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Oral Answers to Questions
(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
1. What discussions he has had with his NATO counterparts on the political situation in Afghanistan.
Mr David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
12. What recent assessment he has made of the political and security situation in Afghanistan; and if he will make a statement.
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
My colleagues and I regularly discuss Afghanistan with our NATO counterparts, as we will in Brussels this week. Although the situation remains challenging, transition is on track. The main NATO summit in Chicago will send a clear signal of the international community’s enduring commitment to Afghanistan.
Bill Esterson
Today the Australian Prime Minister announced the early withdrawal of Australian troops. What has the Foreign Secretary discussed with his Australian counterparts and what are the implications for the early withdrawal of British troops?
Mr Hague
The vast bulk of the ISAF troop-contributing countries remain clear about the commitment to the end of 2014 as the time when the transition to Afghan security control will be complete. The United Kingdom is fully in line with that. We have said that British troops will not have a combat role after that point or be there in anything like the numbers they are now. That position is unaffected by announcements by any other countries.
Mr Evennett
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s original response. Does he agree that the region itself must take a greater interest in and responsibility for the future of Afghanistan? What discussions has he had with Afghanistan’s neighbours about that?
Mr Hague
Yes, I very much agree with that. Of course, there have been conferences of regional nations—promoted by Turkey, for instance. The co-operation of Pakistan with the Government of Afghanistan is of prime importance, and I am delighted that there has been a distinct improvement in relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan in recent months. My right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary has also toured central Asian countries to the north of Afghanistan, encouraging their co-operation with that country.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
The tragic events of Sunday afternoon in Kabul are yet more evidence that the idea of a transition to Afghan national forces is an objective that has been construed independently of any real long-term political solution—aid militarised, corruption endemic. Does the Foreign Secretary therefore accept that we should bring our brave troops home now, rather than waiting until yet more lives have been lost?
Mr Hague
No; one of the things we saw from the incident on Sunday was the increasing ability of Afghan security forces to deal with a major incident on their own. It was the Afghan forces that killed or captured all the insurgents concerned. Of course, they need time for that capability to be built up further, and we are giving them that time by having our troops engaged in Afghanistan—including in combat—up to the end of 2014. If we did not do that, those forces would not be ready for the full task, and we would be letting down the people of Afghanistan and the people who have done so much work over the last decade.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
I suggest that British Governments have long failed to understand that given the available resources, ISAF and Afghan forces will not defeat the Taliban. Is it therefore not now time to drop the unrealistic preconditions to talks with the Taliban and explore possible common ground—including differences between the Taliban and al-Qaeda—for our possible mutual benefit? We can be proud of our soldiers, but I suggest that it is now time for the politicians to step up to the plate.
Mr Hague
My hon. Friend knows that we are fully in favour of a process of reconciliation and that the British Government have been encouraging that—the last Government did it towards the end of their term of office and this Government have continued to do so. However, a successful reconciliation requires a readiness to reconcile on the part of the other party as well, and that has been lacking from the Taliban so far. I suspect that it would be even more lacking if we were to relax our military efforts and let the Taliban think that they could have success entirely on the battlefield.
Mr Douglas Alexander (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)
I have listened with care to the latest answer that the Foreign Secretary has given. I welcome what seems to be his implication that these latest attacks do not detract from the case for dialogue with elements of the insurgency. However, could he tell the House what work is being done and what progress is being made—specifically, by the Afghan Government, the US Government and the British Government—in pursuit of that goal?
Mr Hague
Progress has been made, and the right hon. Gentleman will be aware of the announcement of a Taliban political office in Qatar. That was an indication of a readiness to begin a process of reconciliation. Since then, the Taliban have suspended that intention. It is not surprising that efforts at reconciliation go backwards and forwards, or that sometimes there is a readiness to engage and sometimes they move back from that. That does not mean that we stop our efforts. The important thing is to maintain all our efforts to improve security and to build a viable state in Afghanistan so that, whether or not reconciliation succeeds, the Afghan national security forces are able to maintain security in their country.
Mr Alexander
Let me turn specifically to the NATO summit in Chicago in May, which has already been mentioned. Does the Foreign Secretary agree that the summit needs to agree a co-ordinated timetable for the withdrawal of NATO forces, a stable and sustainable funding arrangement for Afghan security forces and a status of forces agreement on the role of any international forces, post-2014? Does he also agree that, as well as setting those three goals, the summit must achieve genuine progress on a stable political settlement in Afghanistan, and specifically on bringing the regional powers on board in a more meaningful way than has been achieved to date?
Mr Hague
All those things are important, of course. The timetable was set by the Lisbon summit in November 2010, and as I have said, we are sticking to it. The right hon. Gentleman’s point about funding is very important, and we are doing a lot of work to ensure that there is a clear plan and a clear commitment from sufficient countries for the funding of the Afghan national security forces after 2014. I regard that as of the highest importance in regard to what we agree in Chicago. Of course there will be a network of bilateral agreements for forces, as well as any arrangements with NATO and ISAF, including our own commitment to having an officer training academy in Afghanistan after 2014. We also continue to promote a political settlement alongside all that, but the funding arrangements will be of the greatest importance in Chicago.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
For a genuine settlement to be reached, equal pressure must be applied to the Taliban and to the Afghan Government. Will the Foreign Secretary update the House on whether the Americans are continuing to investigate the possibility of retaining one or more strategic bases in Afghanistan after 2014?
Mr Hague
I am sure that the Afghan Government feel that pressure. As my hon. Friend knows, they are in favour of reconciliation; they are promoting it. President Karzai has appointed the high peace council to take forward that work, endorsed by Loya Jirga, so that work is certainly under way. The presence of American forces is a matter for the Governments of Afghanistan and the United States to reach agreement on themselves, so I cannot give my hon. Friend any new news on that.
Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)
2. What reports he has received on the capacity of the authorities in Afghanistan to preside over free and fair presidential elections in 2014.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
6. What reports he has received on the capacity of the authorities in Afghanistan to preside over free and fair presidential elections in 2014.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
10. What reports he has received on the capacity of the authorities in Afghanistan to preside over free and fair presidential elections in 2014.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)
When I was in Kabul about three weeks ago, officials made it clear that the forthcoming elections would create challenges, not only in relation to security. Accordingly, we are working with the United Nations Development Programme to support the capacity building of the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan, which will have responsibility for presiding over and delivering the election in 2014.
Mr McKenzie
Is the Minister confident that the Afghan police force will be strong enough to secure a presidential election in 2014 that is free from intimidation and electoral fraud?
Alistair Burt
We certainly hope so. The work that is being done to train and build up the Afghan national security forces, including the police, is on track. The numbers have increased, and they now stand at 148,000. It should also be noted that not all of Afghanistan is Kandahar or Helmand; there are substantial parts of the country where security is not an issue. As a result of the transition process, half the population is now under the control of the Afghan national security forces. We will continue to work with them, but we hope that they will be responsible for the conduct of free and fair elections and be able to guarantee that security.
Susan Elan Jones
The Minister will know that there are concerns about the capacity of the Afghan authorities to hold presidential elections in 2014. In the light of that, what is the Government’s assessment of recent media reports that Hamid Karzai is considering stepping down a year early, thereby triggering an election before the withdrawal of international forces?
Alistair Burt
Of course the date of presidential elections that might be triggered by a resignation must be a matter for the Afghanistan Government and the President. That he has made clear his intention to stand down is important in the context of accepting Afghanistan’s own constitution, which limits him to two terms. If an election were to come up immediately, the Independent Election Commission has said it would be difficult, but I think the sense is that the timing is likely to be co-ordinated with the Afghan Administration’s ability to hold such an election. It is a matter for them, but too soon an election might be very difficult, although the Independent Election Commission is working hard at improving its capacity to hold an election at the allotted time.
Heidi Alexander
I am sure the Minister will agree that for the next elections in Afghanistan to be really free and fair, women must be able to participate unrestricted in the process. What action has the embassy in Kabul taken to support women in the political process, and how confident is he that such participation will be meaningful?
Alistair Burt
Again, my recent visit and one I made some months ago allowed me to talk to women who are engaged in the political process. They are conscious of the difficulties in a socially conservative structure, but also of the gains they have made over the past 10 years and of their determination to make sure that the constitution, which guarantees equality for women, is adhered to. There can be no guarantees, but we are working with women’s groups and organisations throughout the country to ensure that the constitution is lived up to and to ensure the best possible opportunities for women’s representation because their full participation is indeed crucial.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
The Minister will, I hope, agree with me that British parliamentarians have a role to play in building capacity in regard both to the elections and to general parliamentary matters in Kabul. Will he therefore encourage the Inter-Parliamentary Union, which is planning a trip to Kabul for British parliamentarians, to press ahead with it irrespective of security considerations?
Alistair Burt
I do not think it is ever sensible to press ahead “irrespective of security considerations”, but the point is well made: parliamentarians have an opportunity to share experiences and help in the capacity building of Parliament, which is already ongoing. I very much hope that such a visit will be able to take place in proper security conditions.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Will the Minister outline what steps are being taken to ensure the improvement of voter registration of male and female voters in a country with widespread illiteracy?
Alistair Burt
That is a key part of the capacity building of the Independent Election Commission, which has already improved the percentage of those registered. There is clearly a close correlation between ensuring proper registration and preventing fraud, and the commission is very conscious of that correlation and of the need to continue to do more. That work is ongoing, and we are confident that it will be improved further from the elections of 2009 and 2010.
Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
The capacity of the Afghan authorities and their ability to hold free and fair elections will be crucially affected by the summit at Chicago, as the Foreign Secretary said, so we welcome his remarks about the involvement of neighbouring powers—a course of action we have urged on him for some time. Surely, however, this should also include India, Russia and Iran. Equally important, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) stressed, the voice of Afghan women must be heard at the negotiating table. We must ensure that women’s rights are protected under the settlement. What is the Minister going to do to ensure that?
Alistair Burt
Of course the Bonn conference is part of the ongoing relationship of the international community with Afghanistan, and it has women represented on it. We made it an important part of our representation, and our own Minister with responsibility for dealing with violence against women—the Minister for Equalities, my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone)—was present. We do indeed work to make sure that women’s representation is there. I come back to the point that much of this is in the hands of Afghan women themselves, who are very active and have made it clear that they do not wish to see the gains of recent years reversed. It is difficult, and no one should pretend otherwise, as it is not easily dealt with. We are confident that the opportunities will be there, that the determination of the international community will be there and that Afghanistan will be a stronger society because of the participation—political and otherwise—of women.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
3. Whether he has had discussions with the Ethiopian Government on the human rights situation in that country; and if he will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Henry Bellingham)
My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and I have candid and regular dialogues on human rights with Prime Minister Meles and others. We recently raised the plight of opposition leaders and journalists who have been arrested under Ethiopia’s counter-terrorism legislation, and we have also raised the impact that that is having on Ethiopia’s already restricted political space. We are engaging with the Government to promote best practice in the implementation of the legislation, with respect for human rights.
Mr Anderson
Discussions that I have held with the Oromia Support Group and Human Rights Watch suggest that the situation on the ground is extremely serious. For instance, 80% of male detainees have been tortured and more than 50% of female detainees have been raped, and more journalists are locked up in Ethiopia than in any other country. Would the Minister be prepared to meet me, along with representatives of those groups, to try to clarify the position, so that if it becomes clear that they are wrong and the Ethiopian Government are right, the situation can be rectified, and if it is the other way around, the issues can be taken up with the Ethiopian Government?
Mr Bellingham
I should be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and any people he wishes to bring to see me.
It is important to bear in mind the fact that, although we recognise Ethiopia’s right to fight terrorism, that must be done in the context of observing human rights. It should also be borne in mind that there is a big difference between journalists’ reporting terrorism and their supporting it. It seems that the Ethiopian Government often do not make that distinction.
Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)
Given that between now and 2015 our colleagues in the Department for International Development will be spending £330 million a year in Ethiopia, could we not do more to bring pressure to bear on its Government to improve their human rights record? After all, should not diplomacy and aid go hand in hand?
Mr Bellingham
We have great influence with the Ethiopian Government, which is why, whenever my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary or I visit the country, we have access to the Prime Minister and other Ministers. We have made it absolutely clear that they must give more space to the opposition, and must do more to respect human rights. We find it troubling that, whereas there were 150 Opposition Members in the last Ethiopian Parliament, there is now only one. We will certainly keep up the pressure, and we will continue our candid dialogues.
David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)
4. What steps his Department is taking to support the UK economy; and if he will make a statement.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Jeremy Browne)
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office works to boost trade and support the United Kingdom economy by lobbying the Governments of other countries to open markets, reduce barriers to trade, and make progress with multilateral and EU bilateral trade agreements. To support that work and promote Britain’s future prosperity, we are adding more than 100 new positions in our posts in the fastest-growing cities and regions throughout the world.
David Rutley
Last week, during the Prime Minister’s successful visits to Japan and Indonesia, and elsewhere in south-east Asia, he was able to welcome major deals involving 11 Airbuses for Indonesia and 1,500 new jobs in Nissan in the UK. Given the success of that visit, what steps is the Foreign Office taking to build on the trade relationships that are being fostered in those vitally important export markets?
Mr Browne
I strongly endorse the sentiment expressed by my hon. Friend. Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world. Its economy is growing by 6% or 7% a year, and it is the only G20 country in south-east Asia. There are big opportunities for us—political, diplomatic and economic—in countries such as Indonesia. I am delighted that the Prime Minister’s tour of Asia was so successful, and we are working in posts and across Government to build on that success.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
Britain has some of the toughest arms export rules in the world, and the Prime Minister’s recent efforts to promote the defence industry on his overseas visits will have been made within those parameters. Did he also take the opportunity to push for a strong international arms trade treaty, and what steps are the Government taking to bring that about?
Mr Browne
In a sense, the hon. Lady has answered her own question. We have extremely tough rules on arms exports, and we are keen to promote an arms treaty. However, as is widely recognised throughout the House, it is legitimate to sell arms to people who comply with the regulations, and that is what we will do when it is appropriate.
Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
5. What reports he has received on the conduct of recent presidential elections in the Russian Federation.
The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)
The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, while giving a positive overall assessment of voting on election day, identified problems with unequal campaign conditions and serious limitations on voter choice.
Mrs Chapman
I am grateful to the Minister for his answer. Does he know whether the Prime Minister raised the issue of electoral irregularities with President Putin when he called to congratulate him on his election victory?
Mr Lidington
We raise with Russian leaders and Russian officials, at every opportunity, our concerns about human rights in their country, and we have certainly raised with the Government of Russia our concerns about how the presidential elections, and indeed last year’s parliamentary elections, were conducted.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
Following the results of the Russian elections, does my right hon. Friend anticipate any change in Russian policy towards the oil and gas producing countries of the South Caucasus? What can the British Government do to further broaden and deepen our relationships with those countries?
Mr Lidington
We continue to press for reconciliation between Russia and Georgia following the conflict between those two countries, but we are firm in our belief that that has to be achieved in a way that recognises Georgia’s territorial integrity.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
17. The Minister mentioned the OSCE report. It also said that irregularities occurred in up to a third of the polling stations in the Russian Federation. What representations have the Government made to the European Union for it, in turn, to put pressure on Russia to address the situation?
Mr Lidington
I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that he needs to acknowledge that there are limits to the leverage that the UK alone and the EU collectively have with Russia. However, we always ensure, both bilaterally and in European conversations, that the central importance of human rights and respect for democratic processes is brought home to our Russian interlocutors.
Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)
7. What discussions he has had with his EU counterparts on the situation in Syria; and if he will make a statement.
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
I discuss Syria regularly with EU colleagues. At the March Foreign Affairs Council, we condemned the violence of Assad’s regime and supported Kofi Annan’s six-point plan. We agreed to adopt further sanctions, including an asset freeze on two Syrian petroleum companies.
Kwasi Kwarteng
I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for his answer. What role does he envisage for the Security Council in the ongoing crisis in Syria?
Mr Hague
The Security Council has, I am glad to say, at last agreed a Security Council resolution. It did so on Saturday and I pay tribute to our mission at the United Nations in New York for the way in which it helped to achieve that. This resolution embodies the Kofi Annan plan, but it also sets out very clearly how the role of the monitors for the ceasefire that has now, at least partly, come into effect in Syria, should be regarded, in terms of giving them access to where they need to go and to people they need to talk to. For the first time the Security Council has passed a resolution uniting all the members of the Security Council, against which the Assad regime and its behaviour can now be judged.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
The Syrian military have shelled refugees in Turkey. What is our Government’s attitude to that? If the Turkish Government take justified military action in response, will we support them?
Mr Hague
We deplore that outrageous behaviour, along with the killing of 10,000 and more people throughout this conflict so far in Syria. We have expressed our strong solidarity to Turkey over that. I am not going to get into discussing hypotheses about military action by Turkey; I do not believe that that is being seriously contemplated at the moment, although, of course, continual violation of the border would be an immense provocation to Turkey. But we absolutely deplore that particular violation.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)
Is it not clear that the Assad regime had no intention of respecting the ceasefire and withdrawing its tanks and heavy artillery from towns and cities? As the international community accepts a responsibility to protect, will the British Government initiate urgent discussions with the Arab League, Turkey, the United States and other European countries, with a view to encouraging Arab states to close their land borders and their airspace to any traffic destined for Syria? If that were combined with a naval blockade of the Syrian coast, would it not, at the very least, prevent any further arms from being delivered to the Syrian regime?
Mr Hague
As my right hon. and learned Friend knows, we have very tough sanctions in place, imposed through the European Union, and the Arab League has sanctions of its own. But as he will also know, some Arab League countries do not implement, or do not fully implement, those sanctions, particularly countries that are close to Syria, such as Iraq. For that reason, it is extremely difficult to impose the general blockade that my right hon. and learned Friend talks about, and arms shipments continue to reach Syria from Russia as well. Cutting off all such arms supplies without the co-operation of the countries I have mentioned is not possible. What we now have to do is try to ensure that the terms of the UN Security Council resolution are met, and clearly warn the Assad regime that if they are not met, we will be able to return to the Security Council for further measures.
Mr Douglas Alexander (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)
Let me stay on the issue of the Security Council resolution, and echo the words of praise for the UK mission in New York. We welcome the authorising of the deployment of observers from the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the fact that, as I understand it, members of the group have now started arriving in Damascus, but will the Foreign Secretary say when he expects the observer group to be up to full strength, when it will begin reporting back, and what his personal assessment is of the chances of its being able to go about its work peaceably?
Mr Hague
The right hon. Gentleman is right to sound a sceptical note about the group’s ability to go about their work, as the Assad regime did not fully co-operate with the Arab League observers who were in the country previously. That shows the importance of passing, in the Security Council resolution, clear language about “unhindered deployment of…personnel”, full
“unimpeded and immediate freedom of movement”,
as well as “unobstructed communications” and a requirement to be able
“to freely and privately communicate with individuals throughout Syria”.
The observers will therefore be able to report on a continuous basis on whether these terms are being met, and the Security Council will then be able to debate those terms. They are terms that have been agreed by Russia and China as well as by countries such as ours. The expansion of this monitoring team into a team of several hundred, rather than 30, depends on the observance of the ceasefire, what progress is made over the coming days, and the passage of a further UN Security Council resolution.
Amber Rudd (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
19. What financial support are the Government considering giving to international agencies working to support refugees outside Syria in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan?
Mr Hague
Through the Department for International Development, we have already given about £4.5 million in support for humanitarian purposes. That goes through international agencies. That has helped to provide basic supplies and much needed emergency supplies, particularly to people on the borders with Syria, and we have offered further assistance to Turkey, which has seen large numbers of Syrians cross the border in recent times, if it requires it.
Mr Speaker
Order. Progress is rather slow today, so I appeal to colleagues to ask shorter questions and to Ministers to grace us with somewhat shorter answers.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
8. What reports he has received on the cohesion of the opposition to the Syrian Government.
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
The Syrian opposition has taken steps to improve its cohesiveness. In Istanbul on 1 April, I met senior members of the Syrian National Council. I urged them to continue their efforts to provide a common platform for the opposition to Assad, including for Kurdish people, and I have doubled the financial support we provide to them for non-lethal activities.
Ian Murray
What is the Foreign Secretary’s assessment of the Syrian authorities’ commitment to the peace process, and what effect is the continued violence, particularly in Homs and other areas, having on the cohesiveness of the opposition?
Mr Hague
I think the behaviour of the regime—not only in Homs now or in recent weeks, but throughout the last 13 months—can only help to solidify and intensify the opposition. It is an encouragement to them because it shows what an appalling and murderous regime they are up against. The hon. Gentleman is right to raise doubts about the intentions of the regime. It has complied with the ceasefire in the most grudging way possible, and has not yet met all its terms. It continued to kill as many people in the opposition as it could until the last possible moment. I have no doubt that it will at various stages try to obstruct the observers and that it does not necessarily intend to engage sincerely in any process of political transition. All that is true, but it is an advance to have the observers there and the Security Council resolution in place.
Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
In the judgment of my right hon. Friend, are the tragic events in Syria a genuine national uprising against a tyrannical regime or a power struggle between the Sunni and the Shi’a and their foreign backers, which, if it results in the overthrow of the Alawite regime, could lead to tragic results for some of the other minorities in that country, including the 350,000 Christian Syrians?
Mr Hague
I think it is much more the former than the latter—that would be the judgment I would give to my right hon. Friend. From everything I have seen of opposition activists in Syria, they are motivated by their opposition to the regime for many secular rather than religious reasons. They want to bring about a plural democratic political system in their country, so I think those are the prime motivations, but we always impress on them the need to state their commitment to protecting minorities, including the Christian minority in Syria, and I am pleased that they have now strongly stated that commitment.
Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)
Last week, I visited Jordan’s northern border with Syria, near the town of Deraa. I draw Members’ attention to the entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests that will soon appear. Will the Foreign Secretary check how much of the £4.5 million being given to help refugees is going to the Jordan border, where literally thousands of Syrian refugees are coming through? The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is operating on a shoestring and such relief work is often being done through the generosity of the Jordanian people themselves.
Mr Hague
I certainly will check, and will encourage my right hon. Friend the International Development Secretary to check in detail. We should be clear that if we are asked by the UNHCR or by countries bilaterally for greater assistance, we will provide that. We are providing assistance that has been requested, and we will certainly do more if necessary.
Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)
In welcoming the Annan plan, does the Foreign Secretary agree that, ironically, compliance with it entrenches the regime in situ? Is it still his wish that the Assad regime stand down, and how does he think that can be best achieved?
Mr Hague
Of course it is our view that the Assad regime should go—that was our stated view from last summer—but as my hon. Friend knows, that is not the united view of the whole United Nations Security Council, so this resolution and the work of Kofi Annan is based on a political process. However, that is a process, as set out in the Annan plan, to lead to a plural democratic political system. Of course, the regime will try to use a ceasefire and a political process to its own advantage; but the more it is a genuine ceasefire and a genuine political process, the less it will be to the regime’s advantage.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
9. What representations he has made to the Government of Israel on the increase in demolition of Palestinian houses in the last year.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)
I raised the issue of demolitions in the west bank with the Israeli ambassador on 23 February, and again with the Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, Mr Meridor, on 19 March.
