea to the Secretary of State is to build on them, not throw them away. However, if he will not listen, the House can still intervene. Time is running out for the NHS. Tonight we have a final chance to put the NHS first and party politics second. The country wants us to do that. Let us rise to the occasion. I commend the motion to the House.

16:56

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

As a learned man, Mr Deputy Speaker, you will recall that Plato said that

“empty vessels make the loudest sound”.

The right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) has been a study in this: as his arguments have diminished, so his tone has become more strident. By the end of his speech, he was simply shouting slogans. I listened carefully to his speech, but in vain, for evidence of an argument, still less of an Opposition policy.

I ask the House to reject the motion, which is a desperate ploy from a desperate party. The House scrutinised and approved the Bill, with amendments. following a substantial and highly constructive engagement right across health and care services and with the independent NHS Future Forum. We accepted all their recommendations. The chairman of the British Medical Association Council said at the time that the recommendations

“address many of the BMA’s key concerns”.

Dr Clare Gerada, the chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said that

“we are reassured that things are moving in the right direction”.

Yes, things have moved in the right direction, including, apparently, Dr Gerada, encouraged by her council.

In the other place, things have moved in the right direction, too. We have had hours of constructive debate leading to further positive amendments, including amendments to put beyond doubt the Secretary of State’s responsibility and accountability with respect to a comprehensive health service, and a duty on the Secretary of State to have regard to the NHS constitution; amendments to make it clear that Monitor will have the power to require health care providers to promote integration of NHS services, enabling Monitor to use its powers to support integration and co-operation in the interests of patients; and amendments conferring new responsibilities on the NHS Commissioning Board and clinical commissioning groups to play an active role in supporting education and training, and requiring providers to co-operate with the Secretary of State when exercising his duty to secure an effective education and training system. All those amendments were positively accepted in the Lords.

[Mr George Howarth]

The Secretary of State quoted Plato earlier. Does he recall the advice that Cromwell gave to Members of the Long Parliament—that they had stayed in their place for too long and to no useful purpose? Is that not advice that he might take?

[Mr Lansley]

I do not think the right hon. Gentleman should quote Cromwell to a Cambridgeshire MP; I think I know more about Cromwell than he does. [Hon. Members: “Ooh!”] I might also tell him—

[Michael Dugher (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

What do you know about the health service?

[Mr Lansley]

What do I know about the health service? I have been at the Government and Opposition Dispatch Boxes for nearly nine years speaking on behalf of the national health service. Before that I was on the Select Committee on Health, looking out for the interests of the health service, and before that my father was working—[Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Front Benchers need to be a little calmer. A lot of Members want to be called, and we want to hear the Secretary of State.

[Mr Lansley]

Let me just say this to the hon. Member for Barnsley East (Michael Dugher), who is sitting on the Opposition Front Bench. There may be many things that we can debate in this House, including the policies, but I deeply resent any implication that I do not care about the national health service. I believe that I have demonstrated that I do; and his hon. Friends—and, to be fair, the right hon. Member for Leigh—have made that absolutely clear, time and again. Dr Clare Gerada, on behalf of the Royal College of General Practitioners, has said clearly that she recognises the Prime Minister’s and my passion and commitment and that of the Prime Minister to support the national health service.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

The Secretary of State said some moments ago that the Bill had all been debated in this House, but of course it has not. Possibly the most damaging aspect financially to the NHS outside England is the increase in usage of the private sector in the NHS in England to 49%. That has never been debated in this House, has it?

[Mr Lansley]

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is completely wrong. The private income cap for foundation trusts was debated fully in Committee in this House, and it has been debated again in another place. The reason for the so-called 49% was simply that Members in another House said that they wanted to be absolutely clear that the principal legal purpose of foundation trusts is to provide services to the NHS, and therefore that, by definition, a foundation trust could not have more of its activity securing private income than NHS income, hence the 49%. But in truth, the safeguards that are built in make it absolutely clear that, whatever the circumstances and whatever their private income might be—from overseas activities or overseas patients coming to this country—foundation trusts must always demonstrate that they are benefiting NHS patients. That is why, I remind the House again, the foundation trust with the highest private income—27%—is the Royal Marsden, which delivers consistently excellent care for NHS patients.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend share my absolute astonishment at Labour Members’ collective amnesia when it comes to the 13 years of mixed-sex wards and rising levels of MRSA and C. difficile that they presided over, along with a failed patient record system that has cost billions?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I will come to some of those points. However, I might just say that, in the space of the last few days, we have had an opportunity to demonstrate that Labour signed up to an enormous, centralised, top-down NHS IT scheme that was never going to deliver, was failing to deliver and was costing billions.

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

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Lansley]

No.

In the space of under two years, my right hon. and hon. Friends at the Department and I have delivered a reduction approaching £2 billion in the cost of the NHS IT programme. That will enable us to empower services right across the country to be better users and deliver better IT systems.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

Further to the list of changes to the Bill that the Health Secretary has outlined, will he confirm that it no longer imposes reviews by the Competition Commission on the NHS, therefore ensuring that it is not treated in the same way as any private industry would be?

[Mr Lansley]

That is indeed true, and my hon. Friend will also be aware—the Future Forum was clear about this—that the NHS benefits from the transfer of competition powers. The Bill does not create any new competition powers in the NHS; it transfers the exercise of competition powers from the Office of Fair Trading to Monitor, as a sector-specific regulator, as we agreed in the coalition agreement. That is what the Bill does, and that is a better protection for the NHS compared with what would otherwise be the application of competition rules, and before—[Interruption.] Labour Members mutter, but it has become apparent over recent weeks that in 2006, when the right hon. Member for Leigh was a Health Minister, it was their Government who received legal advice that demonstrated that their changes had introduced the application of EU competition rules into the NHS.

[Simon Hughes]

Will the Health Secretary amplify his answer to our Scottish National party colleague, the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie), and make it quite clear that both Government policy and, now, the construction of the Bill not only prevent private sector activity from going out of the health service in terms of finance, but restrict the method of expanding private sector activity? The controls are now in the Bill, even if they were not at the beginning.

[Mr Lansley]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. Interventions must be curtailed.

[Mr Lansley]

There is absolutely nothing in the Bill that promotes or permits the transfer of NHS activities to the private sector. Of course, NHS trusts are technically able to do any amount of private activity at the moment, with no constraint. The Bill will make absolutely clear the safeguard that foundation trusts’ governors must consent if trusts are to increase their private income by more than 5% in the course of one year, and that they must always demonstrate in their annual plan and their annual reporting how that private activity supports their principal legal purpose, which is to provide services to NHS patients.

Labour sought to oppose the Bill in another place, but its motion was defeated by 134 votes. We have reached a stage at which the Labour party, and the right hon. Member for Leigh in particular, having embraced opposition —for which they are well suited—now oppose everything. They even oppose the policies on which Labour stood at the election. Labour’s manifesto stated that

“to safeguard the NHS in tougher fiscal times, we need sustained reform.”

The trade unions have got hold of the Labour party in opposition, and it is now against reform. Its manifesto also stated that

“we will deliver up to £20bn of efficiencies in the frontline NHS, ensuring that every pound is reinvested in frontline care”.

I remind Labour Members, who are all wandering around their constituencies telling the public that there are to be £20 billion of cuts to the NHS, that that £20 billion was in their manifesto. Now they are talking about it as if it were cuts; it is not. We are the ones who are doing it, and they are the ones who are now opposing it. They scare people by talking of cuts—[Interruption.] They do not like to hear this. Actually, this year, the NHS has an increased budget of £3 billion compared with last year, and in the financial year starting this April there will be another increase of £3 billion compared with this year. The Labour manifesto also stated:

“Foundation Trusts will be given the freedom to expand their provision into primary and community care, and to increase their private services”.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

The right hon. Gentleman has just mentioned reform. In 2009, he said in this place:

“Organisational upheaval and reform do not seem to correlate well.”—[Official Report, 19 November 2009; Vol. 501, c. 225.]

What did he mean by that?

[Mr Lansley]

We know that it is necessary for us to reform in order to deliver the improvements that the NHS needs, as well as the sustainability that it needs. We are not even speculating about this; we can demonstrate that it is happening. This is in contrast to what the right hon. Member for Leigh said. He said that he was not scaremongering, then he got up and did just that. He scaremongered all over again. He went to a completely different set of data on the four-hour A and E provision, for example. He went to the faulty monitoring data, which are completely different from the ones that we have always used in the past—namely, the hospital episodes statistics data, which demonstrate that we are continuing to meet the 95% target.

When we look across the range of NHS performance measures, we can see that we have improved performance while maintaining financial control. The monitoring data from the NHS make that absolutely clear, and that is in contrast to what happened when the right hon. Gentleman was a Minister in the Department, when Labour increased the NHS budget and lost financial control. That happened when the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) was a special adviser in the Department. Now, we have financial control across the NHS and we have the NHS in financial surplus.

Let me return to the Labour manifesto—[Interruption.] Labour Members do not like to hear this. It stated:

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

Yes—choice and any qualified provider are in the Labour manifesto. We are doing what Labour said should be done in its manifesto—and it is now opposing it.

Let us find out what it is that the right hon. Member for Leigh opposes in the Bill. I did not find that out in his speech; I heard generalised distortions, but I genuinely want to know. Let us take some examples. Is it the Secretary of State’s duty in clause 1 to promote a comprehensive health service free of charge, as now? No, he cannot possibly be against that. Is it that the Bill incorporates for the first time a duty on the Secretary of State to act to secure continuous improvement in quality—not just access to an NHS service, but putting quality at the heart of the NHS? Is he against that? No, surely not. Anyway, that approach began with Ara Darzi, and we have strengthened it.

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

rose—

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

rose—

[Mr Lansley]

Let us try this one. For the first time the Bill introduces in clause 3 a duty that embeds the need to act to reduce inequalities firmly within the health system. After 13 years of widening health inequalities under Labour, surely he cannot be against that—or is he? No. Well, what about clinically led commissioning, with doctors and nurses who are responsible for our care given the leadership role in designing services? We heard earlier about one CCG, but 75 leaders of clinical commissioning groups wrote to The Times a fortnight ago. Let me quote them, because it is instructive of what is happening. They said:

“Since the…Bill was announced, we have personally seen more collaboration, enthusiasm and accepted responsibility from our GP colleagues, engaged patients and other NHS leaders than through previous ‘NHS re-organisations’”.

They continued:

“Putting clinicians in control of commissioning has allowed us to concentrate on outcomes through improving quality, innovation and prevention”—

precisely the things that the NHS needs for the future.

Now the right hon. Gentleman says, “Oh, yes, we can do GP commissioning”, but let us recall that in 2005, practice-based commissioning was in the Labour manifesto, and that in 2006, he said he was in favour of it. He said that he was

“introducing practice-based commissioning. That change will put power in the hands of local GPs to drive improvements in their area”—[Official Report, 16 May 2006; Vol. 446, c. 861.]

[Andy Burnham]

rose—

[Mr Lansley]

I will give way in moment. The right hon. Gentleman said he was in favour of practice-based commissioning. In 2010, he was the Secretary of State and was in charge of the manifesto, yet practice-based commissioning disappeared out of the Labour manifesto —it was not there at all. After the election, he pops up and says, “Oh, we are in favour of it again”. The truth is that practice-based commissioning was always the right idea: the Labour Government did not do it; the primary care trusts suppressed it. The Bill makes it possible for clinical commissioning groups to take responsibility and for doctors and nurses to design and deliver better services. Because of this Bill, it will happen—and it will not be suppressed by a top-down bureaucracy.

[Andy Burnham]

I made the Secretary of State an offer in my opening remarks. I said I would work with him to introduce his vision of clinically led commissioning, but he seems strangely silent about that and is pursing a very partisan tone. Will he confirm that he could introduce GP-led commissioning without any need for legislation—and without all the upheaval that is coming with his reorganisation?

[Mr Lansley]

The short answer to that is no. If one wishes to arrive at a place where the clinical commissioning groups have responsibility for budgets and proper accountability—including democratic accountability for what they do—legislation is required to get there. That is why we are putting legislation in place to make it happen.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

rose—

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

rose—

[Mr Lansley]

I give way to my hon. Friend.

[Angie Bray]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that, and I thank him, too, for coming to Acton last week and spending a long evening in a room full of health professionals—doctors, dentists and pharmacists. Does he agree that there was a real desire in that room to engage constructively in discussion on the reforms rather than to turn their back on them, as the Labour party would?

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her initiative in bringing doctors, dentists and nurses together to have that conversation. I really appreciated it, and I thought that it illustrated exactly what I have found—that, although not everybody in the room agreed with the Bill—[Laughter]—many did. Contrary to what I see on the Labour Benches, they all wanted to design better services for patients. They cared about patients and engaged in a proper debate about how to achieve that.

I am still trying to find out what it is in the Bill that the right hon. Member for Leigh is against. Is it the fact that the Bill strengthens the NHS constitution? He should be proud of that; he introduced it. For the first time, however, the Bill requires the Secretary of State to have regard to it and the NHS Commissioning Board and clinical commissioning groups to promote it. He is not against that, I presume.

What about the fact that, for the first time, the NHS Commissioning Board and commissioners will have a duty to promote integration throughout health and social care? Is the right hon. Gentleman against integrated care? I do not know. Let me try another question. What about the prohibition in clauses 146, 22 and 61 of discrimination in favour of private providers, which is in legislation for the first time? The right hon. Gentleman may be against that, because when his party was in office, that is what the Government did. They discriminated in favour of private sector providers, and we ended up with £250 million being spent on operations that never took place and the NHS being paid more for operations when it was not even allowed to bid for the work.

What about the creation of a strong statutory voice for patients through HealthWatch? The Labour Government destroyed the community health councils, they destroyed patient forums, and they left local involvement networks neutered. When they were in office, they were pretty dismissive of a strong patient voice. Well, we on the Government Benches are not, and the Bill will establish that patient voice. Is the right hon. Gentleman against all trusts becoming foundation trusts? The Bill will make that happen, and will support it—oh, no, I forgot: according to the Labour party manifesto, Labour wanted all trusts to become foundation trusts.

Let us keep moving through the Bill. Is the right hon. Gentleman against directly engaging local government in the commissioning of health services, integrating health and social care, and leading population health—public health—improvement plans? I ask the question not least because Labour local authorities throughout England are in favour of that. They want to improve the health of the people whom they represent. Is the right hon. Gentleman against local democratic accountability? The list could go on. Is he against the provision of a regulator—Monitor—whose duty is to protect the interests of patients by promoting quality, stopping anti-competitive practices that could harm patients, supporting the integration of services, and securing the continuity of services? Is he against that? It is in the coalition agreement, but I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman is against it or not, because he does not say.

Is the right hon. Gentleman against statutory backing for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence to support its work on quality? I do not know; we have not heard. Is he against developing the tariff so that it pays for quality and outcomes, not for activity? He knows that that has to happen, and he knows that it has been the right thing to do for the best part of a decade, but we have no idea whether he is against it now.

I cannot discover what the right hon. Gentleman is actually against. He sits there and says that he is against the Bill, but he is not against anything that is in the Bill. He is against the Bill because he has literally made up what he claims it says. He says that it is about privatisation—

[Andy Burnham]

rose—

[Mr Lansley]

All right, I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman one more time. Come on, then: let us find out what he is against.

[Andy Burnham]

I will tell the Secretary of State what I am against. I am against the rewriting of the entire legal structure of the national health service to plant market forces at the centre of the system, and to pit doctor against doctor and hospital against hospital. That is what I am against, it is what 170,000 people signed a petition against, and it is what the overwhelming consensus of health professionals is against. Would the Secretary of State not do well to listen to them for once?

[Mr Lansley]

So now we know, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is sheer invention. There is nothing in the Bill that creates a free-for-all. There is nothing in it that creates a market of that kind. The Bill means competition for quality, not price. It gives patients choice—and the Labour party’s manifesto was in favour of giving patients choice. Competition is not being introduced to the NHS by the Bill; it is being channelled in the interests of patients to support quality throughout the NHS.

The Opposition talk about privatisation. As I said to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), there is nothing in the Bill that allows any privatisation of NHS services. There is nothing in it that promotes such a privatisation.

The left-leaning papers talk about privatisation at Hinchingbrooke hospital because Circle is an independent mutual organisation. That is interesting, because the process for the franchising out of the management of Hinchingbrooke was started by the right hon. Gentleman when he was Secretary of State. So there we are: the only secret Tory plan that Labour can find turns out to be a Labour plan.

[Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)]

The real issue in the debate is between long-termism and short-termism. Is not the reality that the Labour Government went aggressively down the route towards private finance initiatives, burdening so many of our foundation trust hospitals with debt that was unnecessary?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. When Labour Members talk about the private sector in the NHS, they leave out of account the fact that not only did they give the private sector a sweetheart deal to get it into the independent sector treatment centres, but they have left us with 102 hospitals that were built by the private sector and £67 billion of debt to the NHS. They wandered around the country saying, “Look how we’re spending all your money to build all these new hospitals,” but they did not spend the money to build the new hospitals. They have left the NHS to have to deal with it now, which is why I am having to support hospitals that have unsustainable private finance initiative debt that the right hon. Member for Leigh and his colleagues did not deal with.