Michael Connarty
I thank the Minister for that half an answer—it might have been useful to tell us what the Government said. There has been a 40% increase in demolitions in the last year, 26,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished since the Oslo agreement was signed, and 14,000 people have been put out of East Jerusalem through the withdrawal of their right to live there. Is this not in fact ethnic cleansing, and are the Government of Israel not now heading for a racially based apartheid regime similar to South Africa?
Alistair Burt
I am happy to give the second part of the answer—now that that part of the question has been asked. The situation is as the hon. Gentleman indicated: the UN reported an increase in demolitions of some 40% last year. We have made representations to Israel on this issue, and we think the demolitions are very destructive of the peace process and the relationship that needs to be built. This has to be set in the overall context of the relationship between the Palestinian authorities and Israel, because settlements, demolitions and related issues must be part of an overall peace process, which is why we have pressed both parties to continue their engagement.
Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)
Is my hon. Friend aware that over the same period last year there were 627 rocket attacks into Israel, with an upsurge of 200 in the last month? Does my hon. Friend agree that it would help the peace process, which we all want to see furthered, if those acts of unprovoked aggression were brought to an end immediately?
Alistair Burt
We have indeed condemned the rocket attacks that have emanated from Gaza, as we have expressed concern about the increased violence in the area and attacks on civilians anywhere. My hon. Friend’s question is a measure of the difficulty of dealing with this when both sides have issues to raise about each other. That is why our pressure and our determination to see the middle east peace process develop and continue are so important. We have not lost sight of that despite all the other things going on in the region.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
The increase in demolitions of Palestinian houses is one example of the approach to the west bank situation being taken by the Israeli Government. A septuagenarian from my constituency, Anthony Radcliffe, discovered another when he was detained over this weekend by the Israeli authorities in Tel Aviv, having attempted to gain peaceful access to the occupied territories in the west bank. Does the Minister agree that it is wrong that the security services of one country, Israel, can prevent a British citizen from visiting another, Palestine, and what will he do to ensure free passage for British citizens in future?
Alistair Burt
It is clear that UK citizens can visit the west bank and that they do so in ordinary circumstances, but the Israeli authorities have made it clear that they will not facilitate what they consider to be an organised protest. We have made that clear in our travel advice, and in the circumstances we have seen over the last weekend we have ensured that consular officials are available at the airport. It is within Israel’s legitimate immigration rights to do what they are doing, but clearly the situation is not comfortable. We believe that it provides further reasons why we should continue to press both parties to engage in the talks that will resolve the situation. We cannot separate the attempt being made at the weekend to mark Palestinian land day from the overall concerns of both sides.
Mr Speaker
I would like to make some progress down the Order Paper, so we need shorter answers. The word is “shorter”—[Interruption.] I have explained it; shorter answers are required. The Minister must practise giving them.
Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)
Does the Minister not accept that what he is proposing does not work? Will he support me and others at peaceful demonstrations at events involving Israeli Olympians to highlight the plight of the Palestinians and to bring to public awareness the apartheid regime in Israel?
Alistair Burt
I understand any colleague’s desire to take part in free and peaceful process in this country, but the hon. Gentleman raises an issue that he knows is deeply contested by Israeli authorities as regards how they conduct their affairs. It is a further measure of why it is important to work on both sides to get an agreement to this long-standing dispute.
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
11. What discussions he has had with his EU counterparts on Iran; and if he will make a statement.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
13. What discussions he has had with his EU counterparts on Iran; and if he will make a statement.
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
I am in regular contact with my European colleagues on Iran. Most recently my officials met Iranian representatives, alongside those of France, Germany, the United States, China and Russia, in Istanbul on Saturday to discuss Iran’s nuclear programme.
James Morris
EU member states make up four of the world’s 10 biggest oil importing states and OPEC has calculated that removing Iranian oil from the market would result in the loss of about 10 billion barrels a day. To maintain biting sanctions on the Iranian regime, alternative and adequate supplies of oil need to be secured. What steps are the Government taking with their EU counterparts to achieve that?
Mr Hague
The ban on importing Iranian oil comes into force on 1 July, although most European countries have already stopped such purchases. During March, Iranian exports of crude oil reportedly fell by 14%—in just one month. That is putting considerable pressure on Iran. I am not aware so far of any difficulties among EU countries in replacing those supplies. Other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, are increasing their oil production and that is very helpful.
Neil Carmichael
In the Foreign Secretary’s discussions with his ministerial colleagues in the EU about Iran, what measures are being considered in response to growing concerns about nuclear proliferation in Iran?
Mr Hague
The measures we will take will go down the twin track of sanctions and negotiations. We now have unprecedented sanctions coming into force on Iran, including not just the oil embargo but a partial asset freeze on the central bank of Iran, and expanded financial measures against Iran, including on gold and precious metals. However, we are sincere about negotiations. I am pleased that the opening round of negotiations in Istanbul went better than previous rounds, and a second round has been agreed for Baghdad on 23 May.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
I am pleased that the talks last weekend were described as “fruitful” and co-operative—I think those were the words—which is useful of course. Does the Foreign Secretary agree that we need to keep up a maximum dialogue between now and 23 May so that when the parties next convene for a formal discussion we can really look forward to concrete proposals?
Mr Hague
Yes, of course the dialogue will be kept up, as will the maximum pressure in the form of the sanctions coming into place. The commitment to a second round of negotiations includes a commitment to discussions between officials between now and then in order to prepare those discussions in Baghdad.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
15. The last nuclear non-proliferation treaty review conference supported the concept of a nuclear-free middle east. Could the Foreign Secretary say what is being done to promote that and when the conference involving all countries in that region including Israel is due to take place as a way of promoting a nuclear-free and therefore peaceful region?
Mr Hague
We are in favour of such a conference and we were one of the countries that promoted the idea. It was due to take place in 2012, although agreement on its taking place has not yet been reached. I stress, however, that we have no chance of achieving a nuclear-free middle east as long as Iran persists in a programme that the world suspects is a nuclear military programme.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
My right hon. Friend has already referred to the effect of the sanctions and oil embargo in putting pressure on Iran. What discussions has he had with those countries, notably China and Russia, that are breaking the oil embargo and that would presumably have a great deal to lose if there were a loose Iranian nuclear power?
Mr Hague
China and Russia are not part of the agreement on the oil embargo—there is no United Nations oil embargo; it is a European Union embargo—but it is noticeable that Chinese purchases of Iranian oil seem to have fallen in recent months. The Iranian nuclear programme is an issue that we discuss constantly with our counterparts. I discussed it with the Russian Foreign Minister in Washington last week and I will be discussing it with a member of the Chinese Politburo in about 45 minutes’ time. We will of course continue all those discussions.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
Her Majesty’s Opposition strongly welcome the constructive and useful talks that took place last weekend, but what specific actions are the British Government requesting of the Iranian Government before the resumed talks in May?
Mr Hague
The most important thing in making a success of the Baghdad negotiations is that there are productive discussions between officials beforehand and that Iran comes to the table with proposals of its own for urgent practical steps that can be taken to give confidence that it is serious and sincere about the negotiations. The most important step it could take would be to demonstrate to the International Atomic Energy Agency and the whole world that its nuclear programme is purely for peaceful purposes and to do so to all our satisfaction, but it has not been able to do that.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
14. What recent discussions he has had on human rights in Sri Lanka.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)
The most recent discussions with the Sri Lankan Government possible were at the March meeting of the UN Human Rights Council. We lobbied for and supported a resolution that was passed at the meeting which we believe will assist in creating new impetus for Sri Lanka to implement the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission.
Seema Malhotra
I thank the Minister for his answer. On Saturday I attended a Sri Lankan new year cultural programme in my constituency, which was part of important work to build links and trust between the Sinhalese and Tamil communities. Does he agree that it is now vital for the Sri Lankan Government to ensure that there is a credible, independent investigation of the alleged abuses on both sides as part of taking a critical step towards long-lasting peace, as called for by the UNHRC?
Alistair Burt
The hon. Lady’s presence at such a meeting indicates how important it is for the process of reconciliation to be accepted on all sides. There is no doubt that the lingering doubt about the events at the end of the conflict will produce a cloud and a shadow over that. We have been at the forefront of calling for a credible inquiry into those circumstances and we believe that the passing of the Human Rights Council resolution produces a new opportunity for us and Sri Lanka to deal with this and other aspects of reconciliation detailed in the Commission’s recommendations.
Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
Tomorrow my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary and I will attend a meeting of NATO Defence and Foreign Ministers in Brussels. The meeting will prepare for the Chicago summit in May, which will focus on Afghanistan, improving military capabilities, and strengthening NATO’s network of partners across the world.
Steve Rotheram
Will the Foreign Secretary join me in congratulating Aung San Suu Kyi on her election victory, and does he agree with claims by the Chindits—the lions of the jungle—that they have been abandoned by the UK Government in their fight against Burma’s ruling dictatorship?
Mr Hague
Of course I very much congratulate Aung San Suu Kyi on those victories. We are pleased that such change is taking place in Burma. We will discuss at the EU Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg next Monday what we now do about sanctions on Burma. The Prime Minister had a very successful visit there last Friday. We are not abandoning anybody as we improve relations with Burma. In fact, we have stressed throughout the importance of the release of political prisoners, the upholding of human rights—far more effectively, we hope, than in the recent past of Burma—and the ending of regional ethnic conflicts. All of those are equally important.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
T2. This week is the anniversary of the genocide that was perpetrated by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds, a genocide that is still not formally recognised in most countries. Will the UK recognise that a genocide took place and encourage others to follow suit?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)
Whether or not the term “genocide” is appropriate, it is clear that an appalling atrocity was perpetrated against the Iraqi Kurds, not least at Halabja. They were among a number of minorities who were attacked by Saddam Hussein. It is noteworthy that his indictment at the end of the day was for crimes against humanity. Very many suffered as a result of his activities and we should remember them all, as we remember the opportunities now created in Iraq for a new future.
Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)
T4. Following the recent threat by the Iranian leadership, what steps, if any, are being taken to prepare for the possible implications of Iran seeking to close the straits of Hormuz?
Mr Hague
The Defence Secretary and I have both referred to that in the past and we have stressed that any such attempt would be unsuccessful. It is one of the reasons for our maintaining a force of minesweepers in the Gulf. It is one of the reasons for our joining the United States and France in sending ships through the straits some weeks ago to demonstrate our determination to protect international navigation, so I hope that Iran has taken note of that determination and will desist from any such attempt.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
T3. My constituent John Lawton has been missing in Greece since Easter Sunday. He was competing in a marathon. He passed through the fourth checkpoint and has not been seen since. This is very distressing for his wife, Lynda, and son, Steve, who are out in Greece and with whom I am in regular contact. Can the Minister assure me and the Lawton family that everything possible is being done by the Government to support the family and to make sure that everything possible is being done by the Greek authorities at the highest level to ensure the widest possible search, and that the family receive support on the ground from the British embassy?
The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)
May I first express my sympathy to the Lawton family at what must be an incredibly traumatic time for them? I spoke to our ambassador in Athens this morning about this case. My understanding is that our embassy has been in regular contact with both the Lawton family in Greece and the Greek authorities at every level, from ministerial to operational police level. I am very willing to offer a meeting between our consular team in Greece and the Lawton family members who are there, and I am also very happy to meet the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, our hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), in order to discuss the case further.
Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
T5. Following the recent sudden death of the President of Malawi and the peaceful and constitutional succession of Joyce Banda as the new President, what assessment has the Minister made of the prospects now for full diplomatic representation in Malawi and the resumption of the direct foreign aid that is so important to so many people in that very poor country?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Henry Bellingham)
I had a chance to speak to President Joyce Banda a few days ago. I was extremely impressed by her determination to drive a programme of economic reform and to meet some of the milestones that we put in place for the bilateral relationship, so I am confident that we will be able to appoint a high commissioner in the very near future. Direct budget support will be up to the Department for International Development, but we will carry on providing aid to the Malawi people.
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
T6. I recently visited India with a view to helping a constituent whose son died there two years ago. They are still awaiting the outcome of the forensic findings of the loss of life investigation. Will the Minister or the Secretary of State meet me and, on a cross-party basis, other Members of the House who are similarly affected by loss of life investigations in India?
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Jeremy Browne)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on the diligence with which he has pursued the case of his constituent. I have raised the case with the Indian authorities on two occasions but have not yet resolved it to his or my satisfaction. I am more than happy to meet him and others to try to make further progress.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
T8. The International Crisis Group reported in December that:“Women in Sri Lanka’s predominantly Tamil-speaking north and east are facing a desperate lack of security in the aftermath of the long civil war.” It refers to forced prostitution and trafficking. Will the Minister raise those issues in his dialogue with the Government of Sri Lanka?
Alistair Burt
We thought that it was a good report, with elements that we certainly recognise and that also match some of the issues raised through the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, so those concerns will form part of our dialogue with Sri Lanka as it works towards its own determination to secure peace and reconciliation for the future, which we believe must also be based on justice for the past.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
T7. Following a recent visit to Gaza, I refer the House to my entry in the register. Have Her Majesty’s Government raised with Egypt the serious impact on Gaza’s economy, basic infrastructure and medical facilities and the Gaza strip’s sole power station of Egypt’s recent restrictions on fuel exports to the Gaza strip?
Alistair Burt
I have not raised that specifically with Egypt. We are aware of the concerns about power and fuel and the discussions among the relevant parties to try to resolve it. We are following those discussions closely and urge those parties to solve the issue so that some of the pain of the Gazan people can be relieved. My hon. Friend is right to raise it.
Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
T10. Given that today is Palestinian prisoners’ day, can the Minister say what representations he has made regarding the number of Palestinian children currently detained in Israeli prisons and what concerns he has about the treatment they are suffering?
Alistair Burt
I have raised the issue of the detention and treatment of children on a number of occasions with the Israeli authorities. We appreciated the fact that the age of majority for criminal proceedings has been raised, but I still have concerns about access to lawyers. Indeed, from this Dispatch Box I have said that the shackling of children is wrong. We can continue to raise those issues on behalf of those affected.
Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
T9. I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the diplomatic and responsible way in which the 30th anniversary of the Falklands conflict was handled recently. What is his view on Argentina’s continued reference to an illegal occupation, which does not reflect the principle of self-determination?
Mr Hague
Our view on this is well known: we support the Falkland Islanders’ right to self-determination. For us this is not about territory, but about the rights of those people, who have been settled there for generations. We recently saw the birth of a ninth-generation baby on the Falkland Islands, and some of the families have been settled there since before Argentina existed in its current form. The Falkland Islanders have been there a long time. We uphold their right to self-determination and will always continue to do so.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
I know that the Government are appalled at the recent turn of events in the west African state of Guinea-Bissau. Is the Minister in a position to update the House on what has happened in Guinea-Bissau and what efforts can be made to help restore democracy to that beleaguered land?
Mr Bellingham
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his interest in Guinea-Bissau. I gather that he has been there twice, including recently as an election observer. We absolutely deplore the coup d'état. Guinea-Bissau was making really good progress from a failed state towards a functioning democracy, so we support the statement by the Economic Community of West African States that the Prime Minister, Carlos Gomes, and the interim President, Raimundo Pereira, must be released and that the second phase of the election must go ahead on 22 April.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
In the curious case of Mr Neil Heywood, can the Foreign Secretary reassure the House that everything that could have been done has been done, and everything that should have been done has been done, preceding and proceeding Mr Heywood’s tragic death?
Mr Hague
Yes. My hon. Friend will be aware that before Foreign and Commonwealth Office questions today I issued a written ministerial statement, setting out what has happened since 14 November, since the tragic death of Mr Heywood, and I hope that it will be for the assistance of the House. As my hon. Friend knows, we have asked for—we have demanded—an investigation, and the Chinese authorities have agreed to conduct such an investigation. There has been a further discussion about that this afternoon, between my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and a visiting member of the Politburo, Mr Li Changchun, whom I too will meet shortly, so we are pursuing the matter extremely carefully but vigorously.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
Further to Question 9, is not the worst aspect of the demolitions the practice of punitive demolitions, which is based on the doctrine of collective punishment, and does that not directly contravene article 33 of the Geneva convention?
Alistair Burt
I reiterate again that we raised with the Israeli authorities the issue of demolitions as one of great concern. They have been on the increase, and we see them as a setback to the peace process and to the need to build a proper relationship with the Palestinian authorities in order to get an ultimate settlement resolved. It will be resolved only within that context, but we are concerned about the recent increase, and we make our representations very clear.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
I have great concerns about demolitions in East Jerusalem, and the Foreign Secretary himself recently talked about Israeli settlements in the west bank being illegal under international law, counter-productive, destabilising and provocative, but other than words of criticism are there any consequences for the Israeli Government, or do they pursue those policies with impunity?
Alistair Burt
My hon. Friend makes very clear, by echoing my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary’s statement, how seriously the United Kingdom takes those issues and how constantly we raise them, but again I have to come back to the fact that Israel sees the issue differently, and accordingly it is one of those things that ultimately will be resolved only by the settlement that every Member wishes to see between the Palestinian authorities and Israel. Differences of opinion on the matter are likely to remain, but we are increasingly concerned about the activities in East Jerusalem, and my hon. Friend is right to raise them, as indeed was my right hon. Friend when he made his statement.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
Three hours ago the Foreign Secretary rushed out a statement about the death—possible murder—of a British citizen in China last November. There are so many different aspects to the matter that there is no time to go into them, but the statement makes it clear that the Foreign Office knew on 18 January about the allegations, that they were brought to the Foreign Secretary’s attention on 7 February and that it took two months for him to bring it to the attention of the Commons or the public. May I invite him to give a full oral statement, so that the many worries and questions that need to be raised can be put to him for a full answer?
Mr Hague
The points are very clear in the statement that I have issued today—not in a rushed way but after full consideration, putting all the facts together for the House. On the one hand the right hon. Gentleman says that there is a rush, but then he asks for a rush on a great many other things. What is clear is that rumours within the British expatriate community about the matter were brought to officials on 18 January; that the allegations about Mr Heywood’s death, made by former Chongqing vice-mayor and chief of police, Mr Wang Lijun, were made on 6 February; and that on 7 February, the next day, officials brought those concerns to me—the same day that I instructed them to ask China to investigate. I think that puts into perspective some of the ranting of the right hon. Gentleman.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Will the Government seek prudent limits on the amounts of money that the European Central Bank can lend to weak commercial banks in the European Union, given our small shareholding and big interest in that difficult situation?
Mr Hague
That may be more a matter for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but of course the governance of the European Central Bank is also not primarily for the United Kingdom, given that we are mercifully not part of the euro—and are not going to become part of the euro. So we might not be in a strong position to seek those limits.
Dame Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
Are the Government aware that at least 65 executions, including of women, took place in Iraq in January, and that the Iraqi criminal justice system depends largely on confessions extracted routinely by torture? Surely that is a legacy that shames us all.
Alistair Burt
We have noted the increase in executions to which the right hon. Lady refers. We have issued a statement of deep concern and condemnation in relation to it. It is a measure of how far the justice system still has to go in Iraq that some of these hangovers of the past have to be overcome. The United Kingdom, as is its declared policy, will continue to work to oppose the death penalty and continue to work for the improvement of justice in Iraq.
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sorry to disappoint colleagues who wanted to get in, but we must now move on.
Emergency Fire Control Services in Cumbria
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
I am very grateful for the opportunity to present a petition on behalf of the residents of Cumbria who oppose plans to outsource Cumbria emergency fire controls. Along with my signature, the petition contains 18,247 signatures of people from throughout the county who are concerned that the outsourcing and regionalisation of our control centre will lead to a threat to the safety of everybody in the county and the millions of people who visit us every year.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of Cumbria,
Declares that the Petitioners oppose the decision by Cumbria County Council to outsource services currently provided by Cumbria Emergency Fire Control to Cheshire in 2012 and eventually a regional facility in 2014.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to encourage Cumbria County Council to re-consider their decision to outsource Cumbria Emergency Fire Control services and ensure that before any further decisions are made, all plans, including a full breakdown of the financial business case are made available through a public consultation.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001017]
Olympic Transport Arrangements
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
I am pleased to present this petition, which is signed by 10 businesses in Hackney South and Shoreditch—the signatures are fewer in number than those for the previous petition, but these businesses are sorely affected by their precise location close to the Olympics zone, and face considerable disruption to their activities before and during the Olympics and Paralympics. Because of that, they fear for their future and the jobs of their employees.
The petition states:
The Petition of Michael Spinks of Essex Flour and Grain Co. Ltd.,
Declares that the Petitioner is concerned that during the period of local road closures for the Olympic Games, local businesses (including Essex Flour & Grain Co. Ltd) may be forced into liquidation as a result of an inability to receive and dispatch goods and that this may result in job losses.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to encourage the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games to take all possible steps to ensure freedom of access for private and commercial vehicles to businesses in Lee Conservancy Road, Hackney Wick and the immediate neighbourhood during the period of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
And the Petitioner remains, etc.
[P001018]
Abu Qatada
(12 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the deportation of the Jordanian terror suspect, Abu Qatada. May I first apologise to the shadow Home Secretary for the late receipt of my statement, which was occasioned by this afternoon’s court hearing?
I can tell the House that today officers from the UK Border Agency arrested and detained Abu Qatada and served notice that we are resuming his deportation. The assurances and information that the Government have secured from Jordan mean that we can undertake deportation in full compliance with the law and with the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights. Deportation might still take time—the proper processes must be followed and the rule of law must take precedence—but today Qatada has been arrested and the deportation is under way.
Let me remind the House briefly of where we are. For more than 10 years, successive Governments have sought to deport Abu Qatada to Jordan because of the serious risk that he poses to our national security. He has a long-standing association with al-Qaeda, he has been linked to several terrorist plots, and in Jordan he has been found guilty, in absentia, of terrorist offences. Despite the judgment of British courts that Qatada should be deported, and despite accepting that our diplomatic assurances from Jordan mean that he would not be mistreated on his return, in January the European Court of Human Rights ruled against his deportation. It did so on unprecedented grounds—that evidence obtained from the torture of others might be used against him in future legal proceedings in Jordan. As I have told this House before, the Government disagree vehemently with this ruling. Qatada does not belong in Britain; he belongs in Jordan, where he deserves to face justice.
We have since been working closely with our Jordanian counterparts to get the certainty we need that Qatada will face a fair trial on his return, and I want to thank Jordanian Ministers for their constructive and helpful approach. Since January, the Prime Minister has discussed Qatada’s deportation with King Abdullah. I have been to Jordan and held meetings with the King, the Prime Minister and several other Ministers. The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), who is responsible for crime and security, has travelled to Jordan. There have also been several official delegations to follow up on ministerial negotiations. These discussions are ongoing.
The result is that we now have the material we need to satisfy the courts and to resume deportation. I can give the House a brief description of the key facts that mean that Abu Qatada will get a fair trial. The state security court, which will hear Qatada’s case, is not a quasi-military court—as Strasbourg suggested—but a key part of the Jordanian legal system that considers a wide range of criminal cases. Qatada’s case will be heard in public with civilian judges. On his return to Jordan, Qatada’s conviction in absentia will be quashed immediately. He will be detained in a normal civilian detention centre where he will have access to independent defence lawyers. In court, he will be able to summon defence witnesses in his support.
Those accused alongside Abu Qatada when he was found guilty in Jordan, whose evidence is at the heart of the European Court’s ruling, can give evidence, but what they say in court will have no effect on the pardons they have already been granted. We can therefore have confidence that they would give truthful testimony. Furthermore, Qatada will be able to challenge their original statements. Indeed, one of the more significant recent developments is the change to the Jordanian constitution last autumn that includes an explicit ban on the use of torture evidence.
I believe that continuing the deportation proceedings against Qatada on the basis of those facts will be the quickest route to remove this man from our country. I know that many hon. Members are frustrated by Strasbourg’s ruling and by the time that it is taking to deport him. I share their frustration entirely. I know that a number of hon. Members have specific concerns, which I want to address head-on.
The first is why we cannot just ignore Strasbourg and put Qatada on a plane. In reality, we simply could not do that. As Ministers, we would not just be breaking the law ourselves, but would be asking Government lawyers, officials, the police, law enforcement officers and airline companies to break the law too. As soon as we issued a deportation notice to Qatada, his lawyers would win an immediate injunction preventing us from removing him. Even if we somehow succeeded in deporting him against the wishes of the courts, we would be ordered to bring him back to Britain and perhaps even to pay compensation. Instead, our approach will bring an enduring solution. The truth is that of all people and institutions, the Government must obey the law. That means that as long as we remain a signatory to the European convention, we have to abide by Strasbourg’s rulings.
The second concern is why we cannot deport Qatada when other countries have recently deported foreign nationals. The truth is that although all legal systems and all cases are different, no Council of Europe member state now ignores rule 39 injunctions, which Strasbourg issues to prevent deportations. The recent cases of foreign nationals being deported from France did not involve an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. Italy has confirmed that it will no longer deport foreign nationals in defiance of rule 39 injunctions. I am keen to learn from the experience of other countries in Europe, so we will be examining the processes and procedures used in France, Italy and elsewhere to see whether our legislation might be changed to enable us to deport dangerous foreign nationals faster.
In the longer term, we need to stop the abuse of human rights law. The Brighton conference, which begins tomorrow, will examine how to reform the European Court of Human Rights. We are changing the immigration rules to prevent the abuse of the right to a family life and, of course, we need a British Bill of Rights.
Continuing with deportation on the basis of the work that we have done with the Jordanians is the quickest and safest means that we have of removing Qatada from Britain. However, hon. Members must be aware that that does not necessarily mean that he will be on a plane to Jordan within days. There is still a potential avenue of appeal to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission court, and beyond. That appeal process could take many months, but it would be based on narrow grounds, and with the assurances that we have received, we can have confidence in our eventual success. I believe that Abu Qatada should remain in custody throughout that process.
The other option available to us, which is to refer the case to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, could take even longer and would risk reopening our wider policy of seeking assurances about the treatment of terror suspects in their home countries. That policy was upheld by the European Court’s judgment in January, and it is crucial if we want to be able to deport terror suspects to countries where the courts have concerns about their treatment. There are 15 other such cases pending. I confirm that the Government have therefore not referred the Abu Qatada case to the Grand Chamber.
British courts have found that Abu Qatada is a dangerous man, that he is a risk to our national security and that he should be deported to Jordan. We have now obtained from the Jordanian Government the material that we need to comply with the ruling of the European Court. I believe that the assurances and the information that we have gathered will mean that we can soon put Qatada on a plane and get him out of our country for good. I commend this statement to the House.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
I welcome the Home Secretary’s pursuit of the deportation of Abu Qatada in compliance with the law. Given her assessment of the threat that he poses to national security, it is right to try to deport him as soon as possible and to return him to custody in the meantime to protect public safety.
I accept the Home Secretary’s apology for the late delivery of the statement, which I received only 10 minutes ago. Unfortunately, the Evening Standard clearly received the statement at 12.30 pm today, when it reported what she was to say in the House.
I understand that, as the Home Secretary said, SIAC is sitting as we speak, but none of the content of her statement appeared to be contingent on the conclusions of that court hearing, and there is a troubling level of confusion about today’s events that it would be very helpful for her to clear up.
I welcome many of the points that the Home Secretary made, although I have a series of continuing concerns. I welcome the assurances that she has obtained from Jordan. Previous agreements were in place, but she was right to pursue further assurances. I welcome, too, the arrest of Abu Qatada today as part of action through the courts to pursue deportation.
The Home Secretary will know that our concern remains that the Home Office should have acted faster after the European Court judgment in January, and that had we not had early drift and delay after that judgment, Abu Qatada might not have been released in the first place. When I asked her in February, several weeks after the judgment, whether she had had personal contact with Jordan after the European Court ruling, she had not been to Jordan at that point, nor did she go for a further four weeks. Indeed, the court that gave Abu Qatada bail cited as one of its reasons that there was no sign of progress in getting a deal with Jordan. Indeed, the court said:
“I do not know precisely what the Secretary of State has in mind. Indeed, the negotiations are only at the earliest of stages.”
It is therefore very welcome that the Home Secretary has now got further reassurances from Jordan, which are important and I hope will be sufficient, and it is welcome that she is taking action today, but three important sets of questions remain.
First, can the Home Secretary set out how long this will take? Does she expect to deport Abu Qatada in weeks, months or years? She has previously told the House that she hoped to deport him by the Olympics. Does she believe that she is on track to do so? The media appear this afternoon to be reporting that Abu Qatada is expected to be on a plane by the end of April. Does she believe that that will happen or that it is realistic?
Can the Home Secretary also confirm that the action that she has taken today is simply to start the deportation process again from the beginning by going back to SIAC? Can she confirm that she has decided not to conclude the previous deportation proceedings, which started in 2007, by going to the Grand Chamber, and decided instead to start the process again by going back to square one and to SIAC today?
The Home Secretary and I would agree that the process that started in 2007 has been way too long. The British and European courts should be faster, and reforms are needed to deal with the delays. We are happy to work with her on discussing that. However, I continue to be concerned by her confidence that she has taken the fastest route today. She has said that the route that she is taking is quicker than going to the Grand Chamber. Can she confirm, however, that the process that she has started today is still potentially subject to a whole series of appeals throughout the British court process, or to Abu Qatada and his lawyers taking the matter to the European Courts or the Grand Chamber again? Although she has decided that simply going through the final stage in the process is too long and is ditching the Grand Chamber, in fact she may be starting from scratch a process that will still have the Grand Chamber at the end of it.
We understand, too, that the Home Secretary believes it is too risky to appeal to the Grand Chamber. I understand that she will have had legal advice on that, and I do not want her to pursue an unwise and risky process, but we equally want her to pursue the fastest possible safe process to get Abu Qatada deported. May I therefore ask her to share with the chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee and the Opposition, on Privy Council terms, the detail of that legal advice, so that we can understand the judgment that she has reached on not going to the Grand Chamber as the fastest way to get Abu Qatada deported?
Finally, we need to know what safeguards are being put in place in the meantime. We understand that the special court is meeting as we speak, but also that it has been suspended this afternoon. Has the Home Office asked for Abu Qatada to be returned to custody? The Home Secretary did not make that clear in her statement. On the basis of what we know about the case I believe that would be the right thing for the Home Office to do. However, she will know that as Abu Qatada has already been released on bail, there is a significant risk that the court will decide either today or at a future date to continue with bail. It remains, therefore, a serious concern that Home Office delays in January and February led to Abu Qatada being released in the first place, and are also making it harder to return him to prison now.
Given reports that Abu Qatada has been in contact with extremists in Jordan while out on bail, the Home Secretary needs to set out what safeguards she will put in place if the courts do not agree to bail. There are also reports of chaos at the SIAC hearing as we speak. Those proceedings have been held up and we understand that lawyers are being scrambled to court. The BBC is reporting that the hearing is a “bit of a mess”. Can she confirm that the hearing has been properly applied for and planned rather than cobbled together in a rush in order that it sits at the same time as the House?
There is something a little odd about the timing and confusion. We are debating Abu Qatada without knowing what the courts will decide this afternoon and what action the Home Secretary will need to take next. [Interruption.] Will she therefore agree to return this House—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. There is far too much noise in the Chamber. May I just say to the shadow Home Secretary that I think she is bringing her remarks to a close?
Yvette Cooper
Will the Home Secretary agree to return to the House this afternoon or tomorrow morning if the court does not agree to revoke Abu Qatada’s bail and return him to custody, so that we can hear what action she will take and what safeguards she will put in place?
I hope Abu Qatada will be back behind bars by tonight in line with the security assessment that the Home Secretary and the courts have previously made, and that we have a clear and reliable timetable for his deportation to Jordan. I hope we will not be back to square one. There was too much drift earlier this year and we have had a troubling level of confusion this afternoon. Will she assure the House that she is in control of events, and that the deportation everyone wants to see is back on track?
Mrs May
May I first say that I welcome the support the shadow Home Secretary has given to the resumption of deportation and to the work that has been done to receive assurances from the Jordanian Government? A number of the points she made in response to my statement were made in her press release yesterday, but I recognise that she received my statement late. Although I covered a number of her questions in my statement, I will respond to the points she has made.
The right hon. Lady asked whether the SIAC proceedings this afternoon were properly applied for. Of course they were, but I am sure she will understand that when we are moving to arrest an individual whom we intend to deport, there is a limit to the number of people we tell before we move.
The right hon. Lady seemed to suggest that the Government had done nothing about the Strasbourg ruling until the bail hearing a few weeks later, and quoted Mr Justice Mitting, the judge at the bail hearing. The quote she gave made clear that negotiations with the Jordanians had already begun at the time of the bail hearing. I know she is always keen to attack, but her arguments might have a little more strength if they did not contradict each other.
The right hon. Lady asked about my estimated timetable for Abu Qatada’s deportation. As I said in my statement, we have resumed deportation against him and he was arrested earlier today. He has the right to appeal to SIAC, and I understand that he or his lawyers have made it clear that he intends to appeal and to ask for revocation of the deportation, possibly beyond SIAC—there are rights of appeal beyond SIAC. Because any appeal will be based on narrow grounds and because of the quality of the assurances we have, I am confident of our eventual success, but the process could take a number of months. I have been clear about that and said it in my statement.
The right hon. Lady appears to misunderstand the process. She says that we are going back to the beginning. In fact, we are resuming the deportation, which was set to one side during the appeals that went through to the European Court. She asked why we were not referring the case to the Grand Chamber. Again, I covered that in my statement. I said absolutely clearly that referring to the Grand Chamber would open up the whole of the judgment set down by the court on 17 January, part of which was positive for us. We have looked at the issues involved and taken the decision that the appropriate and right course of action that will ensure we can deport Abu Qatada is to follow the action we have taken of gaining assurances from the Jordanian Government and resuming the deportation.
The right hon. Lady asked about the length of time it is taking to deport Abu Qatada. May I remind her that deportation proceedings began in 2001, nine years before the end of the Government of whom she was a member? The time it is taking to deport Abu Qatada is not down to political will, but down to the nature of our legal system. As I said in my statement, I am willing and keen to look at how other European countries deport dangerous foreign nationals quickly, which is something that the last Government never did. We are following what I believe to be the right course of action to ensure that we can deport Abu Qatada. I have been clear in my statement—and I am willing to repeat it—that I believe that Abu Qatada should be in custody. That is why we arrested him this morning, have taken him to SIAC and are asking for his detention. The work that we have done has resulted in assurances from the Jordanian Government that I believe will enable us to deport Abu Qatada. That is what the whole of this House should want: Abu Qatada deported from this country, back to Jordan.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
Having made a powerful statement in favour of the deportation of Abu Qatada, will the Home Secretary confirm that at the Brighton conference, which begins tomorrow, it will be made clear that, as far as the United Kingdom is concerned, a British Bill of Rights will be determined by legislation passed in this House, and not based on the European convention on—but increasingly against—human rights?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend is right to refer to the Brighton conference, which starts tomorrow. It will be chaired by my right hon. and learned Friend the Justice Secretary, who has been working with the other 46 members of the Council of Europe to do what I believe we all want, which is to ensure that the European Court operates appropriately and in a way that reflects its original intentions. The Prime Minister made a speech earlier this year in which he made it clear that there were a number of issues that we wanted to look at, such as subsidiarity and the efficiency of the European Court. It is those matters which the Brighton conference will be discussing.
Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
As the Home Secretary who originally certificated Abu Qatada, it would be churlish of me not to congratulate the Home Secretary on making at least some progress on the back of the change in Jordan’s constitution and on getting agreement. However, does she agree that much of the delay has been caused by the operation of the European Court, and that the proposals originally put forward by the Prime Minister for deliberation by the Council of Europe in Brighton this week have now been watered down? Is it not a contradiction to come here and be quite belligerent about believing that something can be achieved by words, when actually, in deliberation in Brighton this week, we will go in exactly the opposite direction?
Mrs May
I welcome the comments of the right hon. Gentleman, the Home Secretary who, as he said, first initiated proceedings for the deportation of Abu Qatada. What I would say to him about the Brighton conference is that the Prime Minister was quite clear earlier this year about those areas where we would be working to get some change in the operation of the European Court. Of course, all Members of this House will have to wait until the proceedings of the Brighton conference are complete to see the package that comes out of it, but I have every confidence that the work that my right hon. and learned Friend the Justice Secretary has done will indeed enable us to achieve the changes we want.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I welcome the Home Secretary’s action in obtaining assurances from Jordan. Although it is rather odious to have to wait for this man Abu Qatada to avail himself of all the rights and procedures that are available under our system, we should be clear that we want to live under a system that has rights and protections, and not the kind of regime that he and his friends would prefer to bomb us into.
Mrs May
My right hon. Friend makes a very valid point. It is precisely those sorts of freedoms and rights that we have in this country—the ones that we value in our justice system—that Abu Qatada and too many others would wish to destroy. As I said, we should accept that one body above all others that should obviously abide by the rule of law is the Government.
Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
Is not the real issue in the case of Abu Qatada the fact that the Home Secretary has been engaged in a race against time as a result of her Government’s reckless decision to abandon control orders and replace them with measures that the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation has said will weaken national security?
Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)
I congratulate the Home Secretary on the tenacity that she has shown; it makes her a formidable Home Secretary. On the question of assurances, will she respond to the recent comment about Abu Qatada from Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights? He stated:
“There must be watertight guarantees that he should not be tried with evidence obtained under torture”.
Is that the nature of the assurance that she has received from the Jordanians?
Mrs May
I thank my hon. Friend for his words. I have set out a very brief description of the assurances that we have received; more details will obviously be put forward to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission at the deportation hearing. One of the key changes that has taken place in Jordan involves explicit changes to the constitution that outlaw the use of evidence that has been gained by torture.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement. I also congratulate her on the efforts that she has made, and especially on her visit to Jordan. Will she tell us the exact date on which she received the assurances from Jordan that satisfied her that a deal could be made? What worries me are the 15 other cases that she has told the House about today. At the Brighton conference, we need to establish a fast-track system so that cases involving dangerous people in this country can be fast-tracked through the European Court as well as through our own courts. That has been the view of successive Governments as far as Abu Qatada is concerned.
Mrs May
No. The right hon. Gentleman is suggesting that he knew first, but we were still in discussions with the Jordanian Government about the assurances and, as I have made clear in my statement, the work will continue. We have assurances, we are confident in the case that we have, and we will continue to work with the Jordanian authorities.
On the right hon. Gentleman’s question about the wider use of deportation with assurances, one of the issues that my right hon. and learned Friend the Justice Secretary and others across Government have been working on in relation to changes to the European Court is the efficiency of the Court. Another issue relates to subsidiarity and the relationship between national courts and the European Court. It is on those issues that I believe we will see some movement this week.
Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that this appalling case brings the management of human rights and our own justice system into serious disrepute? Does she also agree that both are in need of radical reform?
Mrs May
I am clear that we need to make some reforms. We all value human rights and we want to ensure that we uphold them, but we need to ensure that we have legal structures that will enable us to do so in a way that is proper and appropriate. That is why it is entirely right that the Government have been looking, in conjunction with others, at how the European Court works.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
Observing the rule of law is even more important when we are dealing with an individual like this, but I want to ask the Home Secretary the same question as I have asked on previous occasions. This individual has been here for a very long time; he came here in the early 1990s. If there is evidence against him, why cannot he be charged with any crimes that he is alleged to have committed? If there is evidence against him—and there might well be—it is puzzling that he is not being tried in the United Kingdom.
Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)
I thank the Home Secretary for her assurance that Abu Qatada will be deported in the fastest possible way, and I share her sentiment that the proper place for him is in detention. Does she not agree, however, that one of the major reforms to the European Court of Human Rights must involve addressing the backlog? Will she also assure the House that the Government will show real leadership at the Brighton conference and ensure that we make progress on this matter, once and for all, because it is seriously undermining public confidence in the justice system?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend has made a valid point about people’s confidence in the Court when they see that backlog. That backlog is precisely one of the issues that we have been addressing in discussions with other countries, and I expect the Brighton conference will consider how to deal with it. I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to welcome the outcome of that conference.
Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
It is potentially unhelpful, if not confusing, that the Special Immigration Appeals Commission is deliberating at the same time as the Home Secretary is making her statement. None the less, I, too, welcome the progress that she and her ministerial colleagues have made in their discussions with the Jordanian authorities. I have to put it to her, however, that if she had not been successful in her endeavours, Abu Qatada would not today be on a 22-hour curfew, but on a TPIM or terrorism prevention and investigation measure—a watered-down control order—with access to the internet and able to roam the streets of London. Would she be confident in that level of protection for the people of this country?
Mrs May
Yes, we are confident in the level of protection given by TPIMs—otherwise we not have introduced them. On the right hon. Gentleman’s first point about the timing, I am tempted to say that if SIAC had sat before I had made my statement, I would have received complaints from Labour Members that I should have come before the House before it had taken any decision.
Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)
The European convention is incorporated in law by the Human Rights Act. On that basis, our supreme court has already ruled that it would be lawful to deport Abu Qatada. Why, therefore, does the Home Secretary say that it would unlawful?
Mrs May
Obviously, for the past three months, a rule 39 injunction against the deportation of Abu Qatada has come from the European Court. As I outlined in my statement, if any move were made to deport him immediately—we have a memorandum of understanding with Jordan about how a deportation would take place, including a timetable that we should abide by; it was a part of our arrangements supported by the European Court and was supported in the UK courts—it would be open to Abu Qatada to issue an injunction. If he were to be deported contrary to that injunction, it would of course be unlawful.
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)
I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement, but will she explain why, if it is in the public interest to deport Abu Qatada, it is in the public interest to allow terror suspects based here in the UK to have increased access to the internet, increased access to mobile phones and the freedom to come to London in the run-up to the Olympics and the Queen’s jubilee celebrations? Does she agree with the conclusions of the Anderson review that getting rid of control orders was a “political decision” and
“one that is unlikely to further the requirements of national security—rather the reverse.”?
Is that not a damning indictment of the Government’s decision to weaken our anti-terror laws?
Mrs May
First, as I said in response to an earlier question, I am confident in the TPIM measures that we have introduced and put in place. I note that not only a number of Labour Back Benchers, but the shadow Home Secretary herself have raised a number of questions about the issue of terrorism, anti-terrorism and national security. I simply say to them that they should ask themselves this: if they care so much about that issue, why is the Labour party campaigning to stop the extradition to the United States of a known terror suspect?
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
May I, like others, welcome the Home Secretary’s determination? As already said, the House of Lords has already approved this deportation without the requisite assurances that the Government are now able to provide. I seek some clarification of the rule 39 injunction to which my right hon. Friend has referred. Given the nature of how the UK implements international law, on what basis in UK law would such an injunction be directly enforceable in the UK courts?
Mrs May
I apologise to my hon. Friend. I thought that I had implied the answer to that question in my response to my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless), who is a member of the Home Affairs Committee.
The point is that if we were to act against the rule 39 injunction, it would be open to Abu Qatada—or, indeed, to anyone else in the same position—to go to our UK courts to obtain an injunction against deportation, and we would then find ourselves acting against the law that exists here in the UK. It is on that basis, apart from any other, that I say that we would be acting illegally.
Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)
I thank the right hon. Lady for her statement, and assure her that my right hon. and hon. Friends will wholeheartedly support her efforts to ensure that this dangerous man, who is a risk to national security, is out of our country as soon as possible. Can she assure me, however, that she is confident that the European Court will not interfere again to hinder the deportation of this terrorist?
Mrs May
I thank the hon. Gentleman for assuring me of his support and that of his right hon. and hon. Friends. A legal process can now be obtained. Obviously Abu Qatada will have an initial right of appeal to SIAC and further potential rights of appeal in the UK courts and then the European Court, but it cannot be guaranteed that the hearing of those appeals would be accepted. The confidence that I feel is based on the fact that we are considering a narrow definitional issue as we take the matter through the courts.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
I welcome the announcement that the Government can now deport Abu Qatada, and that they have addressed the concerns about the possible use of evidence obtained under torture. I also welcome the Home Secretary’s clear statement that we should not be in the business of breaking laws ourselves, ignoring Strasbourg, and simply putting Abu Qatada back on a plane. May I, however, follow up an earlier question from the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick)? Will the Government now make every effort to pursue cases such as this through the UK courts whenever possible, so that we do not become involved in such lengthy legal shenanigans in the future?
Mrs May
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his question. I suspect that more lies behind it than merely the deportation of Abu Qatada.
In cases such as this, when we are dealing with individuals who are a danger to the United Kingdom and are suspected of terrorist offences, the Government explore every avenue. However, as I pointed out earlier and as my right hon. Friend will know, decisions about prosecution in the UK are not decisions for the Government. As I have said in response to a number of questions, we and other members of the Council of Europe are looking at the efficiency of the European Court, because the matter was before it for a significant period.
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)
Does the Home Secretary recognise that the vast majority of the British public who have heard her statement today will not understand why we, a so-called independent country, cannot get rid of someone who is a risk to our security? She has said, and I accept it, that we do not want to be seen to be breaking the law, but the law is clearly wrong, and we must find ways of changing it so that we can deport, as soon as possible, people whom we do not wish to be in this country.
Mrs May
I thank the hon. Lady for what I think is her support for my statement. We will be considering, in particular, the systems that are available to other countries to establish whether there is anything that we should be doing here in the UK to ensure that we can deport people who are dangerous to the United Kingdom, who are suspected of terrorist offences, and who pose a national security risk, far more quickly than we do now.
Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)
I too congratulate the Home Secretary on setting in train the process of deporting Abu Qatada. Many people in this country will welcome her action. However, although the matter has not been helped by the European Court of Human Rights, there are rumours that our proposals to the Brighton conference will be watered down. Will the Home Secretary, here and now, give us an unqualified assurance that that will not happen when the conference opens tomorrow?
Mrs May
I am not in a position to predict what will emerge from the deliberations that will take place during the three days in Brighton, but I can assure my hon. Friend that—as I said earlier—the Prime Minister in a speech earlier this year clearly defined the areas in which we felt that it was necessary to work with other countries on reform of the European Court, and I have every expectation that they will be addressed at the conference this week.
Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)
May I again draw hon. Members’ attention to the forthcoming entry in the register? The Home Secretary may be aware that the all-party group on Jordan was also in Amman last week. I believe that it was on the same day as the Home Secretary spoke to the Jordanian Prime Minister that we were able briefly to raise the Abu Qatada issue with him, explaining the great public concern in the UK about it. I must agree that he emphasised at that time that Jordan wished to do what it could to facilitate the deportation and to make progress on human rights. It is also important to put on the record today that when we spoke to the Jordanians—I am sure that the Home Secretary will do this as well—we said that we in no way wish them to lighten up on human rights standards in their country; we want them to continue the progress they are making towards political reform, constitutional reform and human rights.
Mrs May
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. As I have said, the Jordanian Government have been very helpful in our discussions about Abu Qatada. What is significant is that the way in which the Jordanian system operates today is different from the portrayal given by the European Court; a significant number of changes have taken place. Indeed, when I was in Jordan, everything that people were saying to me, both at Government level and through officials and others, was that they see Jordan continuing to move forward on this issue of human rights.
Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)
The Home Secretary has remained admirably calm in her responses to a string of former and wannabe Home Office Ministers on the Labour Benches, whose bluster has not concealed the fact that they utterly failed, over the course of nine years, to make any progress in getting this man out of this country. Will the Home Secretary assure me that Abu Qatada will no longer be residing in the United Kingdom long before there is next a Labour Home Secretary?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend tempts me down a route of prediction. What I will say to him is that, as everybody in this House knows, it has taken considerable time to get to where we are at the moment. There are further processes to go through, but I believe that what the Government have done is to take absolutely the right course, which is to get together the assurances that we need to be able to resume deportation. I have every confidence in our eventual success in being able to achieve that deportation.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Does the Home Secretary agree with me, and, I suspect, with many millions of the British public, that British courts should have the final say on who stays in our country, not a foreign court in Strasbourg?
Mrs May
I am well aware of the strength of feeling on that, in this House and outside it. As I have said, and as has been made clear in this Chamber on a number of occasions, one of the issues raised by the Prime Minister in his speech earlier this year on the European Court—one of the issues that is being looked at—is the question of subsidiarity and when it is right that decisions, having been through national courts, should be considered final, without reference to the European Court.
Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)
I congratulate the Home Secretary on her leadership in getting a grip on this issue, which has gone on for far too long. Does she agree that we can take great pride in this country that, however frustrating it may be, even those who despise our values and our freedoms are accorded the full protection of due process under the law? Does she agree that for those frustrations to disappear in future, we need to reform the European Court of Human Rights, as the Prime Minister has said, at source?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that we can take pride in the justice system that we have here in the United Kingdom. I know that many people find it frustrating when they see such decisions coming out of the European Court and when they see us having to take our time to get the assurances we need. But as he has said, it is absolutely right that we seek reform of the European Court, and that is why the Brighton conference this week is so important.
Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)
May I, too, pay tribute to the work that the Home Secretary has carried out on this difficult issue? Can she give the House any assurances that as and when Mr Abu Qatada is deported from this country he will remain deported from this country, notwithstanding the fact that he has family residing in the UK?
Mrs May
One reason we have been pursuing this case in the way that we have is that I want what I have called a sustainable deportation, in that I do not want us to be required by some court here in the UK to bring Abu Qatada back into the United Kingdom. That is why we have been pursuing the case in the way that we have.
Mr Speaker
Order. I am keen, if at all possible, to accommodate all remaining colleagues, but to do so I require brevity, which exercise will be led by the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone).
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
I am sure the residents of the Kettering constituency would want me to congratulate the Home Secretary on her tremendous efforts to deport this wretched man. Reassuringly, she said she would look at how France, Italy and other countries do this sort of thing rather faster. Who is going to lead that review, and when will they report?
Mrs May
I will come back to my hon. Friend with more details on that in due course, if I may. I have already initiated some work on this within the Home Office, and we will be looking at the matter as soon as we can. If we were to require legislative changes, we would have to look at the legislative timetable.
Mike Crockart (Edinburgh West) (LD)
Torture is abhorrent no matter where it happens, and we must all be happy that Abu Qatada’s deportation will be achieved without implicitly condoning such behaviour. The Secretary of State must agree, however, that that is still the second-best option, behind the option of trying Abu Qatada in this country. Will she therefore redouble her efforts to remove any remaining barriers to that happening in future, such as by addressing the use of intercept evidence?
Mrs May
As I have said in answers to a number of other Members, the Government have, of course, at all times looked as widely as possible at what action could be taken in relation to Abu Qatada, as I assume the previous Government also did. The hon. Gentleman raises the issue of intercept as evidence. As he will know, we have a Privy Council group that is still looking into that issue, and the only comment I would make is that very often it is assumed that that is the one answer that will solve all our problems when all the evidence is that it is not.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
May I, as a member of the Home Affairs Committee, congratulate the Home Secretary on the personal role she has played in securing Jordanian co-operation in this matter? Although the shadow Home Secretary kept referring to this as going back to square one, will my right hon. Friend confirm that it is, in fact, a resumption of proceedings that were already ongoing, having herself now obtained assurances from the Jordanians; and that this process will be faster than going through to the Grand Chamber of the European Court?
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
I obviously welcome the statement and I admire the Home Secretary’s persistence in this case, but I believe it is a huge waste of her time to have to spend so much time trying to rid the country of this particular individual. There are now a number of cases where our national security is under threat because of rulings from a foreign court whose judgments undermine both confidence in the judiciary and human rights in general. I know reform of the Court is high on the agenda, and we would all like to see that, but you mentioned the Bill of Rights in your statement. May we please speed up the timetable for that, so we have it in place as soon as possible?
Mr Speaker
I should just mention that I did not mention the Bill of Rights at all, but somebody did, and I think we are about to hear from her.
Mrs May
Yes, I did refer to the Bill of Rights, and as my hon. Friend will know, my right hon. and learned Friend the Justice Secretary has set up a commission to look into this whole question of a Bill of Rights. It will report in due course. As I have said, I am looking into how we can ensure that we can deport people who are a risk to our national security, and have a speedier and more secure process of doing so than we currently have.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
I warmly welcome the Home Secretary’s strong statement. Has this whole sorry episode convinced her and the entire Government that, as others have said, what we need is a British Bill of Rights declared senior to Strasbourg, and a supreme court over the road that lives up to its name?
Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s approach. Those who are called upon to exercise judgment in striking a balance in this matter would do well to regard the evidence over a long period about the seriousness of this gentleman’s connections and the threat he poses, and to take into account the judgment of an eminent British judge, who called him a “truly dangerous individual”.
Mrs May
My hon. Friend is absolutely right and I assure him that the case the Home Office will be putting forward at various hearings—both at bail and otherwise—will of course draw on the past evidence that this is a dangerous individual. That is why we wish to deport him and why I believe that, prior to deportation, he should be in detention.
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
I congratulate the Home Secretary on moving mountains to get to this point, but will she describe the roadblocks that the Opposition had to encounter before we could get a grip on this issue and sort it out?
Mrs May
I thank my hon. Friend for his remarks. Of course, this is not purely my effort; the Minister with responsibility for crime and security, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup went to Jordan, and a significant number of Home Office and Foreign Office officials have been working extremely hard over the past weeks and months since the original judgment to ensure that we reached the position we are in today, whereby we have been able to arrest Abu Qatada and resume deportation. It has taken a long time overall, and part of the reason is the lengthy legal process that has taken place. That is one of the reasons why I believe it necessary to look at whether we could make any changes to enable us to make these deportations quicker.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
May I join in the congratulations to the Home Secretary on the progress she has made? Without asking her to predict failure, if the Brighton conference fails to produce a suitably robust reform for the Strasbourg Court, do the Government have a fall-back position for getting these things into a far better, more streamlined state?
Mrs May
I am rather more optimistic than my hon. Friend is about the Brighton conference, because I know of the considerable work put in by my right hon. and learned Friend the Justice Secretary, and by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and others across government, to work with the other 46 member states—remember, 47 countries will be around the table to discuss this. I am confident that the areas of change the Prime Minister has set out will indeed be addressed.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
At the Brighton conference, what steps will we take to ensure that cases such as this, which raise important and serious issues of national security, can be expedited and take their place over and above the thousands of cases heard by the European Court that raise no new issues of law whatsoever?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend raises a valid point. On the length of time taken, there are two issues, one of which relates to the European Court. As I have said, the question of its efficiency will be addressed at the Brighton conference, as I understand it. The other issue is the time that proceedings here in the United Kingdom take, which is why I am looking at the systems and legal structures that apply in countries such as France and Italy, to see whether there is something we should be learning and changes we should be making.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is quite right—the British Government must not break the law, but she will know that the British Parliament must make the law, and make it quickly. Can she say when the day will come—can she indicate a timetable—when the findings of British courts and the decisions of my right hon. Friend will not be subject to overthrow by the European Court of Human Rights?
Mrs May
I have made my views on this issue absolutely clear on a number of occasions. As I have said, a number of pieces of work are going on to strengthen the position of the Government and the UK generally in dealing with such issues. That is partly about working with the European Court to reform the way it operates, and partly about us looking at our own legal system to see whether we need to do anything to strengthen our hand here in the UK.
Kris Hopkins (Keighley) (Con)
I welcome the progress made by my right hon. Friend in ridding this country of this wretched man—something the previous Labour Government should have done many years ago. Will she use the experience gained in this case to start deporting the many other foreign prisoners who continue to reside in our prisons at our taxpayers’ expense?
Mrs May
I can assure my hon. Friend that we are working on the whole question of the deportation of foreign national offenders, the assurances we need from other countries and the need to ensure that we can do it more speedily and more efficiently than in the past. This is ongoing work and cannot be done at a drop of a hat, so it will take some time for us to put in place some of the arrangements we need to ensure that we can act with rather greater rigour.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
One of the great frustrations in this case is that foreign nationals who are suspected of terrorism in other countries gain admission to the UK and use our courts and the European courts to frustrate their removal. What action can my right hon. Friend take to ensure that those foreign nationals who are suspected of terrorism are not admitted in the first place?
Mrs May
Of course, we have been looking across the board at our policies on this subject. We have a far stronger policy on exclusions from the UK than the one adopted by the previous Labour Government. I believe that that is right. We have a duty to protect British citizens and it is right that we should consider every avenue to ensure that we can do that.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
I welcome today’s arrest of Qatada and congratulate my right hon. Friend on her work, particularly with the Jordanian authorities, in this case. However, the central fact remains that in this case the European Court of Human Rights did not weigh up the interests of UK national security against the interests of Qatada. Will she assure the House that if the European Court of Human Rights cannot be reformed to meet the standards of security that British citizens expect, we should consider leaving it?
Mrs May
Of course, as I am standing at the Dispatch Box before the Brighton conference on the reform of the European Court has taken place, I can only refer my right hon. and hon. Friends to the speech made by the Prime Minister earlier this year and to the areas in which change should be made that he set out. I am afraid that in terms of what will come out of the Brighton conference, my hon. Friend will just have to be patient.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
For far too long, this country seems almost to have been a beacon for terrorists who arrive here legally or illegally and stay here. They live on us like leeches and we cannot get rid of them. Will my right hon. Friend instruct her officials to make as much progress as possible in reducing the time for which those people, who suck our blood for so long, stay in this country before we can get rid of them?
Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)
I, too, congratulate my right hon. Friend on her statement and on her resolve on this issue. It is hard to think of another case that so clearly sums up everything that is wrong with the twisted priorities and logic of the European Court of Human Rights. Does my right hon. Friend agree that without radical reform, the European Court represents a clear barrier to British courts’ ability to protect British citizens from those who threaten our security?
Mrs May
It has been the clear view of this Government for some time that we need to bring about reform of the European Court in a number of areas. That work has been undertaken in recent months. As I said, the Brighton conference, under the chairmanship of my right hon. and learned Friend the Justice Secretary, will consider the action that can be taken to reform the European Court. As a Government, and in the Home Office, we will consider the systems we have in place to see whether we can learn anything from other countries to provide us with a swifter means of deporting those who are a threat to our national security.
Mr David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
I am very grateful to you for calling me, Mr Speaker. I congratulate my right hon. Friend on her statement and on the leadership she has shown on this issue, which is to be commended. Is she aware that my constituents believe that this case has gone on for far too long, that it needs a speedy resolution and that until we can get rid of this Abu Qatada, he should stay behind bars? My constituents are also looking for radical reform so that this cannot happen again.
Mrs May
I ask my hon. Friend to reassure his constituents that, like them, I think that this has taken too long. Like them, I wish Abu Qatada to be deported and deported sustainably so that he does not return to the United Kingdom. Like them, I think we need reform of the European Court. That is the view of the Government and that is why we have been pursuing this in our work as chair of the Council of Europe. The Brighton conference will consider those proposals this week.
Point of Order
(12 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Home Secretary said that it was not a good idea to warn Abu Qatada that he was about to be arrested, which obviously prompts one to ask whether he would then have been able to abscond. She maintains that that is why she could not tell the House first and suggested that there had been no briefing to the media, but the precise words in the Evening Standard, which was published before the House sat today, are:
“A deportation order to send Abu Qatada to Jordan and allow him to be put back behind bars will be issued within days, Home Secretary Theresa May said today”—
not “will say today” or “in the next few days,” but “said today”. That was published before she came into the House and before the House sat. It goes on in precise terms to detail every single element of what the Home Secretary has said to the House this afternoon.
Mr Speaker, will you investigate precisely why and how this came to pass? Surely, at least on matters of national security, about which the public need to have confidence in the Government and parliamentary process, Parliament should hear first. Will you also confirm that if Mr Qatada is not under detention at the end of today it is perfectly possible for the Home Secretary to return to the House to explain why not?
Mr Speaker
I will rule on that, but as the hon. Gentleman has raised a point of order that relates directly to the Home Secretary and she is in her place, she has the opportunity to respond if she wishes to do so.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I assure the House that I gave no such briefing to the press in relation to this. In response to the suggestion of the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) that the Special Immigration Appeals Commission had not been properly informed, I made the point that the number of people who were aware that the arrest was about to take place was limited. I understand, however, that there were a number of journalists outside Abu Qatada’s house, as there have been at various stages in the past three months. Therefore, when action was taken it was only to be expected that that information would be available to the media.
Mr Speaker
Order. I am happy to respond to the point of order from the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). First, I have had no opportunity to make any direct comparison between the text reported in the Evening Standard and the content of the Home Secretary’s statement. Secondly, as has already been said, it is commonplace for there to be heavy media speculation in circumstances of this kind.
Thirdly, I take this opportunity forcefully to underline the crucial importance of statements of this kind, and indeed all significant statements of Government policy, being made first to the House. The Home Secretary did me the courtesy of contacting me over the weekend and we discussed her desire to make a statement today. Of course, I pointed out that it was extremely important if the statement was not to be made until Tuesday that nothing of it emerged in advance into the public domain, to which proposition I know she readily agreed. I do not think I can say more than that now, but these things must first be revealed to the House and not outside. Although of course there are many actors on the stage, not least within Departments and other organisations, Ministers are responsible for everything that is said by those within their Department. I know that that is a responsibility of which the Home Secretary will be keenly conscious.
Surrogate Parents (Leave, Pay and Allowance Arrangements)
16:48 - The House divided: - Ayes: 300 / Noes: 243 - Question accordingly agreed to.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision to introduce leave, pay and allowance arrangements for parents of children born to surrogate mothers equal to those available to parents whose children are born to them; and for connected purposes.
Almost three months ago, I had nearly finished a long Saturday morning advice surgery—we all do them—when in came two sharp, slightly sassy young women, Jane Kassim and Amy Bellamy, who are cousins. Jane is a teaching assistant in a local Rotherham primary school and Amy works part time in a betting shop. She was seven months pregnant and was certainly showing. When Jane first heard about Amy’s being pregnant it was the news that she and her husband had longed to hear, because she had been told at the age of 15 that she could never bear children and Amy had offered to be an IVF surrogate mother to their baby—or twins, as it turned out.
Like any mother, Jane had begun to make preparations for the birth. She had asked her employer for maternity leave and was stunned a few weeks later when she found out that she had no legal right to maternity leave and no legal right to maternity pay. She had confidently expected to take up to 52 weeks leave. She had expected to get 39 weeks maternity pay, just as any mother giving birth to her own child or adopting a child is able to do. But unlike other mothers, because she is having her baby through a surrogate mother she is entitled to only 13 weeks parental leave, unpaid, and then entitled to it only when she and her husband have a parental order in place formally transferring the legal responsibility and legal rights from Amy to them. That means that mothers like Jane are faced with a choice of going back to work very quickly or giving up their jobs entirely.
Today is the day when I hope the House will take the first step to closing this legal loophole. I am grateful for the support that I have had from colleagues right across the House. I am grateful for their backing and for the presence of many of them in the Chamber. I am grateful also to the Minister with responsibility for employment relations for agreeing to meet us as a cross-party group to press the case further.
I was asked on the radio this morning why mothers who have their babies through surrogates do not have the same rights as other mothers automatically have. I found that hard to answer, but I think the answer lies partly in the fact that surrogacy is largely made possible by IVF, and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 was a piece of legislation based principally on the concern about the risk of coercion and commercialisation of pregnancy. This means that the right to and the legal control of any child remain with the mother giving birth, unless and until they are formally ceded and legally transferred to the commissioning mother. The surrogate mother and her husband can exercise an absolute veto over this happening.
Furthermore, as the leading lawyer in this field says, the conditions for a parental order do not place the child’s welfare first, and ultimately children born through surrogacy do not have the same protection as other children for the time to bond with their parents in the early months of life. That is from Natalie Gamble, a leading legal expert in the field, who has probably conducted more cases and seen through more parental orders than any other lawyer in the country.
Surrogate births may still be relatively uncommon in this country. Probably about 100 babies are born in this way each year, but the number is growing as society changes and science advances. Surely there must be a good case for Britain, like some states in the US, to have a system of pre-birth orders. But the first and most important step is to secure basic maternity rights so that mothers like Jane, who have their children born through surrogates, have the same rights as other mothers who give birth themselves or who adopt children. That is the purpose of my Bill.
It is wrong that thousands of mothers who have their own babies or who adopt have a legal right to 39 weeks maternity pay and a right to up to 52 weeks maternity leave, while others have a right only to 13 weeks parental leave, unpaid. It is wrong that such parents cannot put their names on their children’s birth certificates or make decisions about medical treatment for their children until they have a formal parental order in place. It is wrong that such a legal step can be blocked completely by the surrogate mother or her husband and wrong that it might take months to get the order in place if a magistrates court is busy. Above all, it is wrong that mothers such as Jane Kassim are denied the same basic right to the time they need with their newborn babies that other mothers have.
In Jane’s case, her employer was ready to give her leave early, although still unpaid, so that she could be at the hospital with Amy for the birth of her twins, Isla and Ivy, and stay there to look after the babies until they were all allowed to come home. I am told that the going rate for a surrogacy these days is about £20,000, but Amy tells me that all she received was a pair of maternity trousers and a couple of big tops. She simply wanted Jane to have the same joy as a mother that she had had with her own son, Archie. She said, “It’s just what you do for family. It wasn’t an option not to do it.” Together they make a powerful case for legal change. This is their campaign. I hope that the House will back them today and back the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That John Healey, Mr Clive Betts, Katy Clark, Chris Heaton-Harris, Julie Hilling, Simon Hughes, Margot James, Mrs Eleanor Laing, Mr Denis MacShane, Fiona Mactaggart, Valerie Vaz and Mr Mike Weir present the Bill.
John Healey accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 27 April, and to be printed (Bill 328).
Legal Aid, sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (Programme) (No. 3)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),
That the following provisions shall apply to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill for the purpose of supplementing the Orders of 29 June 2011 (Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (Programme)) and 31 October 2011 (Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (Programme) (No. 2)):
Consideration of Lords Amendments
1. Proceedings on consideration of Lords amendments shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 10.00 pm at today’s sitting.
2. The proceedings shall be taken in the order shown in the first column of the following Table.
3. The proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the times specified in the second column of the Table.
TABLE | |
|---|---|
Lords Amendments | Time for conclusion of proceedings |
Nos. 1, 3 to 5 and 24. | 5.30 pm. |
Nos. 2, 189 to 194, 196, 217 to 220, 243, 168, 169, 240, 170 to 172, 177 to 181 and 206 to 216. | 8.15 pm. |
Nos. 31 and 32, 6 to 23, 25 to 30, 33 to 167, 173 to 176, 182 to 188, 195, 197 to 205, 221 to 239, 241, 242 and 244 to 326. | 10.00 pm. |
Subsequent stages
4. Any further Message from the Lords may be considered forthwith without any Question being put.
5. The proceedings on any further Message from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour after their commencement.—( Stephen Crabb.)
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
(12 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
17:30 - The House divided: - Ayes: 300 / Noes: 251 - Question accordingly agreed to.
17:46 - The House divided: - Ayes: 300 / Noes: 248 - Question accordingly agreed to.
20:16 - The House divided: - Ayes: 302 / Noes: 243 - Question accordingly agreed to.
20:30 - The House divided: - Ayes: 288 / Noes: 246 - Question accordingly agreed to.
20:43 - The House divided: - Ayes: 294 / Noes: 250 - Question accordingly agreed to.
22:00 - The House divided: - Ayes: 292 / Noes: 256 - Question accordingly agreed to.
22:14 - The House divided: - Ayes: 297 / Noes: 252 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I must draw the House’s attention to the fact that financial privilege is involved in Lords amendments 1, 2, 6, 9, 24, 100, 104, 168 to 173, 176, 178, 181 to 187, 195, 197, 198, 203, 207, 210, 212, 215, 216, 220, 221, 228, 229, 231, 233 to 240, 243 and 244. If the House agrees to any of these amendments, I shall ensure that the appropriate entry is made in the Journal.
Clause 1
Lord Chancellor’s functions
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)
I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 1.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Lords amendments 3 and 4, Government motions to disagree, and Government amendments (a) and (b) in lieu.
Lords amendment 5.
Lords amendment 24, and Government motion to disagree.