What do we have? We have policies that the right hon. Gentleman disowns, and we have nothing to replace them with. We have political opportunism, distortions dressed up as arguments, and a shameful campaign to scare people about a Bill that, in reality, is about strengthening the NHS for the benefit of patients.

Of course, if we want to see what Labour would do, we only have to look at the situation in Wales. I have to hand a Wales Audit Office bar chart; I shall hold it up so Opposition Members can see it. One bar shows rising real-terms expenditure on the NHS in England, and the blue bar shows rising real-terms expenditure on the NHS in Scotland, while the green bar shows the rate for Northern Ireland, where the rise is lower. Another bar, however, shows a very large real-terms cut in NHS spending in Labour-run Wales. Labour in Wales did not just agree with the right hon. Gentleman that it would be “irresponsible” to increase NHS spending; Labour in Wales went further, and cut spending.

In order to see the result of that, we must look at performance. In England, 91% of patients are seen and treated within 18 weeks, compared with just 68% in Wales. In England, only 1.4% of patients waited over six weeks for diagnostic tests; in Wales, 29% waited over six weeks. In Wales, Labour says it wants to insulate the NHS against reform. It ought to adopt it, however, because all that is happening in Wales is that the Labour party is, once again, putting politics before patients.

It is patients who should be at the heart of the NHS —patients and those who care for them. This Bill is simply the support to a far more important set of changes, which make shared decision-making with patients the norm across the NHS, which bring clinical leadership to the forefront of the design and delivery of health and care services, which make local government central to planning for health and care, which strengthen the patient voice, and under which the NHS is open about the results we achieve and how to improve those results so we genuinely match the best in the world. We will continue to work with the royal colleges, and others with an interest in the future of the NHS, to implement our plans, so that we provide the best possible care for patients. The right hon. Gentleman’s motion and speech gave no credit to the NHS for what it is achieving, but I will.

We are proud of the services we deliver for patients: the lowest ever number of patients waiting over six months for treatment—[Interruption.] Labour Members do not like to listen to this, but it is the reality. Average time spent waiting for treatment is lower than at the last election. The number of patients waiting over a year for treatment has more than halved since the election. MRSA and C. difficile are at their lowest ever levels. There are more diagnostic tests—up by 300,000 over a year. There is more planned care, and there are fewer unplanned emergency admissions to hospital. Some 11,800 patients have benefited from the cancer drugs fund, and 990,000 more people have had access to NHS dentistry, while mixed-sex accommodation is down by 95%.

[Andy Burnham]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Lansley]

No, because I am going to tell the right hon. Gentleman what he did not admit. Reform is going ahead. We are delivering efficiencies across the NHS.

[Andy Burnham]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Lansley]

All right, I will give way, but the right hon. Gentleman might like to explain why in the year before the election the administration costs of the NHS rose by 23% and he added more than £320 million to the administration costs of primary care trusts and strategic health authorities, but in the year since, we have cut those costs. Absolutely contrary to what he said—because he was completely wrong—we are on track to deliver the Nicholson challenge. We delivered £2.5 billion in savings in the first six months of this year, having delivered £4.3 billion in savings during the course of the last financial year. Come on: explain that one.

[Andy Burnham]

I should just point out that the Secretary of State is trading on the successful legacy he inherited from Labour: the lowest ever waiting lists; the highest ever patient satisfaction. Let me leave that to one side, however. We on the Opposition Benches have noticed that he has not once mentioned his tribunal defeat on the NHS risk register, and all the achievements he just reeled off are at risk, are they not, because of this misguided reorganisation? I ask him to answer this point today: will he now comply with the ruling of the Information Tribunal, publish this risk register today, and let the public know the full truth about what he is doing to their national health service?

[Mr Lansley]

I was right, was I not, that the weaker the right hon. Gentleman’s argument, the stronger the tone? My noble Friend Earl Howe answered a private notice question in the other place yesterday, and the position is absolutely as he described it: we were right to go to appeal, as the appeal demonstrated, because the tribunal agreed that we should not publish the strategic risk register. The decision of the tribunal was that it took the view that we should publish the transition risk register, but it did not publish its reasons. Given the simple fact that there is considerable overlap between the strategic register and the transition risk register, I find it extremely difficult to know what the tribunal’s reasons are, so we will see what its reasons are.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Lansley]

I will not give way.

Let me just make it absolutely clear that reform is happening and it will be supported by the Bill: nearly £7 billion has already been saved to reinvest in front-line care; we have 15,000 fewer non-clinical staff; we have 5,800 fewer managers and 4,100 more doctors—since the election, we have had more qualified clinical staff; there are 890 more midwives since the election and a record number in training; we have 240 clinical commissioning groups covering England, leading on commissioning from April on up to £60 billion-worth of services; and the ratio of nurses to beds in hospital has gone up.

Labour’s motion is politics masquerading as principle, and it is synthetic anger. I would take the right hon. Gentleman’s campaign more seriously if his own leader could have been bothered to turn up to his NHS rally, rather than taking a Rolls-Royce to a football game. This is empty rhetoric from an empty vessel; this is no policy, only politics; and this is a leader who treats his party’s campaign with disdain. The House should have no truck with them, and I ask it to reject the Labour motion.

17:25

[David Miliband (South Shields) (Lab)]

I rise today to make a simple point to Ministers and their supporters: however acute the embarrassment of giving up on the Health and Social Care Bill at this stage, it will pale into insignificance compared with the embarrassment, never mind the trauma and cost, of ploughing ahead with this health reform and making it the template for health policy for the rest of this Parliament.

The Bill has achieved a remarkable feat since we contributed to the Second Reading debate. First, it has taken the Government hostage. It is the political equivalent of the Stockholm syndrome: falling in love with your captor. The Prime Minister insists, in one breath, that he must have the Bill to save the NHS and, at the same time, at Prime Minister’s questions, he insists that 95% of the country has already had the benefit of the reforms that he claims the Bill will put through.

Secondly, in the real world—many miles from the claims of Ministers that they wanted an unprecedented consensus between politicians and professionals—this Bill is without friends. Even more remarkable, and shocking to me, is that it is a Bill that has lost friends at each and every stage of its passage through Parliament. Every compromise, every “concession” and every retrofit has cost the Bill coherence, cost the Bill support and raised levels of anxiety about the Bill.

The reason for that is simple: the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and the Deputy Prime Minister have made it their calling card to say that the choice is between this Bill and inertia. I know that tactic, as I have written those speeches and those articles, but in this case the problem is that that is not true. The Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Secretary of State for Health have put forward practical proposals to achieve some of these aims that are shared across the House.

The Secretary of State will recognise that more reform is going on in the English health service than in any other health service in the world at the moment—that is the product of what was done under the previous Government. That is perhaps one reason why it is improving faster than those anywhere else. The choice is between good reform and bad reform, and this Bill is bad reform: it gives reform a bad name. In fact, it threatens to set back the cause of reform for a generation, and I want to explain why.

As amendment has been piled on amendment, the Bill has gone from being wrong to being the most half-baked, quarter-thought-out shambles that the NHS has ever seen. I want to give three examples that go to the heart of the issues raised by the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister in their speeches to launch the Bill. The first and most important is managing service change. That is most important, because everyone agrees that the health service has to change to deal with the challenges of demography, drug costs and medical technology, and that means changing in the way in which services are organised. Yet in its hatred of planning and confusion about competition the Bill makes change at a local level not more likely but less. Why? The levers of change have been neutered. Clinical commissioning groups are too small and weak as replacements for primary care trusts, the NHS Commissioning Board is too remote and gargantuan and, as the Palmer study of reorganisation in south-east London shows, market forces on their own will not reconfigure services in a coherent way.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

This weekend I met 80 women from Walthamstow who are desperately concerned because we do not have a sexual health service there, so we have very high levels of teenage pregnancy and repeat abortion, as there are doctors in the constituency who will not provide contraceptives. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the changes could make dealing with such problems harder, not easier?

[David Miliband]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Far from driving the health service towards a coherent vision of the future, the Bill promises frenetic gridlock as professionals try to make the best of the bad job they have been left by the Health Secretary.

The second example is promoting efficiency. The Select Committee on Health stated:

“The reorganisation process continues to complicate the push for efficiency gains.”

It is, of course, right. The story today that senior GPs are spending four days a week coping with reorganisation rather than treating patients is, I predict, only the first step on that road.

The third example is accountability. If there was a germ of an idea in the original Bill presented by the Secretary of State, it was to align clinical and financial responsibility. In May last year he said that the key question was to

“put the right people in charge”.

After a year, it is completely inexplicable who is in charge: not GPs, because they are overseen by the greatest behemoth of them all, the national NHS Commissioning Board; not hospital trusts, because they are answerable to Monitor and the competition authorities; not the sectoral replacements for strategic health authorities, because they are only temporary; not the managers, because they are being sacked just before they reapply for their old jobs, which now have new names; and not the clinical senates, because their purpose has not yet been defined.

In truth, the new system hardly deserves the title of a system at all. It is not just that people do not support what the Government are doing, but that they simply do not understand what the Government are doing. I warn the House that the real danger for the NHS is a perfect storm of rising costs, rising demand and opaque and inexplicable decision-taking structures.

The Government promised clarity but have delivered complexity. They promised devolution but have had to create the biggest quango of them all. They promised efficiency and they have delivered bureaucracy. The result is that at the end of this Parliament we will once again be back in a debate that I thought we had buried for ever, about whether a tax-funded health service free at the point of need could deliver for the whole population of Britain. That is the last debate we should be having, but it will be the product of the shambles now being created.

I believe the Secretary of State when he says he supports the NHS passionately, but by the end of this Parliament, when the structural flaws of the plan are clear, he will not be around to defend it. That is the true danger of this misconceived and unloved Bill, and that is why this Secretary of State, in his last act of kindness to the NHS, should kill the Bill.

17:33

[Mr Stephen Dorrell (Charnwood) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for South Shields (David Miliband) and it was notable that his hon. and right hon. Friends were listening to his words, rapt, possibly reflecting on what they had missed out on. The kernel of his argument for this side of the House appeared to be the offering of advice to us about where our party advantage lay. He will forgive me if I say that I think we should look elsewhere for advice about where our party advantage lies.

The right hon. Gentleman was raising a voice for Blairite reform of the NHS, and that is a theme to which I want to return. Some opponents of the Bill can claim the virtue of consistency. Some opponents of the Bill can claim that they always opposed the development of structures in the health services that encouraged flexibility and encouraged a focus on the patient voice and on general practitioners and the wider clinical community as an effective voice for patients in the health service.

Some can claim that they have always opposed having a health service open to private and independent sector provision alongside the national health service provision—that they have always preferred a centrally planned, state-provided service. The right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), who is not in his place, can claim the virtue of consistency on that argument, but the shadow Health Secretary cannot claim that consistency because he, like the right hon. Member for South Shields, was once a Blairite. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has shown with the quotations he gave from the shadow Health Secretary when he was at the Department, the shadow Health Secretary used to be an advocate of the policies that underlie this Bill. The Bill will deliver effective practice-based commissioning —a policy that the shadow Secretary of State used to espouse.

[Andy Burnham]

If this Bill simply continues our policy, why does it rewrite the entire legal structure of the national health service over 500 pages?

[Mr Dorrell]

The right hon. Gentleman knows that there is room for more than one view about the extent to which there is a need to rewrite the full statutory basis of the Bill, but that is not the issue now. The question is how, if we went down his route, had a summit and talked for another 12 months about what the institutional structure of the health service should be, that would serve the policy objective that he seeks to espouse, of greater clinical engagement in commissioning. How would it serve the policy objective of which he says he is in favour, of engaging local authorities and the wider political community in decisions that shape the future of the health service?

One issue that the right hon. Gentleman did not mention in his speech is the shift of public health out of the relatively narrow interpretation that is implicit when it is located in the national health service. Instead, public health can properly be understood as being part of the wider range of local government. Those changes do not justify some of the more ambitious rhetoric being used in support of the Bill but they certainly do not come close to justifying the rhetoric being used against it. If half the things being said about the Bill by Opposition Members were true, I and most of my right hon. and hon. Friends, and certainly my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, would not support it.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

In answer to a recent parliamentary question I asked about waiting lists, Ministers told me that they had no information on waiting lists for private patients. How does the right hon. Gentleman think it will be possible for NHS patients to believe that their waiting times are consistent with their need for treatment when there are no figures to indicate what happens in the private sector?

[Mr Dorrell]

One of the effects of the Bill will be to integrate the private sector more fully in the delivery of public sector services in order to meet better standards for the national health service patient whose services are commissioned by the NHS commissioner. I should have thought the right hon. Lady would welcome the fact that there was greater opportunity for the national health service patient to enjoy the benefits that have previously been available on too exclusive a basis to the private sector patient. With a proper, open-minded commissioner, those benefits ought to be available, as the Blairite doctrine advocated when the Labour party believed in it, to all patients, including, pre-eminently, the vast majority of patients who rely on the national health service.

It is claimed by the Bill’s opponents that it is in favour of privatisation, but as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State says, there is not a single provision in it that promotes privatisation. It is said to be a Bill that promotes fragmentation. The service already suffers too much fragmentation. The Bill writes into the law an obligation to deliver integrated, more collaborative, joined-up services. That addresses the problem that has been identified, which is attributed by its opponents to the Bill. It is said to be a Bill that promotes unbridled competition. That is absurd.

It is not only the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Leigh, who can be quoted from the past. The hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), who is seated alongside him, has said some very useful positive things in the past. I quote from the hon. Lady in 2010:

“I’ve always believed that there needs to be some competition and challenge in the system. . . I am also a strong champion of giving patients more voice and a greater say, not only over which hospital they go to but all aspects of their treatment and care.”

I am sure the hon. Lady was speaking on behalf of those on her Front Bench. The whole Labour party used to believe in that. We believe in that. That is what the Bill provides. It builds on the policy that the right hon. Gentleman used to believe in and used to advocate. He should have the courage of those convictions.

17:40

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Charnwood (Mr Dorrell), the Chair of the Select Committee. He said that Members on our side were looking raptly at my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (David Miliband). Members of the right hon. Gentleman’s party were looking raptly at him, wishing he was the Secretary of State for Health.

It is an important day when both Houses are discussing the Health and Social Care Bill, and the Prime Minister is in America. When they meet, President Obama will remind him that he said the NHS was

“something that Brits take for granted—a health care system that ensures you don’t go bankrupt when you get sick”.

The President’s stepmother said that she owed her life to the NHS, without which she would not have been alive to see him become President.

There is a kind of double-speak about the Bill. If the Bill was so good in the first place and so necessary, why did we need to have a pause and a rethink, and why were there so many amendments—almost 2,000? The Secretary of State says that the GPs are in control. If the GPs are in control, why are there commissioning support groups? Who are they accountable to? Who voted for the GPs to be in control of a business dealing with public funds? If GPs are so happy about this, why did a GP in Walsall tell me that they are demoralised, disengaged and uninspired? Maybe because they were not consulted.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?

[Valerie Vaz]

No, I am sorry. [Interruption.] Okay.

[Robert Flello]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend. My persuasive charms work. Does my hon. Friend share the concerns of my constituents? They often find it difficult already to get a GP appointment. With GPs spending so much time with commissioning boards and more to come, will that not make it even harder to get time in front of a GP?

[Valerie Vaz]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. He should read the front page of the left-leaning newspapers, and he will see how much money is being spent on locums.

The GP in Walsall said that the pace of change is too fast. GPs are being forced into larger organisations. They have no experience of managing a business model. The Secretary of State says he wants to cut the numbers of managers. If the number of managers has been cut, why are the management consultants crawling all over the NHS? A group of consultants including McKinsey, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers sealed a £7.1 million contract with 31 groups of GPs. Pulse found that four in 10 clinical commissioning groups across England have begun to enlist commissioning support from the private sector. That was the work that the PCTs did.

The Secretary of State says that change is happening anyway. So why have the Bill? The Secretary of State says that Monitor did not have a duty to promote competition. So why did the Government not approve the amendment tabled by Lord Clement-Jones that sought to designate the health service as

“a service of general economic interest”,

taking it out of EU competition law? That was not accepted.

The Government said that the role of Monitor is like that of Ofgem, Ofwat and Ofcom. David Bennett said:

“We did it in gas, we did it in power”.

Who are the shareholders? Look at Centrica. Its shareholders include Bank of New York Mellon, the Government of Singapore, the Government of Norway, the state of California, the Government of Saudi Arabia, and Goldman Sachs. The shareholders of the NHS are the people of Britain—but for how long?

The Secretary of State says he wants integration, but the Bill will effectively repeal the integration that started with the Health and Social Care Act 2001. Torbay is a classic example of that. What about the cost, which is £1.2 billion and counting?

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

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Valerie Vaz]

I am sorry, but I have nearly finished my speech and must press on.