Mr Djanogly
Lords amendments 1 and 24 impinge on the financial privilege of this House. I ask the House to disagree to them and will ask the Reasons Committee to ascribe financial privilege as the reason for doing so. Notwithstanding that, the House now has the opportunity to debate the substance and effect of the amendments, and shortly I will state the Government’s full reasons for rejecting them. Before I start, I remind the House of the statement that I made on Report on 31 October 2011 relating to my declaration of interests. It can be found at column 626 of Hansard, and I confirm today that it remains accurate. I ask the House to agree to the Government amendments in lieu of Lords amendments 3 and 4, which relate to the director of legal aid casework.
I turn to the Lords amendments. Access to justice is of fundamental importance to our legal system and to this Government, but our legal aid system is by any measure extremely expensive and sometimes prone to aggravating disputes unnecessarily by pushing them into the courtroom. The question for the Government has never been whether to reform it but how, and our approach is one with a principled basis of focusing scarce resources on the most urgent and serious cases while seeking a broader shift to earlier resolution of disputes. We have always been happy to accept amendments that deliver on those principles, so it should come as no surprise that the Bill is much revised. The Government have listened and made significant concessions, and I am grateful to the other place for its concern to improve the Bill.
In another place, Lords amendment 1, tabled by Lord Pannick, was said to identify the aims of the legal aid system in our society. It would place a duty on the Lord Chancellor, reflecting the provision in section 4(1) of the Access to Justice Act 1999, to secure within the resources made available and in accordance with part 1 of the Bill that individuals have access to legal services that meet their needs effectively. However, clause 1(1) already sets out a clear duty on the Lord Chancellor to ensure that legal aid is made available in accordance with part 1 of the Bill, so the Government are concerned that the amendment replicates what is already in place.
Worse than mere duplication, technical problems with the amendment risk muddying the waters, creating legal uncertainty and undermining the Bill’s clear purpose. Unlike the clear duty in clause 1(1), which relates to legal aid made available under part 1 of the Bill, with legal aid being defined in clause 1(2), Lords amendment 1 would impose a duty in relation to legal services. Despite the purported qualifications in the words in brackets, it can be read as imposing a wider duty on the Lord Chancellor than that intended under the Bill, in that it risks imposing a duty on him to fund legal services beyond the realm of legal aid provision.
We believe that there are potential additional costs attached to the amendment, which would create uncertainty. It runs contrary to the policy intention of creating certainty through the unambiguous description of services in schedule 1 and the clearly defined circumstances in which exceptional funding is available. Both the uncertainty that would be created and the possible costs are undesirable outcomes.
The problem with the amendment is that it conflates the two important but separate principles of access to justice and the provision of publicly funded legal advice. It could be understood in the context of the 1999 Act, which, because it was drafted on an exclusionary basis, specifies what services cannot be funded under civil legal aid but leaves rather vague exactly what the Lord Chancellor is responsible for funding. However, the Bill is carefully drafted on an inclusionary basis, which means that it is explicitly clear about what services can be funded, thereby representing Parliament’s view on services that should be provided under legal aid to meet people’s needs.
Lords amendment 1 risks providing the basis for myriad new legal challenges seeking to widen the scope of the Bill. The central purpose of our legal aid reforms is targeting resources where they really matter, not providing work for lawyers. We cannot accept an amendment that might prompt endless legal dispute and judicial review.
Lords amendments 3 and 4, which were tabled by Lord Pannick, and the Government’s Lords amendment 5 all concern the director of legal aid casework. Lords amendments 3 and 4 are born out of concern that the director’s decisions will be subject to political interference from Ministers. I reassure the House that the Government absolutely agree with Members of the other place that the Lord Chancellor should have absolutely no involvement in a decision about legal aid funding in an individual case. However, we ask the House to reject Lords amendments 3 and 4, because they would have the unwelcome effect of preventing the director from being appointed as a civil servant.
I must remind the House that we are abolishing the Legal Services Commission to improve the administration of legal aid, not to create greater fragmentation of responsibility and accountability.
Clause 4 provides protection to the director by creating, in clause 4(4), a statutory bar on the Lord Chancellor’s involvement in funding decisions by the director in individual cases. The Lord Chancellor may not give directions or guidance to the director about the carrying out of the director’s functions in relation to an individual case. In addition to that protection, the Bill imposes a duty on the Lord Chancellor to publish any guidance and directions that he issues to the director.
Lords amendment 5, which is a Government amendment, goes further by requiring the director to produce an annual report for the preceding financial year on the exercise of their functions during that period. That annual report will be laid before Parliament and published. We consider that further offer of transparency to be an important safeguard.
I am aware that the question of directorial independence was one that exercised the other place considerably. It is because we agree that that is a vital issue that we are happy to put the matter beyond doubt. That is why I am asking the House to agree to the Government amendment in lieu of Lords amendments 3 and 4. That will reinforce the protections already set out in clause 4(4) by requiring the Lord Chancellor to ensure that the director acts independently of the Lord Chancellor when applying directions and guidance given under clause 4(3) in relation to an individual case. That provides additional assurance on the director’s independence without compromising common-sense administrative arrangements designed to improve control and accountability.
Finally, Lords amendment 24 concerns the provision of advice over the telephone, on which I am afraid I cannot agree with many of the sentiments of the other place. The effect of amendment 24 would be to weaken a key measure to modernise the system and bring it up to date. The aim of the telephone gateway is to route access to legal aid, in the first instance, by the phone. That is not only much more efficient, enabling calls to be properly triaged, but simpler to access and generally of higher quality.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
Has the Minister done any studies on the effectiveness of telephone advice lines for people whose first language is not English?
Mr Djanogly
We have, and if one were to call the telephone hotline, one would be able to speak in any of 170 different languages, which is more languages than one would find used in a high street solicitor’s office.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
It is fine for hon. Members to use telephone hotlines, but what about those with mental illness, special educational needs, learning difficulties or no English? What will happen to ensure they get legal advice and do not give up before they can get anywhere?
Mr Djanogly
I confirm to my right hon. Friend that it will be possible for all such people to have face-to-face advice. If the people who take the call, who are expert in finding out whether a person needs face-to-face advice, feel that people need face-to-face advice, they will get it. I am not just speculating. We know that that is the case because a modern, phone-based service currently exists, namely the Ministry of Justice community legal advice helpline. Its record is one of excellent public service. In 2010-11, more than half a million calls were made to it. More than 90% of respondents to the last survey who subsequently received advice from the specialist service found it very helpful.
Concerns have been raised about accessibility. However, contrary to the claims of those opposed to the reforms, phone-based advice has been shown often to be more convenient and accessible than face-to-face advice, particularly benefiting those living in remote areas or those who have a physical disability.
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
Will the Minister accept that currently, the CLS gateway is a choice—people can choose to use the phone system or to have face-to-face advice? For people under stress, who cannot bring themselves even to open an envelope with their bills in, face-to-face advice is often the most appropriate route.
Mr Djanogly
I simply disagree that face-to-face advice will be appropriate in all cases of disability—quite the opposite. In many cases, people with disability would prefer to use telephone advice.
Such advice is also high quality. Contrary to the assumption that face-to-face advice is always better, specialist telephone advice providers are currently required to meet higher standards than their face-to-face counterparts. That will continue under the new contracts required to implement the Bill.
Under our plans, an individual seeking advice will simply need to ring the community legal advice helpline. They will be greeted by a trained operator who will assess whether they are eligible for legal aid or not. Their goal will be to ensure that people get a high quality, accessible service that delivers the right help, either by transferring them to specialist telephone advice providers or face-to-face providers if telephone advice is not appropriate, or by signposting them to other possible support if their issue does not fall within the scope of the legal aid scheme.
Mr Adrian Sanders (Torbay) (LD)
We know from our own experience as Members of Parliament that many of our constituents insist on coming to see us in our offices and working face to face, because that is how they can best get across their grievances. Why are the Government insisting on denying people the right to see somebody face to face?
Mr Djanogly
In many cases the support that my hon. Friend’s constituents receive will be better received over the telephone than face to face. Crucially, the staff concerned will be trained not just to help the caller identify the nature of their problem, whether it is in scope and whether they qualify financially, but to assist with the prior issue of whether they need support in accessing the service. That could include the operator calling them back to reduce the cost of the call, a third party, such as an available family member, assisting the caller with the call, or a very good telephone translation service, if a person has limited or no spoken English. With 170 languages available, a better service will be delivered than someone could possibly get in a law firm’s offices.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
The hon. Gentleman said at the commencement of his remarks that this measure was about targeting resources a bit better. The Government’s impact assessment says that they might save between £1 million and £2 million under this unfortunate scheme. However, the cost will be three times that amount, in terms of people being let down, losing their homes, not being able to receive assistance, and so on, along with all the other problems that will flow from this. The cost will be far more than £1 million to £2 million.
Mr Djanogly
The right hon. Gentleman’s points go more to scope, which is not the subject of this debate, than the telephone service.
Some in the other place raised concerns about the gateway being mandatory and what that means for access by particular categories of vulnerable callers. However, that is precisely why we are applying the gateway in a limited number of areas—debt, discrimination and special educational needs—but not community care, which we have agreed should not be available initially. It is also why we are building in strong safeguards. Not only will there be an exemption for emergency cases, those in detention and under-18s, but even where a case is in scope and not in those groups, face-to-face advice will always be available where deemed to be required. Although those seeking advice in the three areas of law will be required initially to contact the helpline to apply for legal aid, callers eligible for legal aid who cannot give instructions or act on advice given over the telephone will be referred to face-to-face advice. I should also emphasise that, in response to concerns raised in another place, a review of the implementation of the mandatory gateway, including the operation of the gateway in the three areas of law, will be undertaken, and the report of that review will be published.
In all those areas—a duty to provide legal aid, the independence of the exceptional funding scheme and the operation of the gateway—the Government’s priority is to protect access to justice while modernising the service and ensuring that it is affordable. We agree with the need to underline the independence of a funding decision in an individual case. However, we cannot accept measures that would create legal confusion about what services the scheme provides, nor can we agree that it is unreasonable to ask claimants in three areas of law to access the service by the simple expedient of ringing a phone line—a modernisation entirely familiar from other walks of life.
I ask hon. Members to support the Government on all these amendments.
Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
We have the first set of knives at 5.30 pm, so we will have had less than 26 minutes to discuss the four amendments from the House of Lords in this group, and we will have less than five hours in total to discuss the 11 amendments passed in the other place—the 11 defeats for the Government.
Let me deal first with Lords amendment 1. This 23-word amendment was supported by a number of prestigious Members of the other House, for whom I have a great deal of respect. Some are Cross Benchers, some are members of the Justice Secretary’s party and some are members of my party. Many Government peers voted with Lord Pannick in the other place when he pressed the amendment to a Division, which was won with a majority of 45. The amendment was carefully drafted; indeed, I should point out that none of the technical deficiencies pointed out today was raised by Lord McNally when he responded in the other place.
The speakers in the debate in the other place included the former Leader of the House of Commons and former Cabinet colleague of the Justice Secretary, Lord Newton of Braintree, who sadly recently passed away. His last contribution in Parliament was on this Bill, and he spoke powerfully against many bits of part 1. I would like to echo the tremendous tributes that have been paid to him in the other place recently, as I am sure would all Members of all parties in the Chamber.
The Bill, as drafted, contains no duty on the Lord Chancellor to provide the services that the Bill permits. Lords amendment 1 would ensure that he had to meet the needs of citizens within “the resources available” and the scope of legal aid, as defined by the Bill. It would quite simply be a statement of legislative purpose at the outset of the Bill. The wording in the amendment has been included in legal aid statutes since the first Act in 1949. Even given the understandable budgetary constraints on the Government, a clause such as this would show that the Government recognised that legal aid was regarded as an essential element of access to justice. It would be modest and sensible, and it would not cost the taxpayer anything, but it would enshrine an important constitutional principle in part 1 of the Bill.
In fact, the amendment does not go as far as the House of Lords Constitution Committee wanted to go. Lord McNally stated:
“I also accept that the duty that the amendment would place on the Lord Chancellor would be qualified by the reference to the duty being subject both to the resources available and to the provisions of Part 1.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 5 March 2012; Vol. 735, c. 1569.]
It is therefore unclear how on earth the Government can claim financial privilege in relation to this amendment, or, more pertinently, why they are so unwilling to accept it. We shall oppose their attempt to overturn Lords amendment 1.
Lords amendment 24 seeks to ensure that the telephone gateway that the Government intend to create will not be mandatory, as proposed in the original Bill. This is important for many vulnerable groups, such as those with mental health issues or communication problems. The other place voted by a majority of 28 to support the amendment tabled by Baroness Grey-Thompson to remove the provision of a mandatory telephone gateway and the delivery of legal aid services exclusively by telephone. It is particularly disappointing that the Government are seeking to overturn this amendment as well. Without it, the Bill will give the Government wide powers to make legal aid services available exclusively by phone or other electronic means. For the avoidance of doubt, we accept that telephone advice might suit many people; we are not against its use. We are, however, against it being the only way of getting initial advice. This goes to the matter of access to justice, and the Government just do not get it.
It has been emphasised many times in our debates on social welfare law that it is often the most vulnerable in society who rely most on the support of social welfare—for example, those with learning difficulties, mental health issues or communication problems. Some in those groups already suffer from chaotic lives and find it hard to communicate complex, multi-faceted, challenging problems. I wonder how many of the Ministers on the Front Bench conduct their surgeries exclusively by telephone. Those people’s problems can be further compounded by having to explain them and seek advice over the telephone. Many do not have a landline, and others cannot afford the cost of using their mobile, with waiting time eating into their scarce credit.
The Government appear to agree with that. In response to a question about the impact assessment from my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), the Minister did not give the entire information. The Government’s own impact assessment highlighted the fact that the disabled, and those whose first language is not English, would find this a particularly hard way of engaging with the legal aid system. I fear that the result will be that many vulnerable people are deterred from seeking support.
John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend acknowledge that call centres often have a time limit for handling people? Such a limit would put pressure on people who are already under pressure, probably for financial reasons, which would make it impossible for them to get the information that they need over the telephone. They need face-to-face advice.
Sadiq Khan
My hon. Friend makes an astute point. We all know from our MP surgeries, including those of us not blessed with having been lawyers in our previous careers, that talking problems through with our constituents often gets to the core of their difficulties and saves a huge amount of time further down the road. That point has been made by Scope and other disability groups and campaigners. The irony of the proposal is that not dealing with such problems at an early stage risks escalation, with increased costs to the taxpayer further down the line.
Labour Members agree with the decision of the other place. We hope that Government Members, who voted half an hour ago to limit debate to less than five hours, will also support the decision to remove the mandatory telephone gateway and recognise that, for some complex and vulnerable clients, face-to-face support is the only effective way to access justice. We will also oppose the Government’s attempts to overturn Lords amendment 24. I do not know whether other colleagues wish to participate in the debate, but there are only five minutes left, so I will finish my comments there.
Simon Hughes
I was grateful for the Minister’s reassurance, but I have to say that I am not persuaded. Like any MP with a constituency containing people from many different races and backgrounds, with many different first languages, and with all the disabilities that any mixed community has, I simply do not believe that a telephone route into deciding eligibility for legal aid is right for everybody. It may be right for many people, and I understand that it will be a good service, but if we ask constituents such as mine whether they have always been satisfied with the council response line—whether under Labour now, or with us running it, as previously—the answer is always no. That does not change, irrespective of who is running the show. I understand the Government’s position, and I hear what they say about a review, although I add a request for the review to be regional as well as general, but I believe that the Lords who pressed for amendment 24 have a well-made case. I shall support the Lords in respect of amendment 24.
Mr Llwyd
I have just one or two brief remarks. I am pleased that the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) said what he did, because Liberal Democrat Members in Committee did not make those points at any stage. In any case, I am glad that he said it, and I am sure he is sincere in doing so.
By definition, the people whom we are dealing with are likely to be the most vulnerable in society. Our system of justice is based on the equality of arms. Unless we have equality of arms, we will prevent certain individuals from having access to justice. I do not want to be part of any legislature that will do that. I come back to my intervention on the Minister. The Government’s own figures suggest savings of £1 million to £2 million. How many savings will be made when people are not allowed to be given basic advice about debts, housing, welfare and all the other problems they face? We should remember that people often face not just one problem but five or six, as the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) said.
Sadiq Khan
Has the right hon. Gentleman had a chance to read the Citizens Advice report published today? The final paragraph on the first page states:
“A key message from this report is that early intervention in casework funded by legal aid works. In the absence of free legal advice, the risk is that these individuals will not only be out of scope, but out of mind.”
Mr Llwyd
That is absolutely right, and I am concerned about it. I understand the need for the Government to look for some savings, but they are going after what they perceive to be a soft target. It is the wrong target. Even at the eleventh hour, I hope that they will think long and hard about it. Members in the other place argued long and hard; we were not allowed to argue sufficiently long in Committee or indeed on the Floor of the House, which is a disgrace in itself. Those who took time to go through all the available evidence concluded with an alternative view, and those people are right. If we have a vote, I will encourage all my hon. Friends, and any Member who has a conscience, to vote in favour of the Lords amendment and not to accept this mealy-mouthed excuse from the Government.
Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
I encountered a Member of the House of Lords yesterday. She said, “I hope you will agree that we have done a good job on this Bill.” I said, “You have done a brilliant job, but it is all going to be overturned by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons tomorrow.”
The fact is that this Government, who do not need finance for their own legal aid, are forcing people to obtain legal advice by telephone operator. If they hold constituency surgeries, they will know that people cannot present a concise account of their problems. They have to discuss them, and when they have discussed them, it is possible to get to the core of what they need and help them—but these people do not care about that. I will say this, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is out of order in this House of Commons to accuse anyone of hypocrisy, so I—
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 2.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Lords amendments 189 to 191.
Lords amendment 192, Government motion to disagree, and Government amendments (a) to (c) in lieu.
Lords amendment 193.
Lords amendments 194 and 196, and Government motions to disagree.
Lords amendments 217 to 220 and 243.
Lords amendment 168 and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 169 and 240, Government motions to disagree, Government amendments (a) and (b) in lieu, and amendment (i) to Government amendment (a).
Lords amendments 170 to 172, and Government motions to disagree.
Lords amendments 177 to 181, and 206 to 216.
Mr Clarke
Lords amendment 2 impinges on the financial privileges of the House. I ask the House to disagree to the amendment and I will ask the Reasons Committee to ascribe financial privilege as the reason for doing so—and so too with amendments 168, 170 and 171. In addressing the very wide selection that you have just announced, Mr Deputy Speaker, I shall begin by looking at the principles that the Government are adopting on the various amendments and the reform as a whole, and at what principles we are inviting the House to adopt.
The scope of legal aid goes to the heart of our attempts to reform and improve the justice system, because targeting funding where it really counts is fundamental, first to the savings the Government are having to try to make in this area as in any other. There is no doubt that the present level of legal aid provision is on any measure unaffordably expensive. I shall not dwell on this issue but it is bound to recur during our debates. Even after our reforms have been carried, if Parliament eventually approves the Bill and it becomes an Act as we intend, we will still have by far the most costly legal aid system in the world. It is almost twice as expensive as that in any other country per head of population. In no other democratic jurisdiction would it be possible to get up and argue seriously that the taxpayer should spend money on the scale that we do on legal representation and advice.
The changes to the scope of legal aid that we are proposing are also part of a broader shift. We are trying to reduce the amount of unnecessarily adversarial litigation. The very broad provision of legal aid has encouraged people to bring their problems before the courts, but sometimes their basic problem is not a legal one and the best way of resolving the dispute or tackling the problem would be not to take a litigious approach. Such an approach imposes costs and does not always resolve problems. Before I move on from the tricky matter of cost let me say that with legal aid the cost is not just to the public purse and our Department. One has to think of the costs imposed on all the other people who are parties to litigation, such as businesses—small and medium-sized enterprises—and the national health service, as this selection includes clinical negligence claims. Everything we agree to do in relation to clinical negligence comes out of the budget that is otherwise available for public services. The growth of the clinical negligence industry is having an impact on national health services at the present time. There is also a cost to individuals, because for an ordinary citizen of ordinary means to be in the appalling situation of being engaged in litigation when the other party has legal aid is not an experience that most people would enjoy. We should bear all that in mind as the background to what we are doing.
Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
Is the Secretary of State actually arguing that the best way of getting a level playing field is to deny everyone any kind of legal aid? That seems to be the thrust of his argument.
Mr Clarke
I am not arguing that. I am saying there should be hesitation before the very powerful and quite legitimate lobbies that have descended on the House since we proposed the changes just sweep everybody into believing that ever-wider provision of legal aid is necessary. There are downsides. In addition to the cost to the public purse, which we cannot ignore because no other democratically elected Government spends this amount of public money on funding litigation and legal advice, if we have a litigious society it imposes costs on all other branches of our life. That is an essential background that we cannot forget as we consider these amendments.
We have applied other tests, but the whole point of having legal aid—and the reason why we are keeping a legal aid system that will still be the most generous in the world even when we have cut it back a bit—is to deal with the needs of justice and those who are vulnerable in society. The other principle that applies is the need to focus taxpayer funding on the most serious and important cases that genuinely require specialist legal advice. Our principled stance is that legal aid should routinely be available in cases where people’s life and liberty are at stake, where they are at risk of serious physical harm or immediate loss of their home, or where their children may be taken into care. It should not routinely be available where other funding is available, where litigants can present their own case, or where the taxpayer is at risk of paying for litigation that any person paying from their own pocket would not finance and participate in. That is the basis on which we look at all the amendments that have come from the other place.
I am grateful to the other place for the time and the detailed debate and scrutiny it has dedicated to the Bill, genuinely improving it in places. I went and listened to parts of the debates myself and I have great faith in the power of the other place to revise a Bill without altering it fundamentally. Wherever possible I have sought to incorporate my noble Friends’ amendments or intentions, and as a result of the scrutiny of both Houses the overall package has moved very significantly from our initial position when we introduced the Bill, and it is all the better for it. Before people press me to agree to more than we are proposing to agree to in this important group of amendments perhaps I should remind the House of the changes we have made since we started this whole process quite a long time ago. They include removing the power to means-test suspects receiving advice and assistance at the police station, adopting the Association of Chief Police Officers’ definition of domestic violence and extending the time limit and range of evidence accepted when it comes to accessing the domestic violence gateway. We agreed to that a long time ago. People got very excited about the ACPO amendment so we gave them that, and then a whole list of fresh demands were immediately made by the Law Society and other groups that have lobbied us. I shall address those issues in a few moments.
Other changes include retaining legal aid for cases involving human trafficking and domestic child abduction—another concession; ensuring that funding covers special educational needs for 16 to 24-year-olds; and putting it beyond doubt that we are retaining legal aid for parents to bring clinical negligence cases in the most serious and complex neurological injury negligence cases for small children, which we always intended to do. Beyond the legislation, we announced at the Budget a further £20 million to go to the not-for-profit sector in each of the next two financial years.
How do the further Lords amendments in the group measure up against the principles I have outlined? I regret that the broad thrust of some of them is still to be rather free with taxpayers’ money. In our opinion, they certainly go way beyond ensuring that the Bill is focusing funding on high priorities.
Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)
The Secretary of State made great play of the ACPO definition of domestic violence, but if the test is about protecting the vulnerable I must say that the definition is very legalistic. The experience of lots of women—the 230 women who leave home every week because of violence—is not always packaged in the way allowed for in the proposed legislation. Does he accept that many women will fall outside the definition and will not be able to get legal aid?
Mr Clarke
Let me begin with the domestic violence gateway. The ACPO definition is what the Labour Front-Bench team was originally concentrating on. We have to have a definition because we are talking about qualifying for the public funding of legal aid in certain cases. We have moved a lot on domestic violence and we are moving again in response to the Lords’ debate, as I shall explain in a moment. First, though, let me make it clear, because I do not think it has always been clear to people in either House, exactly what we are talking about. It was never in doubt that there would be legal aid for the protection of victims of domestic violence. Domestic violence is an issue that this Government, like any Government, including the previous one, take extremely seriously. As now, it was always intended that legal aid would remain available for victims of domestic violence who were trying, for example, to obtain protective injunctions to defend themselves in such cases. In domestic violence cases there is no means test so even the super-rich can obtain legal aid if they are seeking an injunction for reasons of domestic violence, although I hope that not too many of them will.
We are doing quite a lot of other things. The Home Office is for the first time providing more than £28 million of stable funding until 2015 for specialist local domestic and sexual violence support services, and £900,000 each year to support national domestic violence helplines and a stalking helpline. Our Department is now contributing towards the funding of independent advisers attached to specialist domestic violence courts. We are giving a total of £9 million for that purpose up to the end of 2012-13. We are allocating £3 million a year to 65 rape crisis centres and opening new ones. Domestic violence protection orders are being piloted in three police force areas. We have announced a one-year pilot which will take place from this summer to test out a domestic violence disclosure scheme, known as Clare’s law.
I mention those things so that we can have a debate which, with great respect to their lordships, is not on the same basis as the part of the Lords debate that I listened to—that people did not realise the seriousness of domestic violence as a social issue in our society. We all do. The Bill never challenged that. It is all part of a pattern of services being provided by this Government, through which we think we are strengthening the support for victims of domestic violence.
What we are discussing here is the special provision that we are also making to provide legal aid to people who have been recent victims of domestic violence, so that when they are dealing with their abuser in court on other issues—ownership of the former matrimonial home, maintenance, access to property—they have access to legal aid. In such cases, particularly the private family law cases and the children’s cases, we are trying to shift away from so much adversarial litigation. Having lawyers on both sides arguing about custody and access to children does not always lighten the tensions or resolve the dispute, as most Members of Parliament are only too well aware from their constituency surgeries, so we are moving towards mediation, which is cheaper. That is why some of the lobbyists do not like it, with the result that in cases where it does not work, they are arguing for legal aid to continue to be available.
We have conceded the case that after a recent episode of domestic violence, the victim on her own may not want to deal, even through mediation, with her abuser. How do we define domestic violence for that purpose? That is an important but secondary purpose, as the case will not be about domestic violence. In such a case, what definition of domestic violence should be used for the person to qualify for legal aid? That is what the argument about the definition in both Houses has been about all the way through.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
The Lord Chancellor mentioned that it will still be possible to obtain legal aid to get an injunction when there is domestic violence. Will this not be a cost-accumulating measure, as women will first go to get an injunction in order to have evidence to be legally aided for the case of domestic violence?
Mr Clarke
Such women will not get an injunction if it turns out that there is no reasonable ground for giving it and they are not in imminent fear of domestic violence. We will give them legal aid because we think it is important that these issues are tested in cases where legal advice is available. If women do not get the injunction, they will not get the legal aid later.
Mr Llwyd
What is being missed here is that the evidential gateway is being closed down. I am not saying that the right hon. and learned Gentleman wants to deprive every person of assistance in a domestic violence situation. I would never allege that; I know him to be a better person than that. What I am saying is that 46% of those who would be eligible will no longer be eligible under these so-called reforms, according to recent reports from Rights of Women and Welsh Women’s Aid. People who would genuinely qualify will no longer qualify, and that is the issue that we are now discussing.
Mr Clarke
I refute the idea that people will be given an injunction at some hearing in order to enable them to get legal aid, but people might apply. If the evidentiary tests are made too lax, there will be a tendency to fabricate claims or to bring in claims that are old and irrelevant, because it is worth thousands of pounds to the lawyer advising that person if legal aid is granted on that basis.
Far from trying to narrow the scope, let me remind the right hon. Gentleman and others where we have got to and where we are going this evening, by the time we have finished. We have a clear, wide definition trying to catch the variety of circumstances that will evidence recent domestic violence so that the argument that the victim should not have to face her abuser without having legal representation can be countered. But we do not want to shift the vast majority of private family law cases away from mediation into publicly funded adversarial litigation.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
Does the Lord Chancellor not accept that the legalistic approach that he is adopting ignores the reality of domestic violence, which is that many women do not report it, sometimes for years on end, and do not go to court to get injunctions, or if they do, are often persuaded to withdraw the proceedings before they come to a conclusion? It is only when the whole situation explodes and they leave the home that the reality of that domestic violence is noted.
Mr Clarke
But women will get legal aid for seeking the injunction. The hon. Lady is falling into what has happened throughout these debates. The definition that we are talking about as the gateway to legal aid for all other private family law cases goes far beyond injunctions.
If I may move on, I will remind hon. Members how far we have gone since we started the Bill—far beyond where the Opposition were first urging us to go—and we will go further in response to the debate in the House of Lords. The first issue is reflected in Lords amendment 192—whether or not we should use the definition used by the Association of Chief Police Officers, which we resisted in this House. The Government’s intent is to have a broad and inclusive definition and one that commands widespread agreement. To cut all the pressure, we are happy to support the spirit of the amendment and we are therefore adopting the ACPO definition. I half suspect that if we had offered that when the Bill was in the House of Commons—it was my mistake that we did not—we would have closed the discussion down in the House because that is what everybody was then pressing for.
In their amendment their lordships in their wisdom add words which are not in the ACPO definition. That rather goes against the arguments that have been put forward for one, single, cross-Government definition of domestic violence. We have therefore tabled further Government amendments in lieu of Lords amendment 192 which would define domestic violence in the same way as the ACPO definition as
“any incident of threatening behaviour, violence or abuse (whether psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional) between individuals who are associated with each other.”
We think this should satisfy the concerns that have been expressed in both Houses on this point, so I shall ask the House to agree to this Government amendment in lieu of Lords amendment 192.
Amendments 194 and 196 concern the accepted forms of evidence of domestic violence. I have already said that when litigation is about domestic violence, the victims will always have legal aid. The issue is one of balance. Lords amendment 194, led by the learned Baroness Scotland and supported by a number of her colleagues in the other place, has prompted us to look again at other kinds of objective evidence to ensure that the test is as widely drawn as possible.
I have discussed that with colleagues in the House, and I am grateful to the colleagues with whom I had meetings, particularly to my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), who is in her place, for advice on the subject because she knows far more about family law than I do, as I have never practised in this field, and in particular for making the point that we need to take care that the range of evidence does not force victims to take formal court action where it may not be suitable in individual circumstances. We do not want to force people to go to court who would not otherwise do so.
Therefore, in response to this House and the debate in the other House, we intend to accept as evidence—we will reflect this in regulations—the following matters: an undertaking given to a court by the other party in lieu of a protective order or injunction against that party for the protection of the applicant, where there is no equivalent undertaking given by the applicant; a police caution for a domestic violence offence by the other party against the applicant; appropriate evidence of admission to a domestic violence refuge; appropriate evidence from a social services department confirming provision of services to the victim in relation to alleged domestic violence; and appropriate evidence from GPs or other medical professionals.
We are prepared to accept those matters and ask the House to accept them this evening. They are in addition to those forms of evidence that the Government already accepted in our earlier debates. Those are: that a non-molestation order, occupation order, forced marriage protection order or other protective injunction against the other party for the protection of the applicant is either in place or has been made in the previous 12 months; that a criminal conviction for a domestic violence offence by the other party against the applicant is still in place; that there are ongoing criminal proceedings for a domestic violence offence by the other party against the applicant; that there is evidence from a multi-agency risk assessment conference of the applicant having been referred as being at risk of domestic violence from the other party and action has been recommended; and that there is a finding of fact by the courts of domestic violence by the other party against the applicant.
For the best part of 12 months we have reviewed this rather narrow point in one piece of litigation, and that is a fairly formidable list of things we are prepared to accept as evidence of domestic violence. If their lordships consult the people who have been sending them all the e-mails for the past few weeks, I am sure that they will be able to add to the list, as will Members of this House, but if we are not careful we will forget what the objective is: we want more of these cases not to be conducted by lawyers, financed by the taxpayer, who are engaged in adversarial litigation about where the children will live, what maintenance should be paid by one party or the other or what share of the matrimonial home should be owned by one party or the other. The Government have responded pretty generously because of our concern about domestic violence and, as I have already indicated, in key areas we have moved beyond where we were. This evening we have to insist that that is where it will end.
I should also point out that, on the time limits, where I do not think any history of domestic violence can be remembered and invoked, it is a question of ensuring that victims of recent or ongoing violence are protected, drawing a line so that Government regulations do not result in a permanent opening of access to legal aid. We will double the time limit we originally proposed from 12 months to two years, except in respect of a conviction for a domestic violence offence, where the only limit is that the conviction should not be a spent one.
Having moved on all those issues, the Government do not agree that the evidential requirements for those cases should be set out on the face of the Bill; the evidence I have described will instead be set out in regulations. The benefit is that that will allow greater flexibility to amend the scheme if required in the light of experience. If we set it all out in primary legislation, we would find that we had set things in stone for our successors.
Mr Llwyd
Can the Secretary of State assist us by telling us how the list he read out, which I must say is welcome, differs from Lords amendment 194, because they seem almost identical? Is he saying that, rather than putting them on the face of the Bill, they will be set out in cast-iron regulations?
Mr Clarke
I think that I am right in saying that what their lordships tried to do was put one form of definition used by the UK Border Agency on the face of the Bill. That is far too wide, and it is for a different purpose—[Interruption.] Well, that is an indication of the sorts of things it will take as evidence; it is not a qualification for anything. We need something that is the basis for making a clear decision on whether or not people are eligible for money, and we have opted for ACPO-plus. The other difference, as I have said, is that we do not think that we should spell it out and draft each of these forms—I of course bind myself by the words I read out earlier, which are what we are committed to. The advantage of regulating along the lines that the Government are committed to is that, if in the light of experience there is some mistake, it is much easier to make a change. It is always a mistake to fix everything in too much detail in primary legislation, because a future Minister or Government might have to try to find the parliamentary time to make the necessary changes to improve it.
Glenda Jackson
I, too, welcome the list that the Lord Chancellor read out with regard to domestic violence. Looking at my constituency, I am concerned about where those women will go to obtain that advice, because we are seeing reductions in the services currently provided by citizens advice bureaux and law centres, for example, as a result of the changes to legal aid. There is a gap between the one who suffers the harm and the obtaining of the advice.
Mr Clarke
People can approach their solicitors for advice on family law, as they do now. In an increasing proportion of cases, through the services offered to them, they will be put in touch with the mediation service, with or without the assistance of their lawyers—that is a matter for them—and the case will be mediated rather than both sides being represented in an adversarial manner. That works successfully where it has been introduced and we think it should be extended much further.
Lords amendment 168 seeks to bring the majority of welfare benefits matters into the scope of legal aid funding. Lords amendment 169, along with Lords amendment 240 and amendment (i), tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) to our amendments in lieu, would have similar effects, so I will discuss them together shortly.
The first point to make about Lords amendment 168 is a financial one. Even bringing advice and assistance into scope for reviews and appeals concerning all welfare benefits, which is the intention behind the amendments, could cost as much as £25 million, and we cannot afford provision in an area of relatively low priority. As I said, we will ask the House to disagree with Lords amendment 168, and we will ask the Reasons Committee to ascribe financial privilege as the reason for doing so. In particular, this is because, in line with the principles I have set out, welfare benefits matters should not generally require specialist legal advice.
Before discussing the other issues, let us consider legal aid for advice on welfare benefits. Every Member sitting in the Chamber is used to giving advice on social security benefits, because we do it all the time, and there are other voluntary bodies that give advice, but we do not get legal aid. I suspect that in an ordinary case, where there is no issue of law and it is a matter of fact, because of the huge complexity of social security regulations, the advice given by MPs and some members of their staff can be superior to that which is available from a large number of general family solicitors, but those solicitors get legal aid. No one else gets legal aid. Legal aid should be for those cases where legal advice and expertise are required, and it should be financed by the taxpayer on legitimate grounds.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
In cases, of which there are many, where people seek advice from citizens advice bureaux to help them prepare a review or an initial appeal, is it not in everybody’s interests, including the Government’s, that they should be able to get some advice before going forward with their review request?
Mr Clarke
I value citizens advice bureaux as highly as the right hon. Gentleman, and ever since the Bill was introduced we have said that we will come forward with proposals to improve the support given by the Treasury. As I have said, at the time of the Budget there was an announcement, which was not much noticed at the time, of £20 million a year to be made available for voluntary advice.
For most citizens advice bureaux, legal aid is not the biggest source of their funding, and some do not get any legal aid funding at all. Their advice is very valuable general advice to people with a combination of debt, housing and every other problem; it is not specifically legal advice in most cases. Our Department is not the biggest Department that contributes to such bureaux; the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has the biggest budget, for debt advice and other forms, and I think that it has ring-fenced its budget and still provides funding.
Most citizens advice bureaux have lost a lot of money because local government funding has been cut quite severely, and the Government are producing money from the Treasury to compensate in part for that, so we—not my Department; the Cabinet Office—are now distributing that £20 million to ensure that such valuable general advice is still available. What we cannot do is start inventing legal aid scope, or fail to narrow legal aid scope, as a roundabout way of maintaining funding for citizens advice bureaux, many of which do not receive legal aid funding now—giving them funding that is spent on general advice as much as on legal advice. Of course, the more we extend the scope to help the citizens advice bureaux, which are busy lobbying the House, the more we also help professional lawyers, who also qualify for all the legal aid scope that we are happily enlarging.
Yvonne Fovargue
The citizens advice bureaux that are so busy lobbying are actually lobbying on behalf of their clients. Some 77% of the funding being removed from the scope of legal aid is going not from solicitors’ firms, but from citizens advice bureaux and law centres—and from specialist legal advice. The Legal Services Commission will not provide the money, which I remind the Secretary of State is £160 for a legal aid case at the early stage of a welfare and benefits case, but it prevents the case from becoming much more expensive later.
Mr Clarke
The hon. Lady’s experience of citizens advice bureaux greatly exceeds my own, but I am pretty certain that fewer than half of such bureaux receive any legal aid funding at all. I have not sought to deny the financial problems of citizens advice bureaux, but we cannot solve them by being so generous in scope with legal aid when the issues involved in most welfare cases are not legal problems. What people require in these difficult times is general advice on a general combination of problems from which they suffer.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
On points of law, I welcome the concession in relation to upper tribunals and welfare benefits, but can the Justice Secretary confirm that the Government intend to ensure that all cases in which points of law are in contention, whether in the upper or lower tribunals, are funded through legal aid? If that is his intention, what will he put in place, either in the Bill or in some other way, to ensure that it happens?
Mr Clarke
My right hon. Friend anticipates the concession that I was going to explain; it is in the documents before us, and he has spotted it. Legal aid issues are usually, as everybody knows, about the factual basis of the claim or the proper application of this country’s extremely convoluted social security regulations, which I hope the current Government’s reforms, when we eventually get to a universal benefit, will greatly simplify, but most such issues are not legal. We have a tribunal system that was deliberately designed so that ordinary citizens might access it and argue their case, and when we invented all those tribunals, we went out of our way to say, “They are not courts and you don’t require lawyers, as these are places where people will argue,” but, as my right hon. Friend says, sometimes legal issues are raised in them.
The Government, in response to these debates, have tabled an amendment, which is a concession. It is Government amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendments 169 and 240, and it would make legal aid and assistance available for welfare benefits appeals on a point of law in the upper tribunal, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. It would also include funding for applications for permission made to the upper tribunal, and it would also make legal representation available for welfare benefits appeals to the Court of Appeal and to the Supreme Court.
Most surprisingly, that Government amendment in lieu was put forward in response to the argument. We did not wish to argue that in such cases, when the whole thing is a point of law, the applicant himself or herself should be expected to represent themselves without legal assistance, so we have tried to define those cases in which legal advice should certainly be available.
My right hon. Friend’s amendment, on the face of it, goes back to the whole of business of whether we should apply legal aid for legal advice in every welfare claim, but the question that concerns him most is, “What about the ones that involve legal issues?”, and I can conceive of cases in the lower tribunals in which what is raised really is a point of law. He wants me to find some equivalent to the upper tribunal, asking, “Is there some situation in which somebody, preferably the tribunal judge, certifies that there is a point of law involved where legal aid should be available?” We do not have such a situation at the moment, and we will have to try to devise one, as there is no system for it: just as we have accepted the argument about legal issues in the upper tribunal, we could of course do so if the same thing arises in the lower.
We will go away and work on the matter. We already have discussions under way with the Department for Work and Pensions, whose help we will also require, to see whether we could have some equivalent—whereby somebody other than the claimant or their lawyer certifies that a point of law is involved—and provide legal aid. I suspect that at this stage of the Bill’s passage through Parliament it is far too late to start introducing primary legislation in the House of Lords, but we have retained for ourselves powers to amend the scoping through regulation, so if we could solve the problem, we could bring something forward through statutory instruments. We are quite open to the argument for ensuring that we have legal representation when there is a legal issue that we cannot expect a lay person ordinarily to argue.
Mr Llwyd
I follow the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s logic on that, but surely if the point of law is a good one in the upper tribunal and all the way up to the Supreme Court, it is equally good in the first tier, but if the case is unrepresented in the first tier, it is not going to go anywhere else.
Mr Clarke
I should like to see whether we can devise, with the help of the DWP, my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington and anybody else, a system whereby we identify in the lower tribunal such issues that involve a legal issue. We think that the number is comparatively small, because it is not the business of lower tribunals normally to find themselves arguing points of law, as they normally argue points of fact and of regulatory interpretation, but we will work on the matter, and if we can devise such a system, we undertake to respond as my right hon. Friend asks me to.
Simon Hughes
The Secretary of State is being very helpful, and my constituents are absolutely not bothered whether this is a primary or secondary legislation matter, as they just want to know that they will have the support that he talks about. May I, however, clarify two things? Will any such measure apply to a matter of law and to judicial review when there is a proper matter of law—and, in those cases, not just to social security but throughout the tribunals service? When the agency turns down somebody’s application and that person wins their appeal to the tribunal, there absolutely has to be a parity of arms at a further stage of appeal if the state appeals again. The applicant is there not because they want to be there, but because the state or the agency has sent them there.
Mr Clarke
On the right hon. Gentleman’s first point, I can assure him that we are continuing legal aid in all cases involving judicial review, so legal aid is available to someone who is trying to have a welfare decision judicially reviewed. That applies to every kind of judicial review, because we do not think that the Government or a public body should be resisting a claim about abuse of their powers from a litigant who cannot get legal advice. This is not an easy concession to make, because quite a lot of people who seek judicial review are not instantly popular with all sections of society, but we still give them legal aid.
On the other matter involving situations in which the state is busily arguing against a successful appellant that some kind of law is involved, I will add that to the list of things that we are studying with the DWP to try to identify whether, in cases where the state thinks that it is worth arguing about the interpretation of something, the litigant should be able to do so as well.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
I am listening to my right hon. and learned Friend’s arguments with great care, but I am still puzzled about the unavoidable problem of the ability to work out what is a legal issue as opposed to a merely factual one. Fact management and legal issues often come hand in hand, and they are often best handled by a lawyer. I worry that we are making an artificial distinction, and that if, as he is suggesting, we are to rethink a number of issues raised by Members of the House, we should rethink this one too.
Mr Clarke
Of course there can be borderline cases, but, with great respect to my hon. Friend, in the vast majority of cases it is fairly obvious whether one is arguing a point of fact or a point of law. In an ordinary welfare case, the question will be whether someone is fit for work or not fit for work, or living or not living at a particular address. When a point of law arises whereby it is not a question of the complexity of the regulations but of the actual meaning of the regulations, somebody like a tribunal judge will know that instantly and think, “That is quite an interesting point of law that I’ve not had before; this will go to the upper tribunal and I will certify that it would be rather nice to have some guidance.” In the end, we have to leave it to tribunals themselves to decide on the facts. Some may be blurred, but by and large, in the vast majority of cases, they will be reasonably clear.
Andrew George
Further to the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), does the scope of the Secretary of State’s amendment exclude lower-tier tribunals, or can it be interpreted in such a manner that lower-tier tribunal appeals that are brought forward on the basis of evidence relating to a matter of law and then taken to an upper-tier tribunal might be included without the need for further regulations?
Mr Clarke
I have obviously failed to make myself completely clear, so I will try again. As it stands, the Government’s amendment in lieu applies only to upper tribunals. The right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington and others argue that something similar should be available in lower tribunals and in other cases. I have undertaken to explore whether we can find an alternative method of identifying those limited numbers of cases and getting them certified when they involve a legal principle. As the matter has been raised at this stage of the debate, we have to fall back on saying that we would use our regulation-making powers through a statutory instrument, because we could not possibly draft primary legislation to cover it in the few days that we have left.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
Before the Secretary of State moves on, may I ask him to give us a time scale?
Mr Clarke
The amendment was tabled only at 6 o’clock yesterday evening, so we have moved quite quickly to get to where we are now. I suspect that the relevant officials at the DWP have not yet even been involved in discussing this. I cannot give a time scale, but we will move as rapidly as possible.
Glenda Jackson
The Lord Chancellor referred to a majority of cases. Citizens Advice says that the proportion of appeals that are upheld in work capability assessment cases, for example, rises from 40% to 90% when a legal adviser is involved. I am not saying that it will necessarily be about a point of law, to pick up the point made by the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland), but there are occasions when a legal mind can clarify the situation. I do not think that the Lord Chancellor understands who the people are who go to appeal. He said that in domestic violence cases, they go to a solicitor. None of my constituents in that situation has a solicitor; they go to the CAB or to a law centre, many of which, in my constituency, are in grave danger of having their ability to provide those services reduced—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The hon. Lady has had a good go at intervening three times. Could interventions please be shorter, because we have to get in a lot of other speakers who want to make points?
Mr Clarke
The cases that the hon. Lady mentions do not depend on a lawyer. When the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) was sitting behind her in the previous debate, he said that in his experience as an MP, when one discusses the matter with somebody, one gets clarity on what the real point is and how they should present it. A general adviser can help to sort somebody out in going along to argue their case by telling them what is relevant and what is not and giving them some guidance on what they should get evidence of in order to pursue their claim. That is not the same as legal aid. That is why we are producing the money for Citizens Advice and other voluntary bodies to give general advice. It is no good claiming that it is all about legal aid. Some lawyers are better at this than others. Just a friend who is a good advocate can be adequate in marshalling a case that is being argued on appeal about a question of fact as to whether, say, somebody is able to go back to work.
Helen Goodman
It would help the House if the Secretary of State could tell us what he means by a point of law. Does he mean that it is a disagreement about the proper interpretation of the rules, or does he accept that it might be about whether the rules have been properly interpreted, which is not a dispute about facts?
Mr Clarke
It would be reckless of me to try off the cuff to make a tight definition of a point of law. It is about a situation where a particular question arises out of the interpretation of a regulation and there is no clear and binding precedent for exactly what the law should be when it comes to applying it to the set of facts involved, and it is then up to the tribunal judge to decide. Following the concessions that I have introduced about upper tribunal and Court of Appeal cases, the judge will certify that a point of law is involved in a case because he thinks that it is one in which the guidance of the upper tribunal or the Court of Appeal is required on what exactly the law will say that it means. That is what is meant by a point of law. We have made considerable concessions. No one is arguing about the vulnerability of groups of people who are arguing about their welfare benefits. The Bill is about how much money the taxpayer pays to how many lawyers. We are trying to concentrate on spending that money on paying lawyers for cases in which a lawyer is required to sort out a welfare benefit dispute. That is the basis on which our amendments were produced.
Let me turn finally, and as briefly as I can, to clinical negligence and legal services for children. That has been debated throughout the passage of the Bill in this House and in another place. We have listened carefully to the concerns that have been raised about the impacts of these reforms on children. I can again assure the House that the provisions in the Bill will safeguard the vast majority of the spend on cases involving children, because we have covered all the most serious cases of clinical negligence—about 96%.
I remind people that the underlying problem in the tricky area of clinical negligence cases is that all the money that we spend on compensation, legal advice, expert witnesses and so on comes out of the budget of the national health service. That now takes up a proportion of the NHS budget of a kind that I would never have contemplated all those years ago when I was a Health Minister struggling with what I thought were difficult budgets. The more one allows to be taken out of the budget for lawyers and expert witnesses in claims for compensation, the more one cannot ignore the impact that that is having on what is available for patient spend. There is no doubt that this has been a bit of a growth industry in recent years, particularly since the changes to the no win, no fee arrangements about 10 years ago. There has been an increase of 50% or so in the number of claims in the past five or six years. The last annual report of the NHS Litigation Authority estimated that the unfunded liabilities for clinical negligence claims totalled £16.8 billion, which is a cool doubling of the figure since 2006.
The bills paid to the lawyers of criminal negligence claimants more than doubled from £83 million in 2006-07 to £195 million in 2010-11. The damages paid to claimants have gone up somewhat more slowly, but the lawyers’ bills have increased substantially. One reason for that is that the fees paid to and costs incurred by the lawyers and expert witnesses acting for the plaintiffs are about three or four times as much as the Litigation Authority, as the defendant, pays for its lawyers and expert witnesses. The costs and the claims are rising exponentially. Although this is an area that we should approach with care, the clinical negligence industry has been doing well over recent years, and that has been funded entirely by budgets that would otherwise be available for patient care.
Having given that somewhat stark background, I will turn to Lords amendment 171, which seeks to bring all such cases back into the scope of legal aid when a child is a party. In our opinion, that would be unnecessary and wasteful. As I have said, under our plans, the overwhelming majority of the existing support for children will continue. For the record, that includes child protection cases, civil cases concerning the abuse of a child, special educational needs cases, and legal aid for children who are made parties to private family proceedings.
In addition, we have made funding available in the final set of amendments under consideration in this group for cases of clinical negligence involving claims for babies who suffer brain injury at or around the point of birth. I state categorically that as a result of the Government’s Lords amendment 216, any baby who, through clinical negligence, suffers brain damage during childbirth, resulting in severe disability, will receive legal aid. The amendment provides legal aid for clinical negligence claims for babies who suffer brain injury during pregnancy, at birth or in the immediate post-natal period, leading to a lifetime of care needs. I also make it clear that if a baby were to be injured in an operation, say at six months, legal aid would be available through the exceptional funding scheme, where necessary, to ensure the protection of the individual’s right to legal aid under the European convention on human rights.
When we introduced the Bill, we believed that we had covered all those cases through the exceptional funding scheme. Doubts were expressed continually in this House and in another place about that, so we now have this set of amendments to put it beyond doubt in the Bill.
By contrast, we cannot support Lords amendment 172, as I have said. That amendment would provide public funding for the remaining minority of medical negligence claims with child claimants, despite the fact that many of them are relatively simple, do not involve lengthy and detailed investigations of the kind that we are trying to catch in Lords amendment 216, and are suitable for funding through a conditional fee agreement in exactly the same way as for adults. In line with the principles that underpin the Bill, the state should not fund cases that can be provided for by alternative means.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
The Justice Secretary has moved on from Lords amendment 171. I am concerned about children in care and care leavers, who are among the most vulnerable children in our society and whose life chances are badly affected by their situation. There is a grave risk that children in care and care leavers will be massively over-represented in the relatively small number of people who will be excluded under the Government’s proposals. If that happens, it will seriously affect the life chances of a group of children who are already very vulnerable and who often do not have adults to advocate for them.
Mr Clarke
Babies, yes, although exceptional funding rules will apply to other serious cases involving children. Under the European convention on human rights, one must plainly provide someone with access to funding to have a fair resolution of a dispute. We therefore think that we are covering most cases. The amendments that I am suggesting that the House should disagree with cover all kinds of routine cases. They state that simply because a person is under a particular age, they should get legal aid in cases for which an adult would not receive it.
Mr Clarke
Let me move on, because I am giving way far too much and taking a great deal of time.
Lords amendment 170 sounds like an innocuous measure, but it would open up legal aid to cover the costs of expert reports in all the cases that currently are funded by CFAs or no win, no fee arrangements. It would allow lawyers to apply for legal aid to cover the expert report in any case where a client, of any age, was financially eligible, and to still get their success fee in respect of their other legal costs. That would transfer all the risk in a no win, no fee case from the solicitors and insurers to the legal aid fund and the taxpayer. That would be unfair to the taxpayer and would result in a significant expansion of the legal aid scheme.
I have covered with as much care as I can these particularly sensitive areas—
John McDonnell
I would not have sought to intervene if I had not been here from the beginning of the debate. I have been here the whole time.
I want to get clarity on one point in relation to children. The Children’s Society and the Refugee Children’s Consortium estimate that there are about 2,500 under-18s who will not gain support in relation to immigration matters. My borough deals with more unaccompanied child immigrants than any other in the country. When this matter was raised before, the Secretary of State said that those are uncomplicated cases and that such children can receive advice elsewhere. That has been interpreted as meaning that social workers are able to give that advice. However, social workers are not registered in that way under existing legislation, so there is a conflict between the proposals and the existing legislation that needs to be resolved; otherwise local authorities will be in not only financial difficulties but legal difficulties.
Mr Clarke
No, not all of them, but the vast majority. Once such a case becomes an application for asylum, legal aid is available. I am surprised by the figures that have been given for the cases that do not eventually wind up getting legal aid in that way. The problems posed by such cases, when a child gets off an aeroplane unescorted, go far beyond the legal ones. The Home Office is discussing with local authorities how to improve the response to such children. However, I am not satisfied that that category of children can be given access to legal aid for other claims of a legal kind, which I cannot visualise straight away, that might arise. The vast majority of those cases quickly turn into asylum applications and will therefore get legal aid.
I hope that the House is persuaded that the Government have taken a consistent and principled approach to reforming the scope of legal aid. No one looks to touch this area of the justice system lightly, but change is unavoidable if we are to protect access to justice and ensure that the system is affordable. On domestic violence, children, clinical negligence and welfare benefits we have sought to ensure that scarce resources are targeted where they matter most and where alternative funding or representation are unavailable. It is not easy to get that balance right. In the light of the principles that I set out at the start of my speech, I think that we have got the balance about right with the amendments that we have accepted and those that we oppose.
I believe the Government have been particularly responsive on all the issues. We knew perfectly well that when cutting back on this country’s legal aid expenditure, we ran the risk of damaging our system of justice if we got it wrong. We have made the countless moves that I have listed since we first produced the Bill however many months ago, in response to debate in both Houses. I am grateful to the Commons and the Lords for what they have done, and I hope that I have eventually put forward clearly the Government’s thoughts on the Lords amendments and on our amendments in lieu. I commend our position to the House.
Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
What a shambles. The Government have had more than a year to consider the Bill, and at the very last minute, with only two or three hours to consider this group of Lords amendments, they make an attempt at a concession on domestic violence. We welcome that concession, but I am afraid it does not go nearly far enough. I echo my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State in saying that this wide-ranging group of amendments demonstrates both the scale of opposition to the Bill and the Government’s failure throughout to provide sufficient time for deliberations on it. We have just two hours to consider the Government’s defeats on domestic violence, welfare benefits advice, children with civil justice problems and clinical negligence.
The Opposition will not press Lords amendment 2. Furthermore, given the Government’s amendment to Lords amendment 193, bringing it into line with Lords amendment 192, which was the result of a Division, we are satisfied that the Secretary of State now accepts the otherwise settled cross-governmental definition of domestic violence: any incident of threatening behaviour, violence or abuse, whether psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional, between individuals who are associated with each other. It is a shame that it has taken him so long to agree to something that is otherwise agreed on across Government, by external campaigners for women’s rights and by many Government Members. [Interruption.] I am glad the Lord Chancellor finds this so amusing.
Despite the Government’s acceptance of a common definition of domestic violence—a very welcome concession—there remain legitimate and pressing concerns that the Government seek to use an evidential gateway that in no way implements the spirit of the agreed definition.
Lords amendments 194 and 196 are the result of Government defeats in another place. They would place in statute forms of evidence that a victim can present to get the help that they need to escape their abuser and protect their children. That list of forms of evidence is already used by other Government agencies. For example, the UK Border Agency uses it for the purpose of proving abuse in immigration cases. It is not just Labour, nor the 84% of Cross Benchers who voted in favour of those amendments, who support the use of that list. Mumsnet, the Women’s Institute, Rights of Women, End Violence Against Women and more groups all warned that the Government’s originally proposed list of acceptable evidence would prevent many abused women from asserting their right to live free of violence.
The new list that the Lord Chancellor proposes significantly omits certain domestic violence services. In another place, my noble Friend Baroness Scotland put a case that I imagine helped to persuade him that she was right. It is a pity, however, that he seems unable to accept the list of forms of evidence that she proposed. She said:
“We should look at the average case, such as when a woman has run from her home. She manages to go to her GP”—
many such women do not—
“who sees the injuries and notes them and then sends her to hospital because there are fears that she may have cracked a rib or another bone. She is seen by the medical staff and they verify that the injuries that she complains of are genuine. Her neighbours may have come in to rescue her from an assault. They may not have seen the assault taking place but have noted what was happening and taken her away. Social services may have come along and examined the children, spoken to them and heard what they had to say. All of that might have been used by the police who then came along and arrested the man. He may then acknowledge that he has indeed committed the offences that are alleged against him. Even if all those things had happened, under these provisions the woman would not be entitled to legal aid.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 18 January 2012; Vol. 734, c. 595.]
I can see why the Lord Chancellor was persuaded by that, but it is a shame that he has not been persuaded to accept what Baroness Scotland went on to recommend. That cannot be right.
It is shambolic to present us with the new list at the very last minute. If the Government’s gateway excludes domestic violence cases from legal aid, it is not fit for purpose. Rights of Women has conducted a survey of abuse victims showing that 46% would have been excluded by the Government’s original list. All of them, however, would be covered by the provisions of Lords amendments 194 and 196. There has not been an opportunity to assess how many would be excluded under the Lord Chancellor’s new list.
The Government claim, in defiance of our Lords amendments, that they do not want to be hamstrung by a list of forms of evidence that may need to change over time. I accept that it might emerge that one of them is prone to abuse, but were that the case, the Government have powers under clause 9(2) to vary or omit acceptable forms of evidence in schedule 1. If the Government provided evidence of abuse of the system and could demonstrate the need to change the list, we would of course not oppose that. I say to Government Members who express concern that one or more forms of evidence on the list might be open to abuse that that is the best route to fixing it.
For now, the list that we have suggested—I say once again that the Government already use it to decide whether individuals have the right to settle in our country—should also be used to decide whether our fellow citizens who suffer abuse should have basic advice and representation. To abandon them to mediation or self-representation in the courts system, with no one to help them deal with their abuser, would be simply cruel. Furthermore, it would go against the long sweep of decades of cross-party harmony on dealing with the horrors of domestic abuse.
According to Home Office figures, the joint governmental strategy to deal with domestic abuse, which was led by my noble Friend Baroness Scotland between 2003 and 2010, cut domestic violence by 64% and saved the state £7.5 billion a year. For the practical, moral and economic reasons that I have mentioned, I urge the Government to think again about domestic violence services that support 125,000 women, only 17,000 of them in refuges. Should they not do so, we will seek to press Lords amendment 146 to a vote, but owing to the inexplicably compressed time scales, we will not force a Division on Lords amendment 148. We will seek to address both matters in another place should the vote be lost.
I move on to Lords amendments 168 and 169, on welfare benefits advice. I welcome the Government’s decision to accept the essence of the latter, which would allow funding for advice and representation on appeals to the upper tribunal, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court on matters relating to welfare benefits.
Helen Goodman
I was slightly confused by what my hon. Friend said about the Lords amendments on domestic violence. Is she saying that she will press for a vote on Lords amendment 194 or on Lords amendment 196?
Mrs Chapman
On Lords amendment 194.
Campaigners have advocated for nearly two years the funding that I described, and we are delighted that the Government have now seen the light. However, they continue to fail to do so when it comes to reviews and first-tier tribunals, which are the only mechanisms by which fact can be challenged. We seem to be a bit fuzzy about points of law and fact, so I point out that higher courts deal only with points of law.
Before the debates in another place on legal aid funding for advice on welfare benefits, the noble Lord Pannick QC wrote to all peers making the case for welfare benefits advice. He made a simple and powerful case for those unlawfully denied disability benefits having access to advice. The case is well understood by Government Members, and I can only imagine that that is how they managed to eke out the concession from the Lord Chancellor at the very last minute.
Before the election, the Prime Minister wrote a powerful piece for The Independent on his experience with the benefits system. He said that
“life for parents of disabled children is complicated enough without having to jump through hundreds of government hoops. After the initial shock of diagnosis you’re plunged into a world of bureaucratic pain. Having your child assessed and getting the help you’re entitled to means answering the same questions over and over again, being buried under snow drifts of forms, spending hours on hold in the phone queue…I am determined to make life simpler for parents.”
Later, he posited a solution in a speech, saying he wanted to help disabled people when they have a problem accessing the benefits system. He said:
“For the sake of these families’ sanity we are looking at the evidence and considering…pulling professionals like doctors, paediatric nurses, physiotherapists and benefits specialists together in one team to act as a one-stop-shop for assessment and advice.”
I have no doubt the Prime Minister wrote openly and honestly, so it is baffling that his Justice Secretary is taking specialist advice away from disabled people and, worse still, from children, who have absolutely no ability to navigate the justice system alone.
We can see the problem and there are obvious solutions, but the Justice Secretary has broken the promises that have been made. Here is another example of those broken promises. Asked by The Guardian what the big society was, the Prime Minister immediately pointed to his local citizens advice bureau, but Citizens Advice, the primary agency that delivers welfare benefits advice, is facing massive cuts because of these changes. Alongside law centres and other neighbourhood advice services, citizens advice bureaux are both value for money and valued by the communities they serve, but now their future is very uncertain.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
My hon. Friend makes a strong case. Is she aware that the funding cuts to law centres, on top of increased demand, mean that many people simply cannot get past the door to get an appointment, even with a voluntary adviser, which might only eventually lead to some kind of legal process? We are denying people justice now, even before the reforms take effect.
Mrs Chapman
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. I am well aware of that point, because those same people turn up at our surgeries week in, week out in desperation, unable to get the support that they previously would have been able to access. Social welfare legal aid is not an adjunct to the system. Right of redress if a mistake is made is a self-correcting element in the system and an inextricable part of it.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
Is my hon. Friend as shocked as I am to discover that social welfare law advice in Bolton has gone up 38% and welfare benefits advice has gone up 57%? The doors have had to be closed on any new people for a fortnight because there is such a backlog.
Mrs Chapman
That says all we need to say about the state of some of our providers of social welfare advice.
Decisions will not be challenged, and individuals will be denied their fundamental economic and social rights, which will eventually lead to a culture of laziness, poor decision making, corner cutting and inefficiency. We are talking about cases in which individuals have been blatantly wrongly assessed. The Daily Mirror investigative team has in the past couple of weeks quantified the scale of failures of state agencies and contractors such as Atos. Through freedom of information requests, the team discovered that 32 people a week die after being certified fit to work. For example, Atos deemed 36-year-old Martina Delaney from Bolton fit for work and her benefits were cut. Her mother, Elizabeth, said:
“She was so worried about losing her flat and she had to sell the family jewellery to pay for the gas and food and never even told us, it would have broken her heart”.
They found Martina dead in her bed on 12 March.
Bill Esterson
My hon. Friend has made an excellent point about the Government’s claimed support for young people. She could add that they have said that they will speed up the court process for adoption, which has been an absolute disgrace for far too long. This attack on vulnerable young people—in particular, children in care—will set back the cause of those people, who have the weakest life chances of pretty much any group in this society.
Mrs Chapman
My hon. Friend speaks with considerable personal experience of this issue, and I take what he has to say extremely seriously.
Finally, were there time, and had today not been so ridiculously compressed, we would have also dealt with Lords amendment 170, tabled by Lord Lloyd of Berwick. It is a just and economically intelligent amendment. It is to the Government’s shame that they have not accepted its minor expense, which would help so many people who have suffered greatly through clinical negligence.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. A lot of people want to get in and I want to get them all in as quickly as possible, so if Members can try to keep their speeches short, that would be great.
Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)
I declare an interest as a legal aid family lawyer who specialises in domestic violence. I shall speak to amendments that deal with the widening of the evidence gateway for victims of domestic violence and the time limits applied to that gateway. However, at the outset I pay tribute to the Government’s wide strategy of combating the scourge of domestic violence. During the course of this Bill’s progress, they have clearly demonstrated their commitment to the legal needs of victims of domestic violence and their related family law issues. The Government have my support, but I would have liked them to go a little further on the time limits.
Let me turn first to the evidence gateway. Domestic violence is so often a hidden crime. It is committed behind closed doors, where the victim’s primal need to preserve a relationship or family unit can overwhelm their fear of continued abuse. There are often no witnesses, save for the sad exception of children, and it is one person’s word against another’s if the police arrive on the scene. The vast majority of victims are women. They find help, support and guidance in the face of adversity through their GPs, hospitals, social services and DV support organisations. The Government are absolutely right to ensure that the gateway criteria reflect and accommodate the alternative routes that women—and some men—take to address the pain and suffering that they are experiencing. Evidence, in the form of medical reports and letters from health professionals, social services and refuges, is successfully relied on every day in the courts. Judges use it all the time to justify the making of non-molestation orders and occupation orders, under the Family Law Act 1996. If such evidence is acceptable to the courts in establishing violence, it should surely be acceptable to the Executive agency of the Ministry of Justice in making its funding decisions.
Some who suffer abuse have even heavier armoury to prevent the disclosure and reporting of domestic violence. Be it a matter of duty, shame or honour, there is often huge familial and cultural pressure in black and ethnic minority communities to avoid the police, lawyers and other statutory bodies. Women also often feel compelled to use alternative but unacceptable community mechanisms for dispute resolution, which can often expose them to increased risk of harm and injustice. A widening of the gateway will especially help those women and girls, many of whom also have practical problems in reporting violence owing to language barriers, unawareness of services and fear of deportation.
There is also a need to maintain consistency across Departments in our treatment of domestic violence. Since 2004, in dealing with applications for leave to remain on the grounds of domestic violence, the UK Border Agency has used similar criteria to those advocated today by the Government. Although I appreciate that the list of criteria is now used as indicative guidance rather than compulsory evidence, it should be accepted that during the last eight years it has worked effectively, and without opening the fearsome floodgates to the outside world.
Having given reasons to support the widening of the gateway, let me now deal with one of the principal objections that has been raised against it. During earlier Government consultations, evidence was submitted by the Law Society and other bodies which suggested that a domestic violence gateway for family legal aid could lead to false allegations. However, having worked as a legal aid family lawyer for more than 20 years, I can tell the House that the overwhelming majority of my clients would not have deliberately recruited social services into their affairs, inviting all the risks that go with such involvement, nor would they have left the family to place themselves and their children in a hostel or women’s refuge, or deliberately inflict injury on themselves or their children and then falsely report the injury to a GP or hospital. Such acts require a high degree of wanton and malicious forethought. Yes, dishonesty exists across every section of society, but we need to weigh up the quantum of potential abuse and balance it against the harm that would persist if we fail to provide essential legal services for the most vulnerable people in society.
On the time limit applied to the criteria, I do not believe that the gateway should remain open in perpetuity, but there are strong reasons for extending it beyond 12 months. Such a limit does not recognise the dynamic of domestic violence or the genuine potential for post-separation violence. Research published by Women’s Aid found that 76% of those who have experienced violence also experience post-separation violence. Also, many non-molestation injunction orders are granted for just six months or a year. It is a sad fact that on expiry a significant number of respondents return and bring to bear a threatening presence, albeit one that is perhaps not sufficient to merit the making of a further injunction order. For many women, especially those who have suffered years of abuse before taking any action, 12 months is simply not sufficient to reach a state of physical, emotional and financial readiness to commence divorce or other legal proceedings. Indeed, a short, 12-month limit could encourage women to take action too early or miss out altogether on the help they need.
In the fullness of time, however, things settle down. Acrimony reduces, people move on, people remarry, children grow up, and old wounds start to heal. We therefore have to question the equity of bleeding the scars of old battles simply to obtain legal aid ad infinitum. All this suggests that at some stage a statutory line has to be drawn under the issues of the past. My personal view is that three years, rather than one, would be more appropriate for the majority of cases, but I of course leave that open for debate.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
I want to echo the case made so powerfully by my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman) and to talk about the importance of the Lords amendments in mitigating the impact of the Bill on some of the most vulnerable members of our society—namely, children. The passionate criticism of the Bill by Members in the other place revealed the short-term, short-sighted and potentially damaging aspects of this legislation, which will hit the most disadvantaged the most unfairly. I commend the work of the other place and the amendments that were passed as a result.
Catherine McKinnell
I will not, as the hon. Gentleman has not been here for the whole debate.
In regard to Lords amendment 194, the Government have repeated their intention to continue to provide legal aid for victims of domestic abuse involved in private law family cases. However, as children are necessarily involved, I am naturally concerned that the adults caring for them should have unfettered access to legal aid, so that they can protect themselves and their children. The Government’s U-turn on the definition of domestic abuse is welcome, but it does not deal with the crux of the matter, which is that the evidence required to prove domestic abuse on an assessment for legal aid is unduly restrictive.