There was a chorus of disapproval from professionals when the White Paper was published, as they wanted more information. As Rogers and Walters say in the sixth edition of “How Parliament Works”, if there is pre-legislative scrutiny, Ministers have less political capital at stake and changes are not seen as defeats; the scrutiny of a Bill in draft gives higher quality legislation. That is not a description of the Health and Social Care Bill. The pre-legislative scrutiny was in the Secretary of State’s head, not in a draft Bill.

What about my constituent Stephen Wood, who went to his local GP’s surgery only to be told that doctors would only refer him to a consultant privately, not on the NHS, as he had apparently used up his budget?

[Mr Lansley]

Rubbish.

[Valerie Vaz]

It is true. This has become personal. The NHS is an organisation in which miracles sometimes happen, which is why people are fighting to protect and save the very essence of its existence. Those who have paid their taxes do not want the Bill, and the health professionals do not want it. From all parties, professionals and patients in the NHS, we can say that we oppose the Bill, and when the NHS unravels, as it is now beginning to, we can say, “We told you so.” I support the motion.

17:46

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “Bill;” to end and add:

“declines to support the Bill in its current form; and calls for an urgent summit of the Royal Colleges, professional bodies, patients’ organisations and the Government to plan health reforms based on the Coalition Agreement.”

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), a fellow member of the Health Committee, who talks with great knowledge and, from the manner in which she handles herself in the Committee, is clearly very committed. The primary concern of us all in this debate is the future of the NHS; I do not question anyone’s motives as far as that is concerned. That is why I was particularly pleased when the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) opened the debate by reassuring us that we would have a non-tribal, non-partisan debate, and that is also why I feel rather saddened that the debate so quickly degenerated once again into tribalism, which I am sorry to say will seriously undermine our chances of coming forward with a rational solution to the intractable problem of what to do with the Bill.

Although the positions have become further entrenched by the debate, I am concerned about its outcome, because ultimately we will not defeat the Bill. This is not Second Reading, when Members could independently make up their mind on the issue outside the tribal mix. We should debate the matter in a manner that might assist the Government to reflect on where we are. I hope that ultimately they will withdraw the Bill, which is what many of us want them to do. As far as I can see, the Bill cannot be defeated by either House, so the power, and the fate of the Bill with it, lies pretty much entirely in the hands of the Government.

Although I understand that the Secretary of State is obliged to advance the arguments in the way he did today, I am concerned. Therefore, if we are to advance as I propose by withdrawing the Bill and, as set out in the amendment, calling a summit of those who want to take forward a lot of what I think is good in the Bill and in the coalition agreement, I am not sure how that could be achieved on the basis of what we have heard so far. Clare Gerada, the chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, this morning talked about withdrawing the Bill in order to stabilise the NHS and ensure that we go forward without basing the future of the NHS on ideology, but we of course need to do that while ensuring that everyone is working together.

I agree with the Secretary of State’s approach to the issue, which is that no change is not an option and that change and reform are of course required in the NHS, but I think that it is better that we take this forward on a more consensual basis than the Government have achieved so far.

I already have only a little time left, so let me say something about the Secretary of State himself, because his commitment to the NHS has been questioned in today’s debate. Let me make it clear to my right hon. Friend—in this regard—that, as I said on Second Reading, I believe that he approaches the issue with the very best of intentions, and I would never question the sincerity of his commitment to the NHS over many years, which I highly respect, along with his knowledge of the subject; our disagreement is on the judgment of the legislation. I do not know whether that metaphorical embrace will damage his reputation among his Conservative colleagues, but I hope that it will not.

There are many failings in the current legislation.

[Andy Burnham]

I am listening very carefully to the hon. Gentleman, but may I push him a little? He says that the Bill cannot be defeated, because of parliamentary arithmetic, but what is his take on the points that his right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) made? Is it not the hon. Gentleman’s understanding that the Lib Dem conference withdrew its permission for his peers to vote for the Bill? Does that not therefore take permission away from Liberal Democrat MPs to support it?

[Andrew George]

The right hon. Gentleman is aware that the conference was advisory on the issue. The motion before it actually congratulated our noble Friends in the House of Lords on having achieved significant amendments to the Bill. They have made the Bill less bad but not good enough to make it acceptable to myself—or indeed to many of my colleagues.

The right hon. Gentleman knows very well that Liberal Democrat Ministers and others cannot vote against the Government, so it is not very helpful of him to try to tease out such a situation. The pressure on those who are not so constrained has, however, been lifted.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

For the purposes of clarification, would the summit that the hon. Gentleman’s amendment puts forward include the trade unions? If not, why not?

[Andrew George]

The summit should be as inclusive as possible—so that there is no sense of it being exclusive. The professional bodies and patient organisations in the amendment would be included as well, so I hope that the hon. Gentleman is reassured on that point.

I congratulate my colleagues in another place on what they have achieved, but underlying that is a concern about the role of the private sector. Serco in Cornwall provides an important out-of-hours service, but there are serious concerns about how the service is being run, and I have raised concerns about that over the past year. The Secretary of State has pointed out that the contract was let under Labour, but even so we can learn lessons from the previous Government’s failings on letting private sector contracts, and there are issues, which I shall take up with the Secretary of State, in that regard.

The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that the debate calms down and becomes less tribal, so that people can speak more freely and the Government can reflect on the fact that the Bill has less support than it did when it started. Support is ebbing away, and opposition to it is increasing even at this stage.

[Mr Adrian Sanders (Torbay) (LD)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Andrew George]

I cannot at this stage. I am sorry about that.

I urge the Government to reflect on this debate and on the opposition in the country, to withdraw the Bill and to allow such a summit to go ahead.

17:53

[Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to follow the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), and the House would do well to listen to what he says. The Secretary of State may feel that he can bluster his way through the debate, but people out there—our constituents—are listening. When I became a Member almost 25 years ago to the day, I made the point that the health of the people is the highest law, so even if we cannot deal with the Bill in this debate, we have three hours in which we can send a message. Although I came into the Chamber to support the motion in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), I have listened to what he has said and to what the hon. Member for St Ives has said, and I am quite content to back the amendment and to ask for an urgent summit—and for the trade unions to be involved as well.

[Mr Burrowes]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Joan Walley]

No, I will not.

I agree with the right hon. Member for Charnwood (Mr Dorrell), who chairs the Health Committee, that some aspects of the Bill are very worthy, particularly those on public health, and we do not want to lose them, but four issues need urgent clarification, and I hope the Minister will address them when he replies.

First, why are my constituents not entitled to know what is on the risk register? What is there to hide? Why can we not have it laid before us when we are making important decisions about the future of the NHS? I am quite content for there to be service changes, but not structural, top-down reform, which the Prime Minister himself, in one of his commitments before the general election, said he was not going to introduce.

The key issue for the House is whether the NHS will be subject to the full force of domestic and EU competition law, and that has not yet been clarified. The Government maintain that it will not, but the changes brought about by the Bill make certain that it will. In any event, it is not in the Government’s gift to decide, because the issue will be decided in the courts, so I genuinely believe that we are entitled to clarification on that issue—[Interruption.] I will not give way on that point. It is absolutely essential that the Government, not the law courts of this country, determine NHS policy.

Secondly, what safeguards are there against private companies using loss leaders to replace NHS services and then, once the NHS service has been eliminated, maximising profits by reducing quality? We have heard from the Secretary of State on that, but once the service is eliminated, the private companies that come in will surely have a free hand. The Government say that there will be no competition on price, but private companies will still be able to use loss-leader tactics by overloading a bid with quality for the specified price, so we must have regard to the real concerns about that.

Thirdly, how will the Government stop cherry-picking in practice? If they attempt to exclude private companies from bidding for a particular contract, will they not face court action, and in those circumstances will not services be put on hold while the courts deal with how NHS care is to be provided?

Finally, again when the Minister replies—

[Mr Simon Burns]

In 10 minutes?

[Joan Walley]

Yes, in 10 minutes, because we need time to sort out the NHS. What will the Government do about foundation trusts once they become unsustainable—once they have been undermined by cherry-picking and by loss leaders?

There are huge issues, our constituents’ health is at stake, and this is an important debate, one in which the Government need to take account of what we are saying so that Parliament can have a say in how the NHS goes forward.

17:58

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

It is an honour to speak in this debate.

I thought that I should set out the context of our discussion. Members on both sides of the House have talked about demand, in particular, and it is important to look at that question. Most importantly, we must admit that the NHS needs to adapt under new pressures. In 2001 the NHS treated 12 million patients. Today that figure is 17 million, so in other words the number of people accessing the NHS has risen over the past decade from 101 per minute to 124 per minute, resulting in the cost of drugs and prescriptions rising by more than 65%.

[Mr Anderson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Skidmore]

No, I will not. The right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) did not give way to me, I am afraid, so I am not feeling too charitable.

Despite the coalition Government’s added investment of £12.5 billion over the course of this Parliament, demand will only rise further, with 1.6 million people turning 65 in the course of this Parliament and many living into their 80s and beyond. The number of 85-year-olds will double by 2030. The NHS is facing a perfect storm—an ageing population combined with a rise in chronic conditions, including an increase in diabetes, which will take up as much as 25% of the health budget. That is why we are reforming the NHS. Just as this Government are committed to dealing with the deficit so that future generations will not be burdened with debt racked up yesterday, we must be committed to reforming the NHS so that future generations can enjoy an NHS that is free at the point of delivery regardless of the ability to pay. I am sure that that is what everyone in this House is committed to.

By placing GPs rather than management in control of patient treatment, we will not only drive up standards of care, allowing patients access to more treatments under any the qualified provider scheme, but ensure that recurrent cost savings are made to be reinvested in the NHS to cope with the rising demand. Above all, this is an evolutionary measure. My right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Mr Dorrell) touched on the Blairite doctrine. It was a pleasure that we had Professor Julian Le Grand come to the Health Committee, where he said that if Tony Blair were still Prime Minister and he were advising him, he would have urged him to undertake this measure. It is great to see the right hon. Member for South Shields (David Miliband) in his seat. It would have been fascinating to see what would have happened if he had become leader of the Labour party. I am sure that we would not have seen the rank tribalism that we have seen from those on his Benches today.

[Andy Burnham]

We are supporting the amendment.

[Chris Skidmore]

I am talking about the right hon. Member for South Shields, not the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George).

Professor Julian Le Grand stated on 28 February:

“With respect to the NHS bill, it is important that even those who generally prefer to rely upon their intuitions should avoid muddying the waters by accusing the bill of doing things that it does not, like privatising the NHS; and that all those involved should acknowledge the peer-reviewed evidence demonstrating that its provisions with respect to public competition…are likely to improve patient care.”

More hours have been given to debating this Bill than any other during this Session. Despite Labour’s message, which seems to be opposition for opposition’s sake, we are gradually learning what its policy will be for the next general election. It is interesting that at a rally in Manchester last week, the right hon. Member for Leigh stated, in front of his union faithful,

“And I will make you a promise today—if I am the health secretary after the next general election I will repeal this bill.”

According to the Opposition, this is the greatest reorganisation in history. Yet the Bill will save £4.5 billion straight away and then £1.5 billion recurrently, year on year, thereafter.

[Mr Burrowes]

All our constituents will be listening intently to the debate and will hear that following the health inequalities that have grown under the previous Government, the Opposition will oppose and repeal legislation that imposes a duty to tackle those inequalities. What will they think of that?

[Chris Skidmore]

We have already heard one Labour Member say that she welcomes the new measures on health inequalities, so it is a shame that the legislation could be repealed in its entirety.

Last week, Labour Members committed themselves to re-establishing primary care trusts and strategic health authorities—to reconstituting the NHS as if time had stood still, with middle-level management holding the reins. It is remarkable that Labour is not the party of the NHS patient but has become the party of the PCT, the SHA and, above all, the NHS manager.

[Grahame M. Morris]

On the hon. Gentleman’s point about efficiency, costs and so on, I draw his attention to an article in The Guardian today which says that the cost of replacing with a locum GPs who are away on clinical commissioning duties is £123,000 a year, while one clinical commissioning group has reported that 15 local doctors are each spending two days a week away from their surgeries. How is that an efficient use of resources?

[Chris Skidmore]

We are reinvesting the billions of pounds saved on managers into front-line care, and that is why we have already seen over 5,000 new doctors working on front-line services this year. I understand where the hon. Gentleman is coming from in terms of the political spectrum, but I believe that he is referring to a TUC press release that The Guardian published in full.

In a previous debate, the right hon. Member for Leigh said that he would put a cap on private practice in “single figures”. That would take the NHS backwards from its current position, and it is an arbitrary cap based on ideology, not on what is in the best interests of NHS patients. Nor is it in the interests of some of our best-loved hospitals. Dr Jane Collins, the chief executive of Great Ormond Street hospital, has said:

“The lifting of the private patient cap would allow us as a Foundation Trust to treat more patients, but also, through re-investment, to help more NHS patients.”

So Labour has set its face against Great Ormond Street hospital: well done!

We need a constructive debate about what needs to be done for patients in the 21st century. The right hon. Member for Leigh should stop using the shroud-waving language that he used today in stating:

“Time is running out for the NHS.”

In December last year, he said that there were 72 hours to save the NHS. What happened? He should beware, above all, of becoming the boy who cried wolf. I believe that this Bill will improve the NHS. I sincerely urge him to base his argument not on intuition but on facts, and, for the sake of patients, not to turn his back on reform that he once believed in and should go back to believing in.

18:05

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

If there are three letters in the English language that resonate in practically every household in this country, they are NHS. One need say no more than “Save the NHS” for the people of this country to know what one is about. The NHS is this country’s most precious national institutional asset. It is free at the point of use and available to all. It has saved lives, it has prolonged lives, it has improved the quality of lives, and it has done all those things by the million—and now this Government are in the process of destroying it.

That is not surprising, I suppose, because, after all, when Aneurin Bevan brought to this House the Bill to create the national health service, the Conservatives voted against the creation of the national health service. Ted Heath accepted it as part of the national consensus. That consensus was breached by Margaret Thatcher, but even she never targeted the national health service. “The national health service is safe in my hands”, she said. It is all the more shameful that the Government are legislating in this way, because the Tory posters in the 2010 election featuring the current Prime Minister specifically featured the NHS—the Tories knew that that was their vulnerable point. It is now even more so, and it will destroy them.

This Government are the most right-wing Government that the country has had for three quarters of a century. They bring back the social neglect and the social damage of the era of Neville Chamberlain. They are creating mass unemployment, and particularly youth unemployment. They are harming our schools and destroying Sure Start, whose creation, of course, they also opposed. They are taking the police off the streets and provoking crime on the streets. They are inflicting irreparable harm on the universities and on higher education. They are harming pensioners, even down to the niggling theft from them of money from the winter fuel payment. They are creating homelessness. They are doing damage that it will take a generation to repair, even if they are thrown out at the next general election—and all without a mandate of any kind.

All this damage to my constituency and to every constituency in the country, including those of Government Members, is being done with the cynical complicity of the Liberal Democrats. Without them, none of this would be possible. Last night, I had the distasteful experience of refreshing my memory of their manifesto by reading it again, and there is nothing in it to justify what they are participating in today and will be as this Bill proceeds through the House of Commons.

The Liberal Democrats’ spring conference last weekend was a degrading spectacle. They even trundled on the nation’s favourite elder sister, Shirley Williams, to try to convince people that this appalling Bill and their complicity in it are tolerable. What a contrast that is with their facile promises in opposition, when they promised everything because they knew that they would not have to deliver. Now they have to deliver and they are damaging everything they touch. They could save the national health service by their votes this evening. If they do not, the nation will remember and the nation will never forgive.

18:10

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Like all Government Members, I am absolutely committed to the principles of the NHS: that it should be free at the point of need, irrespective of the ability to pay, and available to all those who need it. The NHS saved my life when I was 24-years-old. It was there for me and I always intend to be there for it, for my constituents and others who need it. I say to Opposition Members that on Saturday morning I spent two and a half hours in Dunstable market talking to more than 400 of my constituents on a wide range of issues, and not a single person raised concerns about the national health service.

[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Selous]

I will make a little progress.

I also say to Opposition Members that the GPs of Bedfordshire are thoroughly behind these proposals. Dr Paul Hassan, a long-standing Dunstable GP, will be the leader of the clinical commissioning group in my area. He is an excellent GP who has the interests of his patients at heart and he will do an extremely good job.

[Karl Turner]

The hon. Gentleman says that he met 400 people in his constituency, not one of whom mentioned their opposition to the Bill. Has he had any communication from any health service professional who has concerns about the Bill? I and many Opposition Members have received numerous e-mails and a great deal of correspondence from such people, as well as from constituents.

[Andrew Selous]

I am aware of one GP in my constituency who has concerns about the reforms. The overwhelming majority of GPs are thoroughly behind them. I find it troubling that Opposition Members do not trust our nation’s GPs, with their wisdom, good sense and commitment to patients, to do the right thing by their patients. They will look at the powers in the Bill and use them for the good of their patients where it is wise and appropriate to do so.

I have to tell Opposition Members that the clinical commissioning group in Bedfordshire has already established a new team to deal with emergency calls from elderly people in care homes. That has resulted in a 40% reduction in hospital admissions and has enabled vulnerable elderly people to be treated at home. That is just one example of the sort of thing that we will see when doctors make use of the powers that they are given in the Bill.