Victims will pass through the narrow evidential gateway. Broadly speaking, an order will need to have been made within the past 12 months or still be in place, and the abuser will need to have a criminal conviction or be party to ongoing criminal proceedings for abuse. The evidence will have to have been generated within the past 12 months. On that basis, a letter from a refuge, to which a woman has fled from domestic abuse, stating that she is a victim would not suffice, and neither would a letter by a social worker stating the same thing. Victims who have not previously sought help from the police or lawyers, those who are too scared or proud to do so and those enduring low-level but nevertheless unacceptable abuse are among those who might be denied support.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady not accept that we have heard today that the threshold will now be two years, rather than one?
Catherine McKinnell
Yes, I gladly accept that, but that does not address the underlying concern that the terms are unduly restrictive and will not cover all those who require support and assistance.
Mrs Grant
Would the hon. Lady not also accept that we have just heard from the Government that a letter from a general practitioner, a social worker or a refuge will be of assistance? Such letters will also form part of the evidence gateway, in addition to undertakings. Those points have already been made.
Catherine McKinnell
My apologies; I do accept what has been said by those on the Government Front Bench today. I am simply making the point that it does not go far enough to allay the concerns of hon. Members on both sides of the House. We shall see, when the amendments are voted on, whether that gives Members on the Government Benches the reassurance that they describe.
Lords amendment 194 would expand the types of acceptable evidence and harmonise the requirements for other agencies, such as the UK Border Agency, by permitting evidence from hospital doctors, GPs, and domestic violence support services and other “well-founded documentary evidence”. It provides a comprehensive list that far better reflects the reality of the forms that violence takes. It also mirrors the list of evidence already accepted by the Government in immigration law cases.
I want to quote the respondent to a survey by Rights of Women who said:
“Legal aid enabled me to resolve legally and permanently the issues around violence and emotional abuse which had been plaguing myself and my son for years. Legal aid made it possible for me to stand up to my ex-partner with the full weight of the law behind me.”
The importance of immediate access to legal aid for victims of violence and their children cannot be underestimated. It represents the difference between remaining in an abusive and life-threatening situation and finding safety. I also want to quote a member of the public who posted a message on Facebook at 7 o’clock this evening:
“I used to be a victim of domestic violence, back in the day when police did nothing and the courts gave out short-term injunctions, which was an insult. But what I do know is that domestic violence happens regardless of class. I got out of my violent marriage and was able to get a prompt divorce because I had legal aid. This Government is causing regression. What makes us proud to be British is being eroded away.”
The Government are targeting the most vulnerable and disadvantaged people with this Bill. That is unfair; it is not economically sound and it will create bigger problems for the future. It is short-sighted and damaging, and I urge the Government to accept the Lords amendments.
Tom Brake
I rise to make a few brief comments, bearing in mind that more Members seek to speak in the debate.
In relation to domestic violence, the improvements that have been announced this evening are very welcome. I commend the hon. Members for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) and for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) for their work on domestic violence. Those on the Opposition Front Bench have been a little churlish in their response to the improvements that the Justice Secretary has set out on undertakings and on accepting police cautions and evidence from women’s refuges. Those are significant improvements, and Members on both sides of the House have argued for their inclusion in the Bill. The improvements are welcome, as is the announcement of the extension to two years, although the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald would have preferred it to be three.
I want to focus on the history of the amendment that has been tabled today in my name and those of other colleagues. Members will know that this is not the first time that it has appeared. We were accused this evening by the Opposition of showboating, but I remind them that the amendment appeared in a grouping on 2 November last year. If we are showboating, we have been doing so consistently over a period of time. Unfortunately, we did not reach that amendment during our debate on that grouping. That is why we then supported an amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), which was similar to what we were proposing. Our amendment then reappeared in the House of Lords, where it was tabled by Baroness Doocey and voted through with a majority of just under 40. It has therefore been debated on a number of occasions; it is not new.
The Government are clearly going to negate Lords amendment 240 today. I welcome the concession that has been made in relation to the upper tribunal, and the fact that, on points of law, legal aid clearly will be available in the upper tribunal, the Supreme Court. I also welcome the Justice Secretary’s clarification that it is the Government’s clear intention that, whether the points of law are for the upper or lower tribunals, these cases should be funded by legal aid. I welcome, too, the Justice Secretary’s saying that there will be discussions with the Department for Work and Pensions and possibly other Departments to try to identify ways of achieving that. There is a technical issue about how to identify easily the cases that involve a point of law. I hope that, when that process of identification takes place, the Government will err on the side of being generous in their interpretation of what counts as a point of law. There will be cases where it is hard to unpick whether a particular case is a complex welfare benefit case that either does or does not involve a point of law.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
Does the right hon. Gentleman not think it a problem that even if a modicum of legal aid were available for tribunals dealing with points of law, one of the practical difficulties would be people’s ability to source the legal advice because the services are not there? On the basis of my experience as a solicitor, I suspect that most solicitors who do not specialise in this area do not have the expertise to give that advice. Closing the door on so much legal aid for social welfare law means that, even if people could get it, there would be nowhere for them to get it from.
Tom Brake
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. She makes a strong point that legal aid lawyers need to be available to provide legal aid advice. I hope that the Government will ensure that that is the case.
I would welcome some clarification about the timetable. My hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), who is no longer in his place, intervened to ask for clarity about the timetable for reaching a conclusion on identifying lower tribunal cases that involve points of law and on how the certification process would work. I look forward to seeing how that will be resolved. I accept that the Justice Secretary’s proposal will not address all the complex welfare benefit cases to which Citizens Advice has referred. It has confirmed to me that it is working on some cases of general advice that are funded through legal aid. It acknowledges that there are already cases where there is no requirement for the work to be legally aided, or legal aid funded, in order for it to be completed.
Members may have looked at some of the case studies in the briefing from Citizens Advice, “Out of scope, out of mind”. For example, there is the Kelly case where her care needs were set out in detail in a three-page letter to the DWP appeals officer, but it was not immediately clear to me that there was a requirement for legal aid to write that particular letter, as it was suggested there was in the briefing. It acknowledges that there are cases where the issues are more about general advice, so the additional Government funding—the extra £20 million, or the £16.8 million this year, and the £20 million next year and thereafter—is welcome.
Of course I acknowledge that local authorities are cutting funding to their citizens advice bureaux, but I would ask all Members what pressure they are putting on their local authorities, which can make choices. It is clear that some have chosen to continue funding for their CABs, while others have chosen not to. Local authorities have some options on where to make the cuts. If some choose to support their CABs, which I welcome, others are choosing not to, which I regret.
Simon Hughes
I hope I am not pre-empting my right hon. Friend’s argument, but the other thing the Justice Secretary said that was welcome in respect of this part of the Bill was the commitment he gave that judicial review cases would be covered by legal aid. They are exactly the cases that people were most worried that there would be no support for. Here, legal aid is clearly necessary.
Tom Brake
I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention and for putting on the record the fact that the Justice Secretary has made that point clear, which is welcome.
Finally, with respect to our Liberal Democrat amendment, I am satisfied with the undertakings that the Justice Secretary has given to look at points of law relating to lower tribunals, so it is not my intention to press it to the vote.
Mr Llwyd
That last comment winded me, because I fully expected the Liberals to vote on their amendment, particularly given the right hon. Gentleman’s performance in Committee—where he said absolutely nothing during the entire Committee stage.
I must say to the Lord Chancellor that I accept and am grateful for how he has moved on the definition of domestic violence, which is most welcome. On the gateway, things have greatly improved, too. The hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), who is greatly experienced in these matters, has made her speech, so I can curtail what I had intended to say. Suffice it to say that I think three years might be better than the two-year limit, but two years is still an improvement. In any event, this represents a great improvement on where we were just a few weeks ago—certainly a vast improvement on where we were in Committee. I hope that this will be a far fairer regime on domestic violence and on assisting the most needy in society.
As to the welfare benefit cases, the Government have now accepted the relevant amendment. Again, it is an improvement, but there is a lack of logic in saying that a second tier would be covered in respect of points of law for the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. Let us just face the fact that the number going to those two courts will be a handful in any year, if even that. The truth is that it would be far better to extend downward to ensure that where a genuine point of law is at stake —I am not sure how exactly we are going to measure it—it is only right that something should be done at the very lowest level. Again, the cases will be few and far between.
Since becoming a Member of Parliament, I have seen 200 or 300 benefit cases of various kinds before the tribunal—gratis, I have to say. It is necessary to put your ducks in a row and prove that the medical officer has been less than honest in assessing the needs of the individual. We heard one glaring example from the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) earlier and I could provide many more. As I have said in this place before, the system is wrong because the people who do the tests are most keen on getting them through in 25 minutes and picking up their cheque—and that is that. I have seen some abominable cases. I remember one case in which a young lad was invalided out of the Air Force, having lost a leg and badly damaged a shoulder. He was alleged to be able to walk 100 metres in the given short space of time. That was absolute nonsense. He went to appeal, and in 10 minutes the tribunal said yes.
There are some cases where points of law are relevant. They are few and far between. The Justice Secretary said this evening that he will look to provide some cover there, and it is particularly important to include any points of law that arise lower down, as it were.
I shall curtail my comments this evening, as others wish to speak, but I think that amendment 171, which deals with young people, remains a matter of grave concern to many Opposition Members. The scope of the amendment is fairly wide. If passed, it would retain the provision of legal aid for children who are party to a number of specified legal proceedings. According to the organisation JustRights, it would retain legal aid in civil cases for children who need that aid in their own right in order to deal with their problems independently from the needs or support of their parents or carers, if they exist.
Most of the children affected are likely to be teenagers who have little or no contact with their parents. If they are not eligible for legal aid, they will be left to steer through an adult-orientated legal system involving tribunals and court hearings with no specialist support or advice. Most of the children whom the amendment seeks to protect would not be represented by a litigation friend, as most would be bringing cases as a direct result of having no parental support in the first place.
I remind the House that the present Government, like their predecessors, are bound by the United Nations convention on the rights of the child and the Council of Europe guidelines to secure a justice system that is considerate towards children. Last year, 41,000 children gained access to legal aid as the primary applicants. If the Bill is passed unchecked, 6,000 of them—14%—will lose that entitlement. Not only will it be distressing for children to attempt to navigate the legal and quasi-legal systems without support, but it will take longer for cases to be resolved owing to the increase in the number of inexperienced litigants in person.
The Local Government Association has estimated that removing legal aid for unaccompanied child asylum seekers in immigration cases alone will cost local authorities an extra £10 million a year. Given the additional costs that will be incurred by the national health service and the welfare system, we can only surmise that cutting legal aid for the most vulnerable group will do no more than shift costs from one department to another. It is only right for children to be protected by our justice system, and leaving that vulnerable group to travel alone into a quagmire of legal niceties will not be palatable to any civilised society.
The Justice Secretary has moved a long way on several points of contention, and I ask him, even at this eleventh hour, to look again at this one.
Dr Wollaston
I welcome the significant improvements that have been made in respect of domestic violence, so I shall concentrate on Lords amendment 168.
The Secretary of State says that because welfare appeals often involve arguments about points of fact rather than points of law, welfare appellants should not qualify for legal aid. However, justice is about facts. Many of the people whom we meet in our surgeries have fallen through the gaps in Atos assessments. They may not have ticked the right boxes, but within five minutes it is abundantly clear that the wrong decision has been made. In my experience, the expert and professional advice marshalled by the citizens advice bureaux makes all the difference to whether our constituents receive justice. Cost-shifting might be reasonable, but only if the £20 million per year went far enough to fill the gap that has been created.
Historically, South Hams CAB in my area has received 60% of its funding through legal aid. It was not a question of local authority cuts; the authority had not funded the CAB in the first place. Although some of that £20 million has gone to my local CAB and will make a significant difference, the CAB has nevertheless had to cut staff, and has lost 45 hours per week of high-quality professional time. Of course we all pay tribute to the volunteers, but it is mostly the detailed and specific marshalling of facts by specialists that determines whether the right decision is made at a tribunal.
I believe that the employment of more decision-makers would make a big difference, but I also believe that the work done by CABs saves us a great deal of money in the long term. I ask the Secretary of State to think again about how much more we can do to fill the gap so that our CABs can maintain the incredibly high-quality professional service that they provide for all our constituents.
Helen Goodman
Once upon a time the Tory party was the party of liberty, and was particularly energetic in defending the liberties of the individual against the power of the state, but such activity has been completely abandoned this evening, particularly in the Secretary of State’s approach to welfare benefits. It is wholly objectionable for the welfare system to operate without a proper right of redress and recourse unless there is a disagreement about a point of law. That opens the gate to maladministration and low standards, and to a continual lack of proper administration of people’s benefit entitlements.
Not for the first time, the Secretary of State has revealed a perspective that is complacent, out of touch and gender-related. The absence of a woman in the justice team has been highlighted again today. As I have said to the Secretary of State before, I wish that he would telephone the Prime Minister and ask him to replace the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) with the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), because she would make an excellent Under-Secretary of State. She would do a great job, and above all she would improve the policy. That is what interests us.
I intend to focus on two issues. The first is domestic violence. The hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald drew attention to the problem of the time limits in the Government’s definition. Taking such a strongly legalistic approach to the evidence base and refusing to accept Lords amendment 194 removes the context of the pattern of domestic abuse. We know that by the time women go to the police they have experienced an average of 35 instances of domestic violence, which is why we want the Bill to provide for a different evidence gateway.
The second issue involves children. I find it incredible that although the Secretary of State expresses concern about child abduction and people seeing their children taken into care and says that in those instances legal aid should be available, when it comes to the needs of the children themselves he is prepared to abandon the 6,000 who will lose their entitlement if the amendment is not retained. It is clear that vulnerable children who are leaving care or estranged from their families may experience significant legal problems involving such complex issues as debt, housing, education, law and benefits. It is impractical to expect young people who already face significant difficulties to bear the additional burden of dealing with the justice system.
It is not clear that what the Government are doing is in accordance with the UN convention on the rights of the child. In another place, Lady Walmsley warned that if children’s access to legal aid is not protected, the Government
“will be taken to the international court. It is as simple as that.” —[Official Report, House of Lords, 16 January 2012; Vol. 734, c. 443.]
I ask Ministers whether they have taken into account the extra costs that will be associated with further appeals to the international courts. We need a proper system that is sensitive to the most needy children in our country.
Mr Buckland
I rise to deal with several points raised during consideration of this group of amendments. First, I welcome the Government’s sensible concessions in respect of domestic violence. The Secretary of State and his colleagues will know that when these matters were last before this House I expressed concerns about the role of undertakings in proceedings. I was concerned that undertakings would not be part of any process of assessment for legal aid. I am glad that the Government have accepted the concern expressed by me and others on that, and have accepted a range of other sources of evidence, including, most notably, that from women’s refuges and medical reports. I accept the Government’s argument that it would be better to incorporate that list of criteria in regulations, rather than in primary legislation. Experience shows that regulations can be more quickly amended if obvious problems and abuses occur in the system. It would be a tragedy if, through delays in legislative procedure, people in genuine need went without legal aid. For that reason, I am able to support the Government’s approach in the context of domestic violence.
Sheila Gilmore
I would like the hon. Gentleman to respond to a question I put previously: where are the lawyers who will be able to give this advice going to be?
Mr Buckland
The hon. Lady is right, in that we already have huge deserts in our legal aid provision. The previous Government ran down the legal aid bill substantially. I am sorry to say that a lot of the arguments about the provision of legal aid that we have heard in this place have been rather synthetic, particularly those put by hon. Members on the Opposition Front Bench. Taking the moral high ground is a particularly dangerous position for the Opposition, given the reduction of legal aid provision over the past 10 to 15 years or more.
I return to the point about the provision of legal aid for social welfare. I remain concerned that, far too often, poor decision making on the part of the Department for Work and Pensions is leading to a rise in the number of appeals. We know that that number is rising exponentially and that it is projected to increase considerably over the next few years. I make no apology for the Government’s wise reforms on welfare benefits, but the fact is that wrong decisions will be made and they will need to be challenged and properly dealt with. That is why I am concerned that, despite the Government’s proper concessions on points of law, we are still not in a place where we need to be. Although we have welcome Cabinet Office funding, which is now year on year—another of my pleas has been listened to—right up to the end of the Parliament, we need to understand whether that will be enough to fill what I see as a gap in provision. I am not making a plea on behalf of particular organisations, although I strongly support the Law Centres Federation and my local Wiltshire law centre; this is a plea on behalf of the people who will rightly have points to raise, which will be mixed points of law and fact.
I know that other hon. Members wish to speak in the debate before the knife falls, but I shall briefly discuss clinical negligence. I have long taken the view that matters of clinical negligence should remain within the scope of legal aid. I accept that there are constraints on Government finances, but this is one of those areas where assistance still needs to be provided for challenges to decisions and errors made by the state or its representatives—I strongly believe that that needs to be an underlying philosophy in rebalancing how we spend our legal aid budget. Clinical negligence falls clearly into that bracket. Neither of the proposed amendments in this area does the job as effectively as I would like, but I am sad to say that nor does the Government’s current amendment. I can see problems in arguments about whether the child will have reached eight weeks after birth and what the date of expected birth would be; there will be arguments about how children and babies will fit into the criteria. If we are saying that they are in the exceptional cases category in any case, the Government’s amendment does not add up to very much. I say that with respect to my colleagues. So there are still questions to be answered on two particular areas about which I have concerns. With those observations, I will allow others to enter the debate.
Yvonne Fovargue
I wish to support the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) and remind the House that there is a high level of decision-making error. In a recent Westminster Hall debate, we were told that the delay in tribunals is more than one year because of the number of people who—let us remember this—have been unlawfully denied benefit. They have been unlawfully denied their rights. When people go to a tribunal and are represented, they are 78% more likely to win. This is not just about the representation; it is about the preparation of written statements, for which they can receive legal help. They do not receive any legal help for representation, but legal help is provided for a written statement, which will help them go themselves to the tribunal. May I remind the Secretary of State that these written statements and the representation, in the main, are not provided by lawyers or generalist advisers, and they are certainly not provided by MPs? I find it really insulting to the dedicated and knowledgeable band of specialists with whom I have worked over the years for him to say, “Anyone can do this. We MPs will do it for them because we can do it better.” That is simply not the case.
I also wish to discuss the fact that many of the cases do not involve legal help. I can assure Government Members that, having been audited many times by the Legal Services Commission, I know that it does not pay its money out willy-nilly—even the £164 that is obtained for a legal aid case. If it felt that something did not fall within the scope of legal help, someone would not get the money for that case—indeed, it would possibly deduct from even more cases. It is really important to get the facts and the right sort of evidence for a tribunal, which is where specialists are important. Unfortunately, although I welcome the second tier being brought back into scope, it cannot look again at any evidence; it can look only at the point of law. So the fact that someone has not presented the right evidence and that the right facts have not been looked at cannot be considered any further.
Early advice saves money. Early advice is so important in all aspects of law in order to keep people out of the courts system, as the Secretary of State said. This measure is like telling somebody who has a chest infection, “When you get to the stage of intensive care, we will deal with you,” when a cheap course of antibiotics could help them in the first place.
The cost of reviews and appeals is 66% of the legal aid budget, or £16.5 million. That amount of money would bring these cases back into scope and it would save the country money that would otherwise go on complicated cases and on people falling on to the state in the long run. Every such case on welfare benefits saves the state £8.80 in other costs; it saves time and it saves money. To take these cases out of scope and simply leave a second-tier tribunal in scope is a false economy. It will not help the people who come to our surgeries and it will not help the people who are looking for advice from a citizens advice bureau, because, as has been said many times, the required number of specialists may not be in place. The cases left in scope will not be viable for many of the advice agencies.
I believe that keeping amendment 168 and providing help in lower-tier tribunals will in the end save money and, more importantly, will save misery for a lot of people who have been unlawfully denied benefits by the state.
Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)
I agree with much of what has been said about the Government’s change of heart on the definition of domestic violence. I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) and for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), and I congratulate the Secretary of State on changing the definition to include the ACPO definition, as was urged upon him by Opposition Members, one of whom is present now and who put her argument in Committee.
I also congratulate the Government on changing the evidence gateway for those who have been affected by domestic violence. We must remember that there was never a proposal to change the legal aid provisions for people who were in need of protection. The proposed changes were about other matters that might flow from such initial proceedings, and the disagreement was not about the principle of getting legal aid, but about the sort of evidence required in order to get it.
I do not often disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon, but I think we might disagree about social welfare legal aid. I agree with the Secretary of State: I do not see why a lawyer should always be required to sort out disputes about welfare benefit. I do not disagree with the argument that people might need somebody to represent them, however. As a former criminal barrister who defended far more than I prosecuted, I am familiar with the sort of people who will often end up needing somebody to represent them because, for whatever reason, they do not have the ability to advance their case themselves. There is no argument about that. I do not believe that a lawyer has to do that, however.
I pray in aid the situation in my constituency of Broxtowe. We have a citizens advice bureau but no law centre. My CAB has never received legal aid for any of the work it does. It is an outstanding organisation. It has faced substantial cuts in funding from Nottinghamshire county council, but it has gone out and got extra funds, and it is doing a remarkable job. In my constituency work, there has not been any benefit case that my team has not been able to sort out. I have yet to have such a case where I have said, “I think you need to go and see a specialist lawyer.” Many people do need good representation, however, and my CAB provides it.
I urge the Government to beware of the litigant in person. It is often said that only a fool has himself for a lawyer. Friends and former colleagues at the Bar have told me that there has been a rise in the number of people representing themselves in the civil courts, certainly in Nottingham and on the eastern circuit. The Government must look very carefully at that development. They must not take the simple view that when people represent themselves we will save money. Invariably, such people are a nightmare. [Interruption.] I do not say that in any way disrespectfully to most such people—although some litigants in person genuinely are a nightmare. Most of them need advice and support but feel that they cannot afford legal representation, and the consequence often is that the whole system grinds to a halt. Judges find that they have to intervene far more often and cases take longer, and costs therefore rise.
I welcome these proposals, and I will support the Government on them.
Mr Djanogly
I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 31.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
With this it will be convenient to consider Lords amendment 32, and Government motion to disagree.
Mr Djanogly
The Government recognise that mesothelioma is a truly terrible disease—a terminal illness that has a devastating impact on the families of its victims—and we are wholly committed to doing everything we can to help its victims to achieve justice and get the support that they deserve. The Lords amendments seeking to exempt mesothelioma and industrial disease cases from our reforms to no win, no fee agreements in part 2 of the Bill are not the right way to advance the cause of sufferers.
Mr Djanogly
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will give me a chance to put forward our opposition to the amendments.
First, the amendments are unnecessary. The legal climate in which mesothelioma cases can be brought has wholly changed in recent years, and nothing in our proposals should prevent cases from being taken or those affected