I will cite a few areas of the NHS in which, if Opposition Members think honestly, they will recognise that there were problems when they left office. I will use three brief examples from my constituency. As we heard from the Chairman of the Health Committee and others, one of the important things that the Bill will do, under part 1, is to integrate health and social care. I am extremely grateful to the Minister of State, Department of Health, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), who has been looking at the issue of delayed transfers of care at Luton and Dunstable hospital. The new structures that will be introduced under the Bill, with the full integration of health and social care, will be helpful in that area and will deal with the serious issue of delayed transfers of care.

[Mr Sanders]

One of the problems that my constituents have is that they have experienced integrated health care in Torbay since 2003, but it is having to be dismantled because of the Bill. It is difficult to explain to my constituents why what they have taken for granted and enjoyed under existing legislation requires this big Bill.

[Andrew Selous]

All I can say to the hon. Gentleman is that in my area the current structures are not dealing adequately with that issue. The powers in the Bill are permissive and I am hopeful that they will help.

To move on to mental health and other NHS services, my biggest town, Leighton Buzzard, has a 16-bed unit for mental health patients. Many of those beds are empty at the moment and could be used for step-up, step-down care or intermediate care. By giving commissioning powers to doctors and fully integrating mental health with other NHS services, the Bill will open up the possibility of those beds being used for the people of Leighton Buzzard and the surrounding area.

If Opposition Members are serious about orthopaedics, which is a massive issue for the NHS, they will know that the standard of care varies widely and that we can do better. I have discussed this issue with the Chair of the Health Committee and my right hon. Friend the Minister of State. Professor Tim Briggs, who is the clinical director at the Royal National Orthopaedic hospital, and others have useful suggestions in this area that the Government are prepared to listen to.

I say to Opposition Members: look at the record so far. Ten thousand more people have had access to cancer drugs. There are 4,000 more doctors and 900 more midwives in the NHS. There are 15,000 fewer managers and administrators, and all the savings from that are going back to the front line, where they are needed by the hard-working staff of the NHS. Opposition Members should look at the money. The Government are committed to spending £12.5 billion more on the NHS in England, unlike in Wales where, under Labour’s stewardship, the NHS is being starved of funds.

We heard terrible stories about health inequalities from the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), who spoke before me. I wonder whether he has looked at clauses 22 and 25 of the Bill, which for the first time put in law the duty to deal with health inequalities. My goodness, that is needed, because under the previous Government health inequalities got worse and were in a state comparable with Victorian times.

Clause 116 will prevent discrimination in favour of the private sector. We have listened to a lot of concerns about the private sector. Perhaps Opposition Members have forgotten about the private sector treatment centres, which were paid £250 million for operations that they did not perform. Clause 116 will ensure that the higher tariffs that have been paid to private sector providers cannot happen in future.

The involvement of local authorities in public health is another vital thing that did not happen under the previous Government. If Opposition Members think honestly about what local authorities can do fully to involve schools, children’s centres and care homes in the national health service, they will agree that there are real possibilities.

My plea to Opposition Members is to look at the facts, to look at what is in the Bill, and to look at the improvements that have happened already, such as the greater number of doctors and midwives and the £12.5 billion extra that is going into the NHS, under this Government.

18:17

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I will speak in favour of the Government dropping this truly awful piece of legislation.

Before I do so, I will say a few words about my constituent, Dr Kailash Chand, who began the e-petition against the Bill, which has reached 174,000 signatures. Kailash has been a GP in my area for 27 years. He has been awarded an OBE for his work and in 2009 he was named north-west GP of the year. He has dedicated his life to public health. At times he has spoken out against Government policy, whoever has been in charge. His motivation in creating the e-petition was solely his love for and belief in the NHS. We should be grateful for such public servants. I am delighted that he is here to listen to this debate.

[Mr Simon Burns]

So that everyone fully understands the background, will the hon. Gentleman confirm that this same doctor wants to be a Labour MP, has been appointed by the leader of the Labour party to review Labour party policy on older people, and has worked for the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) in a research capacity?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

The Government are just not willing to listen to the people who will be affected by the Bill. Kailash is not alone in opposing it. If I read out the name of every organisation that opposes the Bill, I would run out of time.

[Mr Burns]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

No, sit down and listen for once.

It is clear that the majority of non-biased, objective opinion is against the Bill proceeding. Never in the field of public policy have so many opposed so much and been listened to so little.

Should the Government not be asking themselves this: if the Health Secretary cannot convince the people who he wants to devolve power to, and if the Deputy Prime Minister cannot convince his own party members to support the Bill, maybe—just maybe—there is not that much going for it? The Health Secretary cannot even visit an NHS hospital, so low has his reputation sunk.

As has been said, the people who oppose the Bill, whether the royal colleges or Opposition Members, do not oppose all reform. Of course, NHS services will have to change over time, particularly in the provision of specialist services. The Labour Government introduced reforms, which used the private sector to the advantage of the NHS. The Bill does the opposite and uses the NHS for the benefit of the private sector. The problem is not reform, but these reforms. To say that anyone who opposes the Bill is against all reform is crass and simplistic.

Let us please put an end to the nonsense that the reforms are just an evolutionary approach following what has happened in the past. If that were the case, would there be an unprecedented groundswell of opinion against them? Once the Bill is passed, the primary care trusts and the strategic health authorities will be gone, and clinical commissioning consortia will be responsible for the whole NHS budget. Local authorities will take public health, and Monitor and the NHS Commissioning Board, not the Department of Health, will be responsible for the health system. That is a fundamental, top-down restructuring of the NHS, and no one wants it.

To justify that revolution, the Government started by rubbishing the success of the NHS. It began with the cancer survival rates and carried on from there, and every time the Government’s case has been knocked down. The King’s Fund, the respected health think-tank, in its review of NHS performance since 1997, clearly showed dramatic falls in waiting times; lower infant mortality; increased life expectancy across every social group; cancer deaths steadily declining; infection rates down, and in mental health services, access to specialist help, which is considered among the best in Europe. Again, I put it to the Government that they have no justification for the revolution that the Bill brings about.

The Government’s other justification has been that the NHS has too many managers, yet their reforms create a structure so confusing that, when an organogram of the new structure was published, it became a viral hit on the internet because it looked so ludicrous. What do the experts in the King’s Fund say about this? The myths section about the Bill on its website says:

“If anything, our analysis seems to suggest that the NHS, particularly given the complexity of health care, is under-rather than over-managed”.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

During the Bill’s passage, it has struck me just how vulnerable my constituents will be to doctors who are not as good as many of those who currently serve them well. One of our opportunities in Newham with a decent PCT was to deal with doctors who did not provide the right care. Is my hon. Friend , like me, concerned about the vulnerability of many of our constituents if the Bill is passed?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I agree with my hon. Friend. If the Bill is passed, perhaps one of the biggest changes will be to the relationship between doctor and patient. Every time a patient is not referred for some sort of specialist treatment, they will wonder whether that is on clinical grounds or because their GP has one eye on the budget. Whatever the basis for those fears, GPs will be in a difficult position, and because NICE guidance will no longer be compulsory, the problem will be compounded when people compare their experience with that of others, using the internet or other means.

However, the most worrying aspect derives from the stories that we hear from parts of the country where individual GPs might have a financial interest in the services that they now commission. Such a relationship would not only destroy the trust at the heart of the system, but provide perverse incentives for how it might develop in future.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Government Members have said that the Government will spend an extra £12.5 billion on the NHS. Yet University hospital in Coventry must make further cuts of £28 million this year. The Government boast about the increase in the number of doctors, but it takes seven years to train a doctor. Who, therefore, was responsible for training those doctors? The Labour Government.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

My hon. Friend is, as ever, correct. He knows that the problem that all parts of the health service face is that they have been given money to justify claims from Ministers to Parliament, but they must ring-fence some of it to pay for the reorganisation—£16 million in the case of my PCT.

The story of the Bill is the story of British politics at its absolute worst. We have a weak and unpopular measure, opposed by nearly everyone, pushed through by two out-of-touch party leaders because they are worried that they will look weak if they perform a U-turn. Even worse, whatever Government Members might say, we all know that, had the Downing street operation been up to speed from the beginning of this Government—if, for instance, they had had a policy team in the centre of Government—the Bill would never have got through. After all, why, after spending so much time and so much money convincing the public that they could trust the Tories on the NHS, and after making a commitment that there would not be a further top-down reorganisation of the NHS, have the Government embarked on a deeply unpopular and unwanted top-down reorganisation of the NHS? The Bill has confirmed every swing voter’s nagging fear—you simply cannot trust the Tories on the NHS.

We have the Bill for two reasons: the vanity of the Secretary of State for Health and the naivety of the Prime Minister. Neither is a good enough reason for proceeding. It is time to drop the Bill.

18:24

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I was cut off when I previously spoke on the subject. Perhaps that was welcome, because I was quoting a strangely prophetic entry in Chris Mullin’s diary. It was a conversation with a Labour Member, whom he describes as a “mild-mannered” Yorkshireman—surely an oxymoron—who said in 2005:

“I think we will lose the next election. The Tories will come to some sort of understanding with the Lib Dems and we’ll find we’ve opened the door to the market in health and in education. And when we protest they will reply, ‘But this is your policy; you started it.’”

That is the story of our debate.

Critics of the Bill often fail to realise how far Labour had exposed the NHS to all sorts of market forces such as EU competition law, encouraged and subsidised the private sector, and imposed “any willing provider” in all sorts of places where it might not have been appropriate. Essentially, Labour set up the building blocks for a market system.

The Bill continues that process. To put it bluntly, no one in this House regards the Bill as anything but risky. Even the Whips, who are normally the most cheerful about legislation, can barely summon a smile when dragooning Members into voting for it. Why? There is a simple explanation. It is the combination of the biggest ever organisational upheaval and the biggest ever financial pressure: the £20 billion Nicholson challenge.

The Bill is also considered risky because the confidence of staff and the public is low, concern is justifiably high, and, to quote Donald Rumsfeld, there are too many “known unknowns”—about the interaction with EU law, how GPs can commission themselves legally, and what the law actually means. Nigel Crisp, the former chief executive of the NHS, recently described the Bill as “confused and confusing”.

There is also a lack of trust. To some, the thrust of the Bill seems essentially unchanged. As the Secretary of State warned us in 2009—I repeat his words in case people missed them in the earlier intervention:

“Organisational upheaval and reform do not seem to correlate well.”—[Official Report, 19 November 2009; Vol. 501, c. 225.]

The Bill also represents a significant generator of future over-regulation and, to some extent, a perpetuation of micro-management. There is no essential difference between a Government imposing AWP and telling everyone what to commission and when, regardless of local circumstances, and instructing everyone to have a Darzi clinic, as the Labour party did.

We are considering a strange spectacle—a sort of paradox. We genuinely have gradual improvement of legislation, but simultaneously there is increasing professional detachment and disillusionment. That is possibly because people view the Bill as big government; as a centralising measure. The right hon. Member for South Shields (David Miliband) was right to point out that a huge quango had been set up— “the biggest quango in the land”, in the words of my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who is now a Minister.

There are alternatives. Life without the Bill is possible. However, with or without it, the gap between professional and political opinion is fatal. The gap between ideology and evidence is fatal. The gap between what the Prime Minister thinks he needs—not to look weak—and what the NHS needs, which is a two-way dialogue, is also fatal. We must find some way of bridging those gaps. My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) has tried to find a particular way.

Spin and propaganda will not get any of us out of this. The reality will be played out in the next year and the subsequent year in hospitals, surgeries and homes. Spin will not help because, across the land, reality will kick in—and reality has a horrible habit of trumping spin.

18:29

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

I want to speak in support of the motion, which notes the e-petition and declines to support the Bill in its current form. As has been said but deserves repeating, the Conservative-led Government have no democratic mandate for the Bill; quite the opposite, given the Prime Minister’s promise that

“with the Conservatives there will be no more of the tiresome, meddlesome, top-down re-structures”

of the NHS. Yet this reckless and unnecessary top-down reorganisation will cost £3.5 billion, which could be spent on patient care.

Already in my local area and many others, patients are losing services, waiting longer and receiving poorer treatment than before. Salford primary care trust has ended its active case management service for people with long-term conditions—the service had been both popular and effective. NHS budget cuts have meant that a community matron service was ended in a local area.

The Select Committee on Health recently dealt with the impact of the NHS reorganisation in its report on public expenditure—my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (David Miliband) quoted it. The report concluded:

“The reorganisation process continues to complicate the push for efficiency gains...it more often creates disruption and distraction that hinders the ability of organisations to consider…effective ways of reforming service delivery and releasing savings.”

Cuts are having a direct effect on treatment. A staff member of the local branch of the Parkinson’s Disease Society told me recently that NHS cuts mean that GPs and pharmacists are switching to cheaper brands of drugs for patients with Parkinson’s, many of which are much less effective. One person was admitted to hospital. She became ill following a switch to a cheaper, less effective medicine. The hospital staff told her that she should be “firm with her GP” and insist on the more expensive brand.

The Bill brings competition into the NHS at a level that is unhealthy and unwanted. The PIP breast implants saga showed us the dangers for the NHS of a vast increase in private provision when regulation of medical products for use in surgery is so poor. In January, 14 consultants, GPs and public health experts wrote a letter to The Times about the expansion of private provision and the issues arising from PIP implants. They warned that the Health and Social Care Bill

“provides much less protection for patients should their provider fail than is available to people booking package holidays”.

With PIP implants and private surgery, there was a strong marketing sell to patients of the benefits of surgery but little information about risks, and little or no interest in aftercare. That is an important warning. We know that there are potential health issues with metal-on-metal hip implants, yet there will be pressure on patients waiting for a hip or knee replacement to go for private surgery to avoid the waiting lists that we know are building up.

The Bill risks creating a two-tier NHS and a return to the long waiting lists experienced under Conservative Governments in the 1990s—the Government have already watered down guarantees on NHS waiting times. I recall meeting a patient in 1997 who had been waiting up to two years for vital heart surgery, yet more recently in my constituency I have met people whose lives have been saved in a matter of days by the rapid diagnosis and treatment of cancers.

A number of local GPs have written to me calling on the Government to drop the Bill because they feel it undermines the bond of trust between doctor and patient. One GP told me:

“The reforms are being made on the cheap. GPs are being asked to do the work of the PCTs with half of the funding and all of the blame when problems arise. The Bill drives a wedge between primary and secondary care.”

That GP actually supports the theory of clinicians being given more input and supports a reduction in bureaucracy, but says that the Bill “does the exact opposite” because it introduces new layers of bureaucracy such as the clinical senate. He says that people coming in

“are doing so at different levels of understanding…leading to confusion.”

He feels that, ultimately,

“it will be the patients who will suffer…no one has asked the patients what they want.”

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend describes a GP in her constituency, but a GP in mine described his concern to me. He said that he is there to be a doctor and wants to care for patients, and that he does not have the expertise to be a manager. That is the overwhelming concern of his colleagues around the country. Does she agree that that is the danger of that part of the Bill?

[Barbara Keeley]

I very much agree. Only quite recently have GPs expressed such concern. I have never known GPs to come to their MPs in numbers, as they are doing, to complain about the implementation issues they are already finding. As I said, the GP I quoted supported the idea of GPs being more involved with decisions about patients, but he now thinks that the Bill is

“simply a mask for a cost cutting exercise…a way to deal with the NHS on the cheap. A way of farming out support systems…e.g. clinical support, into the private sector.”

He says:

“More money will be taken out of the NHS and put into the private sector.”

The hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) asked us to trust the wisdom of our GPs. That is a damning indictment by a Salford GP, and one that I believe is echoed by GPs up and down the country. Trusting the wisdom of my local GP, I urge hon. Members to support the motion.

18:35

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

I rise tonight to oppose the motion and the amendment. The motion is clear on the e-petition, on calling on the Government to drop the Health and Social Care Bill, and on declining to support the Bill in its current form. I see no mention of the risk register, yet when we debated it several weeks ago the shadow Secretary of State did not want to talk about it; he wanted to talk about the Bill. I shall come to the very confused position of the Opposition on this issue.

I will obviously not support the amendment—that will come as no great surprise to the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George)—but I agree with his reference to patients’ organisations. Such references have been missing from the speeches of Opposition Members. I would prefer a reference to patients and service users, because my first point is that the voice of patients has not been heard. Those are not my words, but those of somebody who gave evidence to the all-party parliamentary group on mental health last week. We have not heard the voices of patients in the debate so far—[Interruption.] Opposition Members are welcome to stand to correct me, but I have heard no mention from them of the words and views of patients.

[Karl Turner]

I am obliged to the hon. Lady for giving way. The mere fact that more than 170,000 people have signed the e-petition surely must speak volumes to her.

[Nicky Morgan]

If the hon. Gentleman wants to talk about maths or numbers—

[Karl Turner]

I am not talking about maths.

[Nicky Morgan]

We could talk about the number of people who have taken part in the Royal Colleges petitions.

[Karl Turner]

I am talking about the 170,000 people who signed the petition. What are you talking about?

[Nicky Morgan]

Well, 175,000 have signed the petition, but there are nigh on 60 million people in this country.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Mr Turner, do not shout over the Chamber. Either intervene or listen to the points that are being made. You do not have to agree with them; you just have to be quiet.

[Nicky Morgan]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. After many, many weeks on the Health and Social Care Bill Committee, there is no danger of the hon. Gentleman agreeing with any of the points that I make, but that will not stop me making them.

My hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) talked about mental health. Those who spent time on the Public Bill Committee will know that I am particularly involved and interested in mental health, and I hope that we will have a debate on mental health in the Chamber soon, but what has struck me in discussions of the Bill is that mental health service users want to be involved in decisions about the commissioning of their services. They have that opportunity in the Bill through the health and wellbeing board, HealthWatch, the clinical commissioning groups, the involvement of the voluntary sector, and, as hon. Members have said, the integration of health and social care services. The Secretary of State talked about shared decision making. It is incredibly important that that is allowed to flourish under the Bill.

My next point—a damning and depressing one for a Member of Parliament to make—is the misinformation that has been perpetuated about the Bill. Tonight, we heard the shadow Secretary of State say that time is running out for the NHS. An hon. Member said that the shadow Secretary of State spoke in December of our having 72 hours to save the NHS, and another said that their constituents are worried about the services that will be on offer. All that is scaremongering, and it is unfair on those who do not have the time, capacity or inclination to read the Bill. We need to talk about the reality.

[Grahame M. Morris]

On the charges of scaremongering, is the hon. Lady aware that the George Eliot hospital in Nuneaton is engaged in conversations with two private sector providers—Serco and Circle—on taking over that provision? In my 30-odd years involved in the NHS, I have never known that to happen.

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point and the measured way in which he made it. That is welcome in the debate on the Bill. As a midlands MPs, I am aware of what is happening in Nuneaton, but it is not my constituency so I will refrain from saying too much. I will say only that the hospital management have asked in other providers because they are concerned and want to ensure the best possible care. Is that not what we want?

[Grahame M. Morris]

They are private providers.

[Nicky Morgan]

That could be the voluntary sector or the community sector. They are all private. If someone has a physio appointment, it could be with a private provider. At the end of the day, we want the best care for patients and constituents. That is what we all want.

[Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) will be aware that the George Eliot hospital is on the edge of my constituency and serves my constituents. There are six people on the shortlist of people it is talking to—six people who have asked to be spoken to. It is wrong to imply that the George Eliot has gone out and spoken to only two private providers. The rest are all NHS providers.

[Nicky Morgan]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for clarifying that.

The shadow Secretary of State talked about trying to be constructive. I am unclear whether he supports his own motion. Is he calling for the Bill to be dropped or for a conversation? This reflects the position of the Royal College of General Practitioners, which says that it now wants to work with the Government to implement the Bill, having previously opposed it. That is because the people in the NHS are beginning to recognise that implementation is critical if we really care about patient care and service users. There has been talk about how people in the House have stopped listening. I suggest that it is the Opposition who have stopped listening. I am fed up with receiving repeat e-mails. When I reply, making this point and trying to engage in a debate, all I get is another standard e-mail telling me about privatisation and how the NHS will not exist in its current form. That is not correct and not fair on the patients who rely on the NHS.

As my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire said, implementation is already happening in many parts of the country, and that is to be welcomed. In Leicestershire, I have three excellent clinical commissioning groups and a health and wellbeing board being set up. I salute the public health professionals in Leicestershire who are working hard on implementation, the secondary care providers, the patient participation groups and everybody else who has taken part. The trouble is that implementation is being hampered by this ongoing political debate. I have a real feeling of groundhog day every time I come in and speak on this. We are going round and round in circles, and I repeat that the people who are missing out are patients and service users. Loughborough has taken the difficult decision to move our walk-in centre, but the GPs have taken that decision, and although I did not agree with it, they are clear that it will result in better urgent care services, and they are spending more money on them. I am willing to trust their judgment.

Members want to talk about the vote of the RCGP. It is interesting to note that out of 97,000 professionals, only 4,700 have taken part in the debate on the Bill. That should tell us something. We need to get on with the Bill now.

18:42

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

It is good to follow the hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan). Hers was an heroically loyal attempt to fill time on the Government Benches. But she is wrong. The Government have lost the confidence of the NHS to make further changes, and they have lost the trust of the British people to oversee those changes. Why no apology from Ministers? Why no apology to the 1.4 million NHS staff for the last wasted year of chaos, confusion and incompetence? Why no apology to the millions of patients who are starting to see services cut and waiting times get longer? And why no apology to the British people for breaking the promise in the coalition agreement to stop the top-down reorganisations of the NHS that have got in the way of patient care?

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

I was contacted last week by a constituent of mine, Ruth Murphy, who told me that she had waited more than 40 weeks for an operation that had then been cancelled four times. She asked me if that was what we had to expect from a Tory NHS. That is the kind of thing that my right hon. Friend is referring to.

[John Healey]

Sadly, Ruth Murphy’s experience is more and more common. By the end of last year, the number of people having to wait more than 18 weeks to get into hospital for the operation they needed was up 13% since the previous year.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Like many in the House, the right hon. Gentleman will have received a lot of correspondence from professional bodies, such as the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Midwives, the Royal College of Nursing, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy and many, many others, and they all say that these changes will lead to an unsafe foundation for the NHS. Does he feel that they all want change, but the right change, and the right change is not what will be delivered by the Government here?

[John Healey]

The hon. Gentleman is right. One of the great tragedies here is that the Government have squandered the good will and confidence of NHS staff that is necessary to make the changes to the NHS that it must make. This health Bill will make making those changes more difficult, not easier.

The Government could have built on the golden legacy and the great improvements that patients saw under 13 years of Labour investment and reform: hundreds of new hospitals and health centres; thousands more doctors, nurses and specialist staff; and millions of patients with the shortest ever waits for tests and treatments. Instead, we have a Tory-led Government, backed by its Lib Dem coalition partners, who have brought in the chaos of the biggest reorganisation in NHS history; wasted billions of pounds on new bureaucracy; and betrayed our NHS with a health Bill that will, in the long run, break up the NHS as a national health service and set it up as a full-blown market ruled, in time—for the first time—by the full force of competition law.

Everything about this NHS reorganisation has been rushed and reckless. This has been a master class in misjudged and mishandled reform—implementing before legislating, and legislating before being forced to call a pause to listen and consult on the plans already in hand. This health Bill was introduced last January. What was a very bad Bill is still a bad Bill. Make no mistake: this legislation will leave the NHS facing more complex bureaucracy and more confusion about who decides what and who accounts for what, and mired in more cuts and wasted costs for years to come.

Risk has been at the heart of the concern about these changes from the outset. There has been a lack of confidence and a lack of evidence, yet the Government are ready to manage the risks of introducing the biggest ever reorganisation in NHS history at the same time as the biggest financial squeeze since the 1950s. These risks were the reason for the growing alarm among the public, professionals and Parliament in the autumn of 2010, when I made my freedom of information request for the release of the transition risk register.

Last Friday the courts dismissed the Government’s efforts to keep secret the risks of their NHS reforms. Apocalyptic arguments were made in court, in defence of the Government, about how releasing the register would lead to the collapse of the Government’s system for managing risk. That did not happen when the Labour Government were forced to release the risk register for the third runway at Heathrow. Nor will it lead to the routine disclosure of Government risk registers, because the tribunal’s decision, like the Information Commissioner’s decision before it—both saw the transition risk register—was based on my argument that the scale and speed of these changes was unprecedented, and therefore that the public interest in their being disclosed was exceptional.

The Government have dragged out their refusal to release this information for 15 months. That is wrong. They have now lost in law twice. This is not a political argument but a legal and constitutional argument. It is about the public’s right to know the risk that the Government are running with our NHS, and about Parliament’s right to know, as we are asked to legislate for these changes.

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

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[John Healey]

I will not, as I have less than a minute left.

Release of the transition risk register is now urgent, in the last week before the Bill passes through Parliament. It will also be important in the two or three years ahead, as this reorganisation is forced through the NHS. I say to Ministers this evening: do the right thing. Respect the law, accept the court’s judgment and release the register immediately and in full, so that people and Parliament can judge for themselves.

18:50

[Gordon Birtwistle (Burnley) (LD)]

Let me follow on from what the previous speaker said about the legacy of the Labour party by expressing to him my concern about happened to the hospital in my constituency. “We went through the process of meeting patients’ needs.” Well, one would think that if a Government were meeting patients’ needs, they would speak to them to ask what they would actually like. That would be the normal thing to do in meeting patients’ needs: one would want to hear their views. Did the previous Secretary of State speak to the people of Burnley and ask what they wanted within that process? Not a one. Did the previous Government, in their programme to “meet patients’ needs”, ask the GPs what they would like? Not a one.

What did “meeting patient’s needs” mean to the people of Burnley? It meant the closure of our accident and emergency unit and our children’s ward, and their transfer 15 miles away to Blackburn. Hon. Members will recognise from what happened that the strategic health authority and the primary care trust, which made those decisions after taking advice from a gentleman called Sir George Alberti—hon. Members will also recognise from the name that he is not well known in Burnley—did not understand what the people of Burnley wanted. The strategic health authority and primary care trust transferred our A and E unit, which supported 250,000 people, if we include Pendle and Rossendale, and a children’s ward supporting the same number of people, to Blackburn, without one comment accepted from the people in my constituency. That was an outrage.

We campaigned vigorously to get that stopped. I held a march of more than 1,000 people through Burnley. What happened? Our local MP at the time—hon. Members will probably notice that after 77 years, the colour of the MP in Burnley has changed, and it has changed because of this—[Interruption.] A lot longer than you think. What happened then was that our MP was glad to support a change that meant taking a vital service from our town and relocating it 15 miles away. People were having to travel 15 miles to Blackburn after having heart attacks or suffering major trauma in car crashes. An example of a lady—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) wants to ask me a question and apologise for what Labour did, I am happy to take it. No? Fine. One lady had a car crash in the Burnley hospital car park—her foot slipped off the pedal and she crashed her car. She was in sight of the urgent care centre that we have now—an excuse for an A and E unit. What did they do? They did not treat her within 100 yards of the accident; they brought an ambulance all the way from Blackburn to take her there and sort out her problem.

Are Labour Members telling me that that is really good, when there is a chance that in future the people of our town will be able to have a say in what they want? Decisions about the health service will be taken by the GPs and the people they represent. If I have a problem I will go and talk to my GP. I cannot talk to the PCT, and I certainly cannot talk to the SHA, which sits in its landed glory in the centre of Manchester, so what is wrong with the Bill? We cannot allow what has been happening to continue, so I disagree with my hon. Friends down here below the Gangway. We cannot delay; we need to get on with it. We need to sort out the problems that we have. We cannot continue with what we have now.

There is a young lady called Rachel living in my constituency who suffers from myalgic encephalopathy, or ME. She has a friend in Blackburn who has the same problem. The friend in Blackburn was given treatment by the PCT, because it was a decent PCT. When Rachel asked the PCT that represents Burnley for the same treatment to help her, she was turned down—for £3,000. I went with her husband and her parents to speak to the people at the PCT and beg them to fund her treatment—I even had a letter from her doctor—yet the two ladies we spoke to cruelly turned us down. Her doctor was keen to do it; he will still do it in Rachel’s case. I support the Bill; let us get on with it.

18:55

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

I welcome today’s motion on the Health and Social Care Bill, because I know how precious the NHS is. We must do everything possible to protect it. I am proud of the fact that the Labour party founded the NHS. In 1997, when we took over from the previous Government, we had to rebuild a health service that was under-invested in and turn it into a world-class health service, which is what it is today. We reduced waiting times and invested in creating a health care system that delivered for patients. On our watch, there were 33,000 fewer deaths from heart disease each year, and we achieved the highest ever level of patient satisfaction. In my constituency we have seen real improvements locally and real successes in Tower Hamlets, with the highest childhood vaccination rates in London, improved health for those with chronic diseases such as diabetes, and reduced mortality rates from cancer and heart disease, although there is much more to do.

The Labour party has always been at the forefront of reform where it is needed and where it would benefit people on the ground. As my hon. Friends have already pointed out, we are talking about the difference between good reform and bad reform. My party will always support reform that is good for patients, but the Government’s plans do not offer that kind of reform. I have had thousands of letters and e-mails from constituents—

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Thousands?

[Rushanara Ali]

Yes, thousands. I have had thousands of letters and e-mails from constituents—members of the public, as well as professionals—who oppose the Bill.

[Jim Shannon]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Rushanara Ali]

I am sorry, but I will not be able to give way.

Those people are opposed to the Bill. They have been campaigning and have joined the 170,000 people who have signed up to oppose the Bill. They oppose it because they know that it will damage health care. This Bill will damage life chances; it will destroy the NHS.

In Tower Hamlets we had the first clinical commissioning group calling on the Government to drop the Bill, led by the respected Dr Sam Everington, who said:

“Your government has interpreted our commitment to our patients as support for the Bill. It is not.”

It is shameful that the Government carried on trying to use his name in support of the Bill. Those in the clinical commissioning group are concerned about the unnecessary bureaucracy that the changes will create and about the impact on patient care. They know that top-down reforms and restructuring will detract from their ability to care for their patients. That is what they have said. I hope that the Government will listen today, because in areas such as my constituency, where child poverty is higher than elsewhere—half the children in my constituency live in poverty—and where there is an inextricable link between poverty, health and life expectancy, it is vital that we have a health service that delivers for people on the ground. This Bill will not do that—Ministers know that, so they should do something about it. [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I do not need any help chairing this debate; what I need is for Members to listen. If they want to have a private conversation they can go outside and have it, and then come back in for the vote.

[Rushanara Ali]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

This Bill is effectively a form of backdoor privatisation of the NHS, with up to 49% of beds going to private patients. That will hurt my constituents and ordinary people up and down the country. That is why the Government need to think again. The Bill undermines the very principle of the NHS and the inspiration behind it. It highlights the fact that we cannot trust the Conservatives—or, now, some of the Liberals—with the NHS.

Waiting times are expected to go up. Already, between May 2010 and December 2011, they increased by 9%, and that will get worse. The Government need to take these issues seriously and start listening to people. In the east end, inequality continues to be a major concern, and we need to work together to reduce it. I reiterate the shadow Health Secretary’s request that we work together on this. The Government should listen, and they should drop the Bill.

As my hon. Friends have done, I appeal to the Government to think again, to think about the people of this country and to think about the people like those in my constituency who desperately need an NHS free at the point of delivery and free for those who need it. Those people do not need the marketisation and competition that are going to damage the health service. I call on the Government to drop the Bill.

19:00

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

As in the many other debates that we have had on this Bill, there is a strong sense of déjà vu here today. Opposition Members grind out the same old arguments over and over again to attack the Government. They spin the same misleading, scaremongering lines about privatisation. They proclaim the end of the NHS and talk down the medical professionals and patients who will be empowered by the Bill. They continue to support the bureaucracy that drains vital resources away from front-line care, certainly in my constituency. [Interruption.] As he did the last time we debated this, when I mentioned that my constituency had very little front-line local NHS care, the hon. Member for Copeland (Mr Reed) arrogantly sneers—

[Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)]

At you.

[Priti Patel]

No, at my constituents, actually. The Bill will bring much-needed front-line NHS resources to my constituency.

We have heard the shadow Secretary of State recycle the same speech from the Dispatch Box like a broken record stuck in the 1970s. The Opposition have nothing sincere to say and, as in every other debate on the Bill, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has rebutted all their opportunistic smears and given a robust account of the Bill and the benefits that it will bring. He has also ensured that the NHS budget is being increased.

Opposition Members would have done well to engage constructively on the Bill, instead of spending the past two years siding with the smear campaigns run by the left and its trade union paymasters that seek to misinform the public, play with their emotions and frighten them. In particular, we hear the Opposition complain about the involvement of the private sector in delivering health care, but it is this Government who are getting to grips with the spiralling private finance initiative costs that are crippling many NHS trusts in England, for which the Labour Government were entirely to blame.

I find it astonishing that the shadow Secretary of State can come to the Dispatch Box, week in and week out, and bleat on about the private sector without having the courtesy to accept that his Labour Government blew hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ cash on paying private providers for treatments that they failed to carry out. [Interruption.] Opposition Members should put away their synthetic anger for a moment and accept that, thanks to the Bill, expensive private sector pay-offs will be a thing of the past. When they were in government, they were enriching the private sector and creating an army of fat-cat NHS managers while failing to support patient care.

[Paul Uppal]

Opposition Members often try to portray us as callous and uncaring about the NHS, but is not reform absolutely essential if we want an NHS that is free at the point of delivery for our children and grandchildren?

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I mentioned front-line patient care in all our constituencies. This is about ensuring that resource goes to the front line, and that it is taken away from the back office, the bureaucracy and the managers.

Labour’s opposition to the Bill is shallow. Every time we have these debates—[Interruption.] We have had 13 years of Labour. Witham was once a Labour town, but my constituents have all woken up to the fact that, under Labour, there was no resource going to the front line of the NHS. Now, we are working across the parties to ensure that the Bill goes through Parliament, so that we can bring that much-needed front-line care to my constituents in Witham town. Labour’s opposition to the Bill is completely shallow, and every time we have this debate, its arguments are exposed as being ever more synthetic and opportunistic, with little connection to reality. The hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) talked about Labour’s commitment to the NHS. Just as history shows that Nye Bevan introduced the legislation to establish the NHS, it will show that this Secretary of State, through the Bill, has saved it for the patients who rely on it.

19:05

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

I want to pay tribute to all the hard-working individuals who work in the national health service, and to Dr Éoin Clarke and Dr Clive Peedell, who have been supportive of the coalition, for highlighting the dangers of the Health and Social Care Bill. I suspect that this will be my final opportunity to speak up on the Bill. I understand that there are only about seven days before its Third Reading debate in the House of Lords. It terrifies me that the Bill, which I have studied intently during its 40 Committee sittings, is going to become law. The Secretary of State is introducing a new health system. It is a system that no one voted for, and it will be unrecognisable in comparison with the NHS that cared for an entire population from the cradle to the grave.

[Jim Shannon]

Does the hon. Gentleman share the concerns of many Members on the Opposition Benches—and, I suspect, many people outside the House—that the Government will create a two-tier health system consisting of those who can afford to pay and those who cannot? Does not that fly in the face of what the NHS was originally set up to do?

[Grahame M. Morris]

That is precisely our fear, and I hope to develop that argument in a moment.

The national health service was established in 1948, against the background of the devastation following a world war. Men and women with a vision for a better, fairer society set in law the guiding principles and values of our NHS. Let us not forget that, during the post-war period, this country faced a bigger deficit as a proportion of our national wealth than we are facing today.

[Bill Esterson]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Grahame M. Morris]

I am afraid not, as I have very little time.

Those people knew that the value of money would be worthless if it did nothing for ordinary people. Nye Bevan stated:

“No longer will wealth be an advantage, nor poverty a disadvantage. Healthcare will be provided free of charge, based upon clinical need and not on ability to pay”.

In contrast, this Government seem to see any money spent by public sector providers as somehow wasteful unless it is trickled through their friends in the private sector who can turn a profit. I am concerned that their whole philosophy is antagonistic towards the public sector. I was outside the Lib Dem conference on Saturday, lobbying the delegates. I hope that Lib Dem MPs will support the motion tonight.

[Andrew Selous]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Grahame M. Morris]

No, I will not.

The Health Secretary’s problem is that no one voted for these reforms. He has no mandate, and 24 organisations are ranged against them. He has cited Clare Gerada of the Royal College of General Practitioners as his new ally, but nothing could be further from the truth. She has said that, just because the GPs are being forced to man the lifeboats, it does not mean that they agree with sinking the ship. They really have no alternative.

It has been suggested that Labour left the NHS in a dreadful state. Let us not forget that when the Labour Government were elected in 1997 only 34% of those surveyed in the British social attitudes survey said that they were satisfied with the NHS. That was the lowest level since the survey was started under the Tories in 1983. By 2009, however, public satisfaction in the NHS had more than doubled, to 64%. So, from that starting-point of cutting bureaucracy, decentralising powers and increasing clinical commissioning, we now seem to have an end-point, which is becoming clearer. It seems to be the NHS ripped asunder by competition and private provision.

This Bill is about establishing competition and entry-points for the private sector at every level of the NHS. In essence, it is a Trojan horse for privatisation. [Interruption.] People are saying that this is not true, so let us look at clause 163, as amended by the Lords, whereby for NHS hospitals and foundation trusts, up to 49% of their treatments can be set aside for private fee-paying patients. That must surely put NHS patients at the back of the queue.

In conclusion, Labour Members are keen to form a coalition with progressive Members who recognise the damage that these so-called reforms are likely to do to our health service. We fervently oppose the reforms as set out in the Bill. What we should be doing is talking about how to create a national care service, which would be the next and logical step for the NHS. On behalf of everyone in this country, my party, the Labour party, created the NHS and is now fighting to save it. We are building a coalition so to do. We will fight for the values, principles and future of the NHS well beyond the passage of this Bill.

19:11

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

The British public, as I think everyone here acknowledges, have a great care and concern for the national health service. That is not an idle superstition, as Conservative Members sometimes imply, but probably arises because we all interact with the health service when we are at our most vulnerable and at pivotal moments of our lives. Perhaps it happens when we are having our children or when a parent is dying or when we are ill and frightened. It is therefore unfortunate, to put it mildly, that no Government Members have been prepared seriously to engage with the depth of public concern about this Bill.

Let me quote a joint editorial, written by the editors of the British Medical Journal, the Health Service Journal and Nursing Times—publications that originally supported this Bill, to which fact I draw the Secretary of State’s attention. They describe the Bill as

“poorly conceived, badly communicated, and a dangerous distraction at a time when the NHS is required to make unprecedented savings.”

That is the consensus within the NHS. Ministers talk about the GPs involved in clinical commissioning groups. Of course GPs are moving forward and trying to engage with the changes—because they want what is best for their patients, not because most of them support the Bill in principle.

I have spoken about opinion within the NHS. As some Members know, my mother was a woman who gave her life to the NHS. She came to this country in the 1950s as a pupil nurse, and she ended her career working in a mental hospital just outside Huddersfield in West Yorkshire. She was part of that generation of men and women who built our NHS in the years after the second world war. In preparing for this debate and thinking about how to cut through the bluster, allegations, counter-allegations and politicking, I thought to myself, “Perhaps I should say what my mother would want me to say”. She was not a politician; she was not the head of a royal college; she was not a manager; she did not work for a glitzy Westminster think-tank: she was just an ordinary woman who was very proud indeed to say that she worked for the British NHS. My mother would have wanted me to say that the NHS is special and that from its earliest years it has been about change and adaptability. She would have wanted me to say, too, that politicians should handle it with thoughtfulness, not engage in party political games, but give the debate the care and thought that she always gave her patients.

I have to reinforce the point about the specialness of the NHS because part of the Secretary of State’s narrative, as this year has worn on, is that the NHS is somehow broken, and only his Bill can fix it. Well, we have heard that the Commonwealth Fund says that the NHS is one of the world’s leading health care systems for quality and value for money, and we know that it had the highest satisfaction ratings ever at 72%. Even the Secretary of State said on Second Reading that on a number of indicators,

“including mortality rates from accidents and self-harm, equity and access to health care—the NHS leads the world”.—[Official Report, 31 January 2011; Vol. 522, c. 606.]

This is far from a health care system that is broken.

My Labour Front-Bench colleagues and I need no reminding of how special the health service is and how we should respect the people who work in it at every level. We have spent the past year going up and down the country, shadowing workers in the NHS. We have met radiotherapists in Wirral, physiotherapists in Northumbria, ambulance crew in Cambridge, mental health nurses in Rochdale, cancer nurses in Birmingham, hospital porters in Leeds, paediatricians in Bristol and midwives in London. These were different people working at different places at different levels, but from every visit, we heard the same abiding message—“Our NHS is not for sale.”.

The second point that I am sure my mother would have wanted me to make is that from its earliest years the NHS has always been open to change and improvement, as I said. Workers are not opposed to change. Why would workers in the NHS be opposed to change? It is a service where people and science interact. Of course people are different first thing in the morning from how they are when they go to bed. Of course NHS workers are able to deal with change. No one needs to tell a nurse’s daughter that there have always been things in the NHS that could have been improved.

The Labour party is not opposed to change. It was our willingness to change and reform that drove down waiting times to unprecedentedly low levels. Some of the things we tried were so radical that some of us could not vote for them, but it is no discredit to my right hon. and hon. Friends that they were willing to try every lever they could to bring down waiting times and provide a service for the people who voted us here.

[Nicky Morgan]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Ms Abbott]

Time is against me, I am afraid.

The final thing that ordinary health service workers would wish me to say is that if anything has exemplified the unfortunate practice of politicians of saying one thing and doing another, it is the frequency and vehemence with which the Government decried top-down reorganisations when they were in opposition. In 2006, the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron), then Leader of the Opposition said:

“So I make this commitment to the NHS and all who work in it. No more pointless reorganisations.”

In 2007, the then shadow Health Secretary said:

“The NHS needs no more pointless organisational upheaval”.

In 2009, still as Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. Member for Witney said:

“But first I want to tell you what we’re not going to do. There will be no more of those pointless re-organisations”.

Then, the coalition agreement of 2010—I do not want to touch on private grief here for Liberal Democrat Members—said:

“We will stop the top-down reorganisations of the NHS that have got in the way of patient care.”

We are thus presented with a Bill that is based on a bizarre sort of life support—the arrogance of the coalition leadership.

Now we know that the doctors, the nurses, the midwives, the health visitors, the paramedics, the cleaners, the porters, and the scientific and technical workers will do their very best with this Bill if it becomes law. That is what Clare Gerada was saying this morning: if it becomes law, they will do their very best, but why should they have to see an already discredited Bill on the statute book? Why should they have to see more bureaucracy, which is what the Bill will mean, and why should they have to see billions of pounds wasted at a time when the health service is under unprecedented financial pressure? Government Members have sought to denigrate those who oppose the Bill by saying that their opposition is merely party-political. Of course it is not: we are proud to be part of a coalition of concern about the Bill.

My right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (David Miliband), my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds), my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) and for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) spelt out our concern about the Bill. It is extraordinary that we can proceed while the Government are still refusing to reveal the risk register. There is concern throughout the NHS about the fragmentation that will result from the Bill. Government Members say that we are scaremongering—[Hon. Members: “You are.”]—but private sector companies such as Humana and Capita are already advertising their willingness to take over GPs’ commissioning powers on their websites.

The NHS does not belong to the Secretary of State, and it does not belong to the Deputy Prime Minister. It belongs to the people of Britain who built it after the war. The NHS is not for sale, and I urge the House to support the motion.

19:22

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

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), who observed in her vigorous and punchy speech that there was an element of déjà vu in the debate.

I was delighted to listen to the speech of the right hon. Member for South Shields (David Miliband). As I listened to it, and to the speech of the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), I reflected on how odd changes in political fortunes are. Those two were the über-Blair reformers, but it was clear from their speeches—both thoughtful in their different ways—that they had turned away from their reforming zeal. I can only put that down to “what a difference a leadership election makes”.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Mr Dorrell) on another good and compelling contribution. I also congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore), for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) and for Witham, as well as the hon. Member for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle). It seems that in his part of the world they call a spade a spade.

I must also mention the speech of the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), which was at times fanciful, that of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley), that of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), which was passionate but, I fear, misguided, and that of the hon. Member for Stallybridge—[Hon. Members: “Stalybridge!”] I mean the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds). I am afraid that I am from the south. I was disappointed that the hon. Gentleman did not answer my question about the political allegiance of Dr Chand, whom he prayed in aid, given that Dr Chand has had aspirations to become a Labour candidate. Indeed, I think he even had aspirations to fight the seat that the hon. Gentleman fought, so it was very generous of the hon. Gentleman to mention him.

Let me make clear to the House that no party has a monopoly on caring for the NHS. We all care for the NHS passionately, and I find it distressing when Opposition Members seek to misrepresent the position by accusing us of trying to privatise it. Let me tell them that this party, my party—this Government, the coalition Government—will never privatise the NHS, and let me tell my hon. Friends to reinforce that message. Clause 1 of the Bill gives the Secretary of State a duty to provide a comprehensive health service, and subsection (3) gives a commitment—just as Nye Bevan did in his original Act—that it will be free at the point of use.

Let me tell Opposition Members that what they are saying is scaremongering, that it is unfair, and that it is a gross distortion of the facts. Let me also tell them that shroud-waving does not do them any credit. Pulling out examples that have no basis in proof and are simply intended to misguide and mislead the public is a disgrace—

[Andy Burnham]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Burns]

No, because I have no time.

I urge hon. Members to reflect—

[Andy Burnham]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Burns]

No, because I have no time. I have only five minutes.

The right hon. Gentleman was seductive in his speech. He came across as trying to be eminently reasonable by saying that he did not want this to be a party political football. I must say to him, however, that it is he and his friends who have turned the NHS into a party political football, and I must say to them that the NHS is too precious to be turned into a party political football simply for the purpose of trying to gain votes.

Our reforms will help to prepare the NHS for the future, making it more balanced and better suited to the demands of the 21st century so that it has a long and healthy life based on its founding principles. First, our reforms will give patients more choice, enabling them to choose where to go, see who they want to see, and influence the kind of services that they want in their communities. Secondly, they will give doctors more freedom to commission care for their patients, so that they can shape the NHS around the needs of their local communities. Thirdly, they will reduce bureaucracy so that money—£4.5 billion of it between now and 2015—can be saved and reinvested in front-line services. Those are the basic premises and that is the basic ethos of the Bill.

Not once during the speech of the shadow Secretary of State, and not once during the speeches of any of his right hon. and hon. Friends, did we hear a single answer to the question of what they would do. I do not know how many Members saw the right hon. Gentleman being interviewed on “Newsnight” by Jeremy Paxman two weeks ago. Some of us live in fear of that experience, while some of us come to enjoy it. Five times during that brief one-to-one interview, Mr Paxman asked the right hon. Gentleman “What would you do?” and answer came there none. That was because the right hon. Gentleman is prepared to criticise and try to scare people in order to win votes, but he is not prepared to confront, in a realistic and meaningful way, the challenges facing the NHS and the way in which it must move forward.

What we need is less carping, less criticism, and more constructive engagement. When the right hon. Gentleman says in his flowery way that he is prepared to engage in all-party discussions there is a hollowness in his claim, because he has no policies to discuss, and can identify no positive way in which to resolve the problems of the NHS and enable it to evolve to meet the pressures to which it is subject.

This Bill, which has been discussed at length in this House and in another place, is the Bill that will move the NHS forward and enable it to meet the challenges of an ageing population and an escalating drugs spend. I urge my hon. Friends to reject the motion and to reject the Liberal Democrats’ amendment if it is pressed to a vote, because neither is in the interests of the health service or those of the country.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

19:29

Division 488

Ayes: 260

---

Labour: 240
Democratic Unionist Party: 5
Liberal Democrat: 5
Scottish National Party: 5
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 2
Independent: 2
Alliance: 1
Green Party: 1

Noes: 314

---

Conservative: 271
Liberal Democrat: 42

Main Question put.

19:44

Division 489

Ayes: 258

---

Labour: 236
Liberal Democrat: 6
Democratic Unionist Party: 5
Scottish National Party: 5
Plaid Cymru: 3
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 2
Alliance: 1
Green Party: 1
Independent: 1

Noes: 314

---

Conservative: 272
Liberal Democrat: 41

London Local Authorities Bill [Lords]

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Commons Chamber

Third Reading

Debate resumed.

Question (21 February) again proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

I believe that Mr Chope was speaking when we adjourned the debate, and, if I can have his attention, perhaps he will indicate whether he wishes to continue to speak.

19:59

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I was in mid-sentence, I think, when we finished last time at 10 minutes past 10. On that occasion, as we know, we had in the Chamber the sponsor of the Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer). Since then, he has been unwell but he is back today and we are delighted to see him in his place.

The Bill was first introduced in November 2007 and has since progressed through Parliament, although no one would suggest that that progress has been rapid. If and when it gets its Third Reading it will go to the other place so that the many amendments that have been introduced, largely as a result of the broad-mindedness and good sense of my hon. Friend, can be considered. He is to be congratulated on having put pressure on the Bill’s promoters—the local authorities behind it—to compromise on many of the issues on which they did not, at one stage, appear to be willing to compromise. The Bill is now in a significantly better state than when it first reached this House, because it has been amended in Committee and during the three-hour sittings on Report, but it is still an unsatisfactory Bill for a number of reasons.

I articulated in some detail my concerns about the Bill during the nine hours of debate on a series of amendments on Report, and I do not think I can add much to the arguments I deployed in those debates. We are now left with what the Bill looks like after many of those amendments were rejected but others were accepted. All I shall say tonight is that I am glad we have been able to have a full debate on this issue. I am disappointed that there has not been wider participation among Members who represent London constituencies and that we are introducing legislation that will affect one part of the country while ignoring other parts. There is an issue of principle there that the Government need to address. Having said all that, I think the Bill is in a better state than it was.

[Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

We have all enjoyed my hon. Friend’s circumlocution on this matter, but can he distil his arguments into a couple of sentences? Is he saying that he now regards the Bill as reasonably acceptable, broadly acceptable or still unacceptable?

[Mr Chope]

It depends. It is unacceptable to me but it is probably acceptable to the majority of Members of the House if one has regard to the debates and votes that have taken place. As with much legislation, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. When people in London find that they cannot go to the public toilet they used to go to without going through a turnstile they might ask, “Where’s that come from? What happened to the private Member’s legislation that outlawed turnstiles in public lavatories right across the country? Why do we now have a separate regime being introduced in London?” I wonder what will happen when they are accused of trying to sell their car on the internet and are deemed to be engaging in street trading by reason of a substantial extension of the definition of street trading. In fact, we have been able to restrict that, through an amendment, so that it will not affect ordinary individual householders as it would have originally affected such individuals in Westminster. People who try to sell their cars on the internet will be adversely affected by this legislation and perhaps when they suffer significant penalties they will contact their local MP.

I still have significant concerns about the Bill, but there have been many Bills before the House that I have had concerns about, not all of which one has been able to amend. If one is fair-minded, one must accept that progress has been made and that there has been a willingness on the part of the promoters and particularly on the part of my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green, who has taken the matter forward on their behalf, to listen. That is an important lesson for people who want to bring forward private Bills. There is a lot to be said for a bit of jaw-jaw and discussion and for trying to reach a reasonable compromise. That is probably quite a long answer to the intervention of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), but I feel that after this length of time not much more can be said either in summary or in detail. That is why I am going to resume my place.

First, though, let me say that I am very grateful to all those colleagues who have participated in these debates, not least my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), who has made quite a name for himself. In one debate he broke through the one-hour barrier. That is not a novelty for my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), who I think will catch your eye shortly, Mr Deputy Speaker, but for those of our colleagues who have not yet broken the one-hour barrier, this type of legislation is fertile ground for doing so. I commend that process to my hon. Friends.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Yes, but not on Third Reading, Mr Chope.

20:06

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

As always, it is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope). I might well have gone through the one-hour barrier on one occasion or more, but it is not my intention to do so this evening.

The Bill has been considered at some length over several years and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) and the promoters of the Bill on their determination and perseverance in ensuring that it has finally reached Third Reading. The finishing line is in sight, there is not much further to go and the end is nigh.

I have to say that whatever spin is put on the Bill’s provisions, it will give more powers to the local authorities within our capital city and will reduce the freedoms of the city’s citizens and visitors. It will also increase the burden of regulation on our capital’s businesses at a time when they ought to be devoting all their time and energies to improving levels of service, increasing sales and dealing with all the problems that businesses face. They are going to have to sit down and tackle all the new burdens, rules and regulations contained within the Bill.

Let me raise a couple of fresh points. First, given that the Bill imposes new burdens on businesses, I have to ask what has become of the one-in, one-out rule. The promoters have not given any indication of the rules and regulations that are being removed to make way for the new ones in the Bill.

There is one other reason why the Bill, even at this late stage, ought to be rejected. So much has happened in the years since the Bill first surfaced that there must be real doubt about whether it is warranted. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch mentioned the fact that the Bill made its first appearance in 2007. Since then, not only have a number of London local authorities changed their political composition and in some cases their political control, but the Mayor of London has changed, and we are about to enter a further mayoral election.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

May I reassure my hon. Friend that the Bill is promoted on behalf of London Councils, not the Mayor of London? Although over the preceding years the complexion of London Councils may have changed, the leadership of all three political parties and all 32 London boroughs and the City of London still wholeheartedly support the Bill, as amended.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am sure that is the case.

Since the change in the mayoralty of London, a further change has occurred—the passing into law of the Localism Bill. Under the Localism Act 2011 there is a general power of competence for local authorities. Had the Localism Act been around a few years ago, provisions in this Bill might not have found their way into it at all and might now have been rendered completely unnecessary.

As I said in opening my remarks, the Bill has been subjected to detailed analysis on consideration. Some progress has been made and I am pleased to say that the promoters listened to the arguments. The requirement that notices should be served by an accredited person has been removed, which is one small victory for those who highlighted the Bill’s deficiencies. As my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch said, the Bill ought not to have proceeded. I agree, but the House is broadly in favour of its content. For that reason I will draw my remarks on this long-running measure to an end.

20:12

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

I support the Third Reading of the Bill, which has been subjected to immense scrutiny. There have been opportunities for detailed discussion of all aspects, including every clause and every line of the Bill.

[Mike Freer]

On the point about scrutiny, will my hon. Friend join me in thanking our hon. Friends the Members for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) and for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), and the hon. Members for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) and for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) for their work in scrutinising the Bill? It is fair also to thank our colleagues—for instance, our hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope)—for their principled and resilient scrutiny as the Bill proceeded through the House.

[Bob Blackman]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I add my congratulations to the Members who served on the Committee and who have contributed during this debate. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) for his stalwart work in piloting the Bill through this place and making extremely rapid progress since we were both elected in May 2010, considering the slow progress that had been made up till then.

I remind colleagues that the Bill may have entered the House of Commons and the House of Lords in 2007, but its gestation began long before that as a wish list from the 32 London boroughs and the City of London. I well remember seeing a very long wish list prior to the Bill being presented to the House. That list has been considerably reduced.

It is important that we consider the wide range of ideas that emerged on Report. It was suggested that the council officials who were to serve penalty notices should wear a uniform, with a bowler hat, or that they should wear a fine tabard properly approved by the College of Arms. I trust we have accepted that that is not quite what we intended, and that it will not be implemented across London. But many good ideas have been accepted and encapsulated within the Bill, as amended. My hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green has acted in a coherent and co-operative way in order to take in the ideas of others, which have been welcomed across the piece.

There can be no denying that there has been a huge amount of scrutiny of the Bill and the powers within it. Among the topics raised on Third Reading was that of turnstiles on public toilets. The purpose is to do away with the need for toilets to be staffed and for the councils to retain the money that will come from the use of the toilets by members of the public. There is nothing new in that in many parts of London, but those toilets are often operated by private companies, as opposed to the public authorities. That will change, and it is important.

Another issue was the sale of cars on the internet. We dealt with that on Report, but it is important that we put on record now what it is all about. At present, if people sell cars on the public highway and put notices in the cars, that is an offence and action can be taken. However, if unscrupulous individuals do not put notices in the cars but just park them on the public highway and advertise them on the internet, no action can be taken. The Bill allows council officers to clamp down on that practice, which is a scourge on many London streets. The measure will be widely welcomed across London.

The Bill has been scrutinised on the Floor of the House, in Committee and in an Unopposed Bill Committee in another place. It adds to the nine previous Bills that London authorities have put through in order to give London boroughs greater powers to take action on issues that matter to Londoners. I am sure the Bill will be welcomed by London residents. They will see it as allowing action to be taken against those who disobey the law. I trust that visitors from the constituencies of my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch, for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), for Shipley (Philip Davies) and for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), who have all contributed to the debates, will not be upset by the outcome.

I thank the Minister and the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) in advance for their support for the Bill, and all 32 London boroughs and the City of London for their support. I trust the House will give it an unopposed Third Reading tonight.

20:19

[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

I rise in support of the Bill. It is has taken a long time to get to this stage and, I must say, has received an astonishing amount of scrutiny. I am not sure that I would wish to thank the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) for his contribution in the way the hon. Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) did, but he certainly left no stone unturned in his scrutiny of the Bill, and he was ably assisted in that task by his hon. Friends the Members for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) and for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg).

The Bill is an important step. As the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) pointed out, it is supported by every London borough and, indeed, every Member of Parliament who represents a constituency in the capital. For that reason, I hope that it will receive an unopposed Third Reading this evening. It is very much in line with the Government’s call for greater localism and for local authorities to have greater self-determination, which the Opposition support.

The hon. Member for Harrow East dealt with a number of the clauses in his contribution. I think that there was a misunderstanding—if I may put it like that—from the hon. Member for Christchurch, who raised some concerns about the installation of turnstiles in public toilets. He also suggested that cars being parked on highways and then sold over the internet were not a major problem, but I know from the information I have received that local residents have on many occasions been put out by unscrupulous traders who are getting around the law by using the internet inappropriately, so I think that it is appropriate to enable local authorities to address the problem on behalf of the people who elect them.

Some clauses in the Bill have been lost, which I think is regrettable. For example, I think that it would have been helpful if the Bill still included the additional protections that were proposed for people living in houses in multiple occupation and the greater protections for restaurant users. Nevertheless, the Bill is worth supporting and, in view of the considerable scrutiny it has already been subject to, I hope that we will not be detained too long this evening and that it will be given an unopposed Third Reading.

20:22

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)]

I join all hon. Members who have spoken in the debate in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) on the work he has done to promote the Bill—I am delighted to see him back in the Chamber in good health. I also congratulate and thank all hon. Members on both sides of the House who have contributed to the scrutiny of the Bill. I will certainly not detain the House for long. I have made it clear on previous occasions that the Government maintain a neutral position on the Bill, as is consistent with the conventions and precedents relating to Bills of this kind.

The issue that has been flagged up in the course of the debates we have had is the need for balance between localism, which is of course part of the Government’s policy, and a proportionate approach to regulation. If it is the will of the House that the Bill be passed, I hope that local authorities will exercise their new powers in a proportionate and considered fashion and am sure that they will do so responsibly. We want illegitimate behaviour to be dealt with but, at the same time, do not want the legitimate business activities of Londoners to be penalised. In so far as an attempt to strike that balance has been achieved, if the House considers that to be the case, the Government do not object to the Bill. It has been improved considerably by amendments, as has been observed, and a number of clauses that the Government could not support were removed on Second Reading. If it is the will of the House that the Bill be passed, subject to the aspiration that its provisions will be dealt with in a proportionate and responsible manner, as I am sure London Councils will, the Government do not object.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed, with amendments.

Business without Debate

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Commons Chamber

Delegated Legislation

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No.118(6)),

Social Security

That the draft Jobseeker’s Allowance (Domestic Violence) (Amendment) Regulations 2012, which were laid before this House on 19 January, be approved.—(Mr Newmark.)

Question agreed to.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No.118(6)),

Education

That the draft Alternative Provision Academies (Consequential Amendments to Acts) (England) Order 2012, which was laid before this House on 1 February, be approved.—(Mr Newmark.)

Question agreed to.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No.118(6)),

Government Resources and Accounts

That the draft Government Resources and Accounts Act 2000 (Audit of Public Bodies) Order 2012, which was laid before this House on 1 February, be approved.—(Mr Newmark.)

Question agreed to.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No.118(6)),

Immigration

That the draft Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2012, which were laid before this House on 9 February, be approved.—(Mr Newmark.)

Question agreed to.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No.118(6)),

Taxes

That the draft Data-gathering Powers (Relevant Data) Regulations 2012, which were laid before this House on 20 February, be approved.—(Mr Newmark.)

Question agreed to.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No.118(6)),

Tax Credits

That the draft Tax Credits Up-rating Regulations 2012, which were laid before this House on 1 February, be approved.—(Mr Brooks Newmark.)

20:25

Division 490

Ayes: 238

---

Conservative: 197
Liberal Democrat: 41

Noes: 67

---

Labour: 60
Democratic Unionist Party: 5
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 2
Alliance: 1
Independent: 1

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Social Security

That the draft Guardian’s Allowance Up-rating Order 2012, which was laid before this House on 1 February, be approved.—(Mr Newmark.)

Question agreed to.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Social Security

That the draft Guardian’s Allowance Up-rating (Northern Ireland) Order 2012, which was laid before this House on 1 February, be approved.—(Mr Newmark.)

Question agreed to.

Delegated Legislation (Committees)

Ordered,

That the Motion in the name of Secretary Vince Cable relating to Financial Assistance to Industry shall be treated as if it related to an instrument subject to the provisions of Standing Order No. 118 (Delegated Legislation Committees) in respect of which notice has been given that the instrument be approved.—(Mr Heath.)

European Union Documents

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 119(11)),

Implementation of the Common Commercial Policy

That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 7455/11, relating to a draft regulation amending certain Regulations relating to the common commercial policy as regards the procedures for the adoption of certain measures; supports the Government’s aim of enabling appropriate application of the new decision-making requirements established by Regulation (EU) 182/2011, as it applies to all Regulations to be amended by the draft regulation; and further supports the Government’s aim of negotiating a draft regulation which both reflects the need, in anti-dumping and antisubsidy investigations, for effective consultation with Member States and other interested parties and maintains proportionate timelines, minimising uncertainty for business.—(Mr Newmark.)

Question agreed to.

Torphichen Sub-Post Office (Closure)

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Mr Newmark.)

20:37

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

The reason why I have called for this Adjournment debate is to warn all Members of the House that what happened to the sub-post office in the village of Torphichen could happen in every constituency in the UK, and is likely to do so, given the plans of the Post Office.

I should like to draw a timeline for the House. At the time of the last review of the post office network there was no proposal to close Torphichen sub-post office. In my constituency there were a number of closures in very small villages with very small numbers of post office users. However, Torphichen is a village of over 600 residents living in over 300 dwellings. It is a very well-known heritage village where the priory of the Order of St John was founded after the knights left the Holy Land, and it is visited a great deal by tourists passing through West Lothian on their way to Linlithgow palace, where Mary, Queen of Scots was born. The village’s natural attractiveness makes it very popular with people who want to buy houses and commute into Edinburgh. It is not a village with a down-at-heel population who have very little use for a post office. Moreover, it has many elderly residents.

On 2 November 2011 the most recent postmaster, who had not been a shopkeeper before and had been renting the premises for some nine months, decided to give up the premises, stop being a shopkeeper and give up the licence at the same time. The person who previously ran the post office and very popular shop—the only shop in the village—had done so for a long time. That is the crucial point. It is the post office that has sustained the village shop for many years, as do many post offices in communities across the shires of England and the counties of Scotland.

On 8 November Post Office Ltd sent a letter under the name of Brian Turnbull, the change manager, to MPs, MSPs and local authorities saying that there had been a temporary closure. It put an apology for the temporary closure on the window of the shop. Interestingly, I believe that that is the same Brian Turnbull who used to be the manager of the post office in Bathgate, who got me and my constituency party to campaign for some years to keep his post office open. When his Crown post office shut, all the people who worked there got their books and were made redundant. Obviously he then got taken on to carry out the same task in other areas.

The odd thing about the letter was that it was written from an address in St Albans. It referred to a couple of telephone numbers, but when I called them I heard things like, “Press 1 if you want this, press 2 if you want that, or press 3 if you want nothing.” The website that the letter referred to was just a general website with nothing at all about what was happening to Torphichen post office. There was no way of communicating.

In the past, the network manager for Scotland would have had the courtesy to phone the Member of Parliament, because this is a reserved matter. They would have spoken to the Member of Parliament and involved them in any difficulties, temporary closures, or proposals for changes or for a reopening. That has always been the case until now. The new network manager for Scotland, Ms Sally Buchanan, did not take the trouble to do that. In fact, we had to search out her telephone number so that we could contact her.

Ms Buchanan had been contacted by Neil Findlay, the adept MSP for Lothian. He contacted the address in Edinburgh and received a reply on 21 November. The reply was interesting because it said that the Post Office had done modelling. I do not know when it had found the time to do that modelling between 2 and 8 November. Having done the modelling, it had decided that the Post Office Local option, which was mentioned when we debated the Postal Services Act 2011, would be best for that property.

We discovered that, despite the fact that somebody in the village had approached the owner of the post office building and offered to buy it, the Post Office had got the key from the previous owner and stripped out all the security that a normal sub-post office has. For some reason it drilled holes in the safe so that it could no longer be used to store money. When I challenged the Post Office on that matter, the reply was:

“That we removed the Post Office owned equipment, including the computer system, from the premises is not indicative of future service arrangements; it is normal practice for us to recover our property where there is any doubt over our ability to have continued access to the premises.”

As I wrote to the Minister and the head of Post Office Ltd, Ms Vennells, it is quite clear that this was an act of vandalism by the Post Office. I can see the point of taking out the computer, but not of ripping out all the security that a normal sub-post office uses. It is clear that the Post Office had taken the decision to downgrade the sub-post office without any consultation with the public.

I have never had to put up with anything like that. I do not think that any Member from any part of the House or from any party would find that acceptable. I certainly would not have found it acceptable in the past and did not expect it to happen in this case.

[Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. I am a neighbouring Member, representing Livingston in West Lothian, and I am therefore well aware of the community to which he refers. He said that there was no consultation with the community and little consultation with him as an elected Member of Parliament. Is it not the case that the code of practice for the post office network requires full and meaningful public consultation if any changes to particular post offices and sub-post offices are to be made?

[Michael Connarty]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention because I am about to come on to that subject. The code of practice was attached to the original circular that was sent to MPs and MSPs. The Post Office apologised for the inconvenience of the temporary closure and attached to every circular its code of practice, which states:

“We’ll let you know about any change as soon as we possibly can. Sometimes, change is out of our control, but we’ll try to keep you as up-to-date about what’s happening as much as we can. We try to make sure you have 4 weeks’ notice before anything happens. If we’re going to make big changes, there’ll be a ‘consultation period’ which lasts about 6 weeks.”

I can verify that ripping out the equipment happened within days of the Post Office finding out that the closure had taken place.

From then on, it was clear that the Post Office had immediately been contacted by someone in the village who wished to purchase the building and reopen the post office—Miss Oonagh Shackleton and her partner Ian Jamieson, who run a very good manufacturing company in another village. They were keen to give the shop back to the village, and they talked to the Post Office immediately. We also know that the shop’s previous owner, Mussarat Aziz, who had been the sub-postmistress and was also the sub-postmistress in Boghall in Bathgate in another part of my constituency, was approached by the Post Office to ascertain whether she would take over the post office temporarily and run it as a sub-post office. On the one hand, the Post Office was saying that it wanted to keep the sub-post office going, and on the other hand, it had been approached by someone who wanted to do a similar thing.

At the public meeting that we held in the village, Oonagh Shackleton said that she had a business plan, which included financing a sub-post office. In the agreement that we had when the post office network review took place, the money that the Government gave the Post Office included money for running a sub-post office in Torphichen. The money had not been taken away or withdrawn, and it was therefore assumed that it would be available. However, for some mysterious reason that point was never confirmed to Oonagh Shackleton. She decided that she wanted to open the shop in the village again anyway, and she went ahead and purchased it.

However, now that all the security has been torn out, we are told that Mr Brian Turnbull says that if we want a post office service of any kind in that shop in the village, we can have only a Post Office Local. I call that blackmail. All that stuff about removing the equipment not meaning that the Post Office had changed its mind is clearly a bluff.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s disappointment at what has happened to his post office. In four locations in Northern Ireland—Ballyhalbert, Portavogie, Cloughey and Kircubbin—all the changes were made with consultation and a time scale for the changeover. Does the hon. Gentleman feel that there should be a successful transition period before the handover, so that everything runs smoothly, and to stop debacles such as that in his constituency?

[Michael Connarty]

I totally agree. Every hon. Member would expect that. I am sure that the Minister would expect it in his constituency. We would expect the Post Office to say, “We have a closed shop and someone who might want to buy it. We’ll consult the public on what kind of set-up they want, and support the shop on the basis that previously existed.” That would have been sensible.

The Post Office’s precipitate action was driven presumably by a policy from above to drive down the level of service—that is what happens with Post Office Local. The Post Office probably now finds that action irreversible —or perhaps it acted deliberately to ensure that the action was irreversible.

If people consult Hansard, they will find that when we debated the Postal Services Act 2011 and heard talk of Post Office Local, I informed the House that I had had in my constituency its forerunner, which was called post office essentials. The shopkeeper who took that on board eventually after six months decided that it was not worth the trouble, because of a number of things. The shopkeeper of a Post Office Local has to provide all financing out of their own pocket; no money comes from the Post Office in advance. The Post Office will tell people that it might give them a loan in the interim to see them over to the point when they are viable, but in reality, financing for a Post Office Local—or a post office essential, as it was called—comes out of the pocket of the shopkeeper.

Another problem for the shopkeeper was that people could come in and say that he had kept their pension for five or six weeks and they would like to have it because they were going on holiday: they would be asking for £500, £600, £700 or £800. Small shopkeepers do not keep that kind of money in their shop, so the shopkeeper who ran the post office essential in Linlithgow Bridge in my constituency told me that he had to say to people, “I’m sorry. I can’t supply that kind of money. I can’t shut the shop to go to the bank, so you’ll have to go to the main post office,” which was at the other end of town. Of course, people then started saying, “What good are you?” and he started to lose customers. In fact, he decided it was not worth the trouble to have a post office essential.

That was in a town environment, but if it happened in Torphichen, and if people found that they were not using the shop because they were not getting the service, and that they had to go to the main post offices in other towns to get large sums of money, I believe the shop would become unviable, close and be turned into a house. I have seen that happen again and again in villages that have lost their post office.

The shop will be taken away from the village if the proposals do not succeed. The people who offered to open the shop in the belief that they would get a sub-postmaster’s salary, get money delivered by the Post Office securely, and have a safe, secure and insured transit of money, find those things denied to them by Post Office Local. It is a travesty that that has gone ahead, and everything I have had from the Post Office, right up to Miss Vennells, and sadly from Ministers, who have just copied letters coming from the Post Office, does not stand up to scrutiny.

I want to end with a couple of things that make me think this is not just happening in this village. I wrote to Miss Paula Vennells, the chief executive of Post Office Ltd, on 3 February, asking:

“Who took the decision to take out the Sub Post Office infrastructure?...Who decided not to re-open the Sub Post Office but to re-brand/re-offer a Post Office Local to the new owner of the Torphichen Sub Post Office?”

No reply has been heard from the Post Office since then.

We discover that the Post Office proposal, when we discussed the Bill, was to have new operating models—that is what they are called—in 50% of its branch network. Post Office Ltd’s own plans say that at least 2,000 branches will be converted to the new local operating model. That is potentially four sub-post offices in the constituency of every Member in the House. This debate is about that happening in a precipitate manner.

We have tabled early-day motion 2841 calling for a moratorium on the use of the Post Office Local model. As I have said, the post office essential model is not much different. Shopkeepers do not get parcels, and there are limits on the amount of benefits that can be drawn from the shops, because people draw them on the resources of the person who is running the post-office local, or sub-post office.

I am asking the Minister to look again at what has happened in Torphichen, and to say to the Post Office that it has not consulted properly or used its own agreement. It has not yet had a public meeting in the village. We took letters to the community council because nothing has been written to people in the village. Post Office Ltd is secretly badgering the person who has bought the post office to take a Post Office Local. It is saying, “If you don’t take a local, the village will be most upset because they haven’t got post office services. You’ll get no help or money from us, and you’ll get such a miserly sum for every transaction that it really won’t be worth your while, but you’ll have to take it or the village will blame you”—the person who rescues the shop—rather than the Post Office, which deserves to be blamed.

I hope the Minister will look seriously at this situation. The Government might say, “We can’t interfere; this is a commercial matter,” but this is such a breach of the Post Office’s own rules and practices. Will the Government say to their Back Benchers and to Opposition Members that that new model is acceptable? I hope not.

20:54

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Norman Lamb)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) on securing this debate. Adjournment debates are an important opportunity for Members to raise issues of importance to their own constituencies. He has taken that opportunity, and I applaud him for doing so. He has been passionate in pursuing this issue. As a Member representing a rural constituency, I agree with him about the importance of maintaining the rural sub-post office network, and I welcome the opportunity to respond to the concerns reflected in a petition to Parliament from the residents of Torphichen, which, I am told, is a very beautiful village.

The hon. Gentleman spoke passionately about the importance of the post office in Torphichen and about its future. It is a matter he has written to me about, so I have some understanding of his concerns. I think back, however, to the extensive debates in the House, to which he referred, on the Postal Services Act 2011, which was passed last July. He will remember that he opposed the Act, not withstanding its clear objectives, which were to secure the future of the universal postal service and, critically in this context, to secure the future of the post office network. As I said, I care passionately about achieving that.

I shall briefly reiterate, for the record, the commitments to the future of the post office network made by my predecessor as postal affairs Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr Davey). It is important to do so, because the Government’s commitments are particularly relevant to the situation at Torphichen. Over the course of this Parliament, we will provide £1.34 billion of funding to secure the long-term and sustainable future of the post office network. That will be achieved through investment to modernise about 6,000 post offices, improving them for the future while continuing to provide funding to maintain a network of at least 11,500 post office branches.

Alongside that was the fundamental commitment that there would be no programme of post office closures. That is important to this debate and the situation in Torphichen in particular. As I explained in my correspondence with the hon. Gentleman, Torphichen post office temporarily closed—he made that point—last November, following the resignation of the previous sub-postmaster with immediate effect. That is really important. Those two words—“immediate” and “temporary” —are significant. Normally, when a sub-postmaster wishes to resign, they are obliged under the terms of their contract to give Post Office Ltd three months’ notice to enable the Post Office to identify a new sub-postmaster or mistress and, if necessary, nearby premises from which post office services can continue to be provided.

I understand that the previous sub-postmaster at Torphichen resigned with immediate effect, so Post Office Ltd had no opportunity to ensure a proper and timely transition of service in the community without a break in service. That was the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). Of course, ideally, we would seek to achieve a smooth transition from one sub-postmaster or mistress to another, but that is simply impossible where the sub-postmaster resigns with immediate effect.

[Jim Shannon]

In the light of what has happened—I am sure that there are many other examples across the United Kingdom—is it not time that post offices put in place a system whereby they have someone on standby who can fill in as a changeover takes place? Is that something that the Minister would consider?

[Norman Lamb]

The problem is that we are dealing with private businesses. Most sub-post offices are owned individually as private businesses, so it would be difficult to put in place a network of people who are immediately available perhaps to move into premises that are privately owned and not accessible to a third party. The emphasis is on trying to get as smooth a transition as possible, but obviously there are real difficulties when someone walks out without giving any notice. I absolutely sympathise with the concerns of the people of Torphichen, who have been suddenly confronted with the loss of a really important service and who obviously fear for its future. I completely understand that concern.

As a result, the post office in Torphichen has been closed temporarily since 2 November last year. A temporary closure is exactly that: temporary—closed for a limited period while Post Office Ltd seeks to identify a new sub-postmaster to restore services. Where a temporary closure occurs, it is obviously preferable that it lasts as short a time as possible. I understand that in the majority of the 602 cases over the last nine months where a sub-postmaster has chosen to leave the network—whether because they are retiring or moving elsewhere, or for other reasons—there has been a seamless transition between the outgoing and incoming sub-postmasters, with no break in service for the post office’s customers. However, that cannot necessarily happen in all cases.

The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk used the term “downgrade”. Let me address that concern. There was no decision to downgrade the Torphichen post office. He talked about the removal of security equipment, so let me deal with that. I have noted his concern, but I should explain that where a sub-post office temporarily closes, the temporary removal of valuable Post Office-owned equipment for safe storage should not be misinterpreted, or otherwise misconstrued, as suggesting that post office services will be permanently removed or downgraded; rather, it is purely to ensure the safekeeping of equipment. It is standard practice until such time as the equipment can be reinstalled.

As the representative of a rural constituency, I fully understand the considerable distress and inconvenience that the closure of any post office causes to a community. That is why I am so delighted to be in a position to say that this Government are investing in the post office network, not spending large sums of taxpayers’ money closing it. I am well aware of the inconvenience that the temporary closure of Torphichen post office is causing the hon. Gentleman’s constituents, but I can give him this reassurance. Post Office Ltd has not considered the permanent closure of Torphichen post office, and is actively engaged in measures to re-establish the post office service there.

[Michael Connarty]

I hope that the Minister will accept what I said before, and what I will say again: the Post Office is badgering the person who has bought the shop —they own it—to take only the Post Office Local option, which is all that it is offering. There is no equipment going back in, no security going back in and no safe going back—it was taken out for scrap. The Post Office had already made the decision when it wrote to the MSP for Lothian on 21 November that it would offer only a Post Office Local—no consultation; no consideration of keeping the sub-post office. How can that be justified by anyone? All the money that is being spent on the Post Office will not be spent in Torphichen.

[Norman Lamb]

The hon. Gentleman uses the term “badgering”. My understanding from the explanation I have received is that discussions are continuing and that the owner of the shop is keen to provide post office services. There has not yet been a conclusion to those discussions, but I think there is optimism that a successful conclusion will be reached.

[Michael Connarty]

A Post Office Local?

[Norman Lamb]

I want to deal with this issue, because it clearly concerns the hon. Gentleman, and I want to address his concerns properly. I have noted his comments about the future of the post office, and in particular his concerns about the Post Office Local model. Given the importance of the post office network, both the Government and Post Office Ltd have invested a great deal of time and energy to ensure that the future strategy for the Post Office strikes a balance between providing a fair income for sub-postmasters and ensuring that Post Office Ltd is financially sustainable. Both elements of the strategy are underpinned by the commitment to maintaining the network at its current size, with a focus on providing improved service for the Post Office’s customers. The Post Office Local is an important element of the strategy. It offers genuine benefits and opportunities for the sub-postmaster, for the company and also, critically, for customers.

[Michael Connarty]

Rubbish!

[Norman Lamb]

The hon. Gentleman says, “Rubbish,” but let me develop my argument. The Post Office Local model has been extensively piloted over the last year. It is now operational in more than 150 locations. Critically, where it is being piloted, customers—the hon. Gentleman’s constituents in Torphichen—are reporting high levels of satisfaction, and operators are seeing more sales and are benefiting from greater flexibility.

When we look in detail at the Post Office Local model and at the independent research that has been conducted, the reasons for high levels of customer satisfaction become apparent. Not only are post offices staying in communities, but they are offering access to the vast majority of post office services—95% of the transactions that typically account for customer visits across the network—during much longer opening hours.

That is really important. In the past, the service to customers has often been constrained by limited opening hours. With the Post Office Local model, a post office can remain open for as long as the shop is open. That makes it much more convenient for people to obtain those services in an evening, for example, if that suits their working habits. That will mean that more people will use the post office’s services in their local sub-post office. So far, the evidence is that sales have gone up by 9% in those Post Office Local models. Sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses are reporting their own satisfaction with the model. So customers and sub-postmasters support the model in the vast majority of cases.

[Graeme Morrice]

The Minister mentioned the discussions that had taken place on the move to the Post Office Local model. Presumably, those were internal discussions within the post office network. Has there been any public consultation involving local communities on the issue?

[Norman Lamb]

Let me deal with the consultation and with the issue of compliance with the code of practice. I know that the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk has expressed concern that the code has not been complied with, and I note that concern. The code of practice that was agreed between Consumer Focus and Post Office Ltd governs changes in the post office network, and it has to be followed. I see from the hon. Gentleman’s letters to me that Post Office Ltd wrote to him on 8 November to explain why the branch had closed and to say that the company would

“work to find a solution that will provide a post office service to the Torphichen community.”

The code of practice contains details of when and why a consultation will be held. In the case of a temporary closure—which this is—such as that caused by the sudden resignation of the previous sub-postmaster, the code states:

“We will aim to restore the service...as quickly as possible. As such, and given the emphasis on speed of activity to ensure the service interruption is as temporary as possible, this would not be a matter for public consultation—rather it is an issue of effective communication to keep customers informed.”

That is why a letter was sent to the hon. Gentleman very soon after the closure occurred.

As I have made clear in my correspondence with the hon. Gentleman on this matter, the benefits of the local model far outweigh the reduction in the availability of a very small number of services. He might not take much comfort from my words on this matter, but I hope that he will recognise that many sub-postmasters, old and new—potentially including those in his constituency—see the benefits of the Post Office Local model. Given what has happened in the 150 pilots that have been conducted over the past year, and given the very high levels of customer satisfaction that have been reported, I ask him to keep an open mind and to reflect on the fact that, if customers in other branches that have been piloted over the past year have responded so enthusiastically, it might just be that his own constituents in Torphichen would respond positively to a Post Office Local in that community.

[Michael Connarty]

But the Minister must accept that if the Post Office Local model does not provide an adequate income stream for the business model of the person who has bought the shop, and if the shop closes because of inadequate footfall in the village, it will be because there is inadequate supporting income, given the miserly payments from Post Office Local to the people who run them. If that were to happen, the Minister would be responsible for shutting that shop. He will see from the petition and the letters and notes sent by the people in the village that the village was dead during the period in which the shop was not open. No one was traversing the high street, and people were not talking to each other as they had no place to meet. If that happens again, the Minister will be responsible.

[Norman Lamb]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that warning. I come back—[Interruption.] That sort of abuse is surely unnecessary.

Given that the pilots pursued over the last year have proved so successful—both for sub-postmasters and for customers—I repeat that the hon. Gentleman should have an open mind to the possibility that this might work in his community. I absolutely understand the hon. Gentleman’s point about footfall. That is why the discussions are continuing—to see whether this will work in that particular location. As I say, the pilots elsewhere have proved to be highly successful, so it is important to be open-minded.

I understand that the Post Office is holding the commercial discussions with the interested party in Torphichen, who is keen to provide post office services in the community. Crucially, a particular interest was expressed in the Post Office Local model—perhaps because of the flexibility it offers and its popularity with customers.

The hon. Gentleman suggested that there should be a moratorium, but given that this model has been so successful and so popular, it would surely be disastrous to stop it. We all have a common goal in ensuring the sustainability of the post office network. Given the quite dramatic decline in footfall over the last decade, things have to change; we have to find new ways of attracting people into the shop. One attractive aspect of the local model, as I have said, is the fact that opening hours are so much longer. That is an attractive prospect for customers in Torphichen, as elsewhere.

My Department has received many letters from the residents of Torphichen about the future of the post office, with many also signing the petition calling for its reopening, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned. I can tell him that that is very encouraging, because if everyone who signed the petition were to visit the new post office on a weekly basis, its business would be increased by over 50% on previous levels. If we can get agreement with the shop owner and the post office service is resumed, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will do all he can to encourage customers in the local community to use the facility.

Before I finish, let me reiterate the fact that the hon. Gentleman’s assumption that this is all about downgrading or closure is simply not the case. If we are confronted with someone walking out on a business, giving literally no notice, a temporary closure is inevitable, as I explained. Everything is being done to try to make sure that the service is resumed as quickly as possible for the benefit of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents. I thank him for raising this issue and for presenting me with the opportunity to reassure him and his constituents that steps to restore post office services in Torphichen are being actively pursued as a matter of priority.

Question put and agreed to.

21:12

House adjourned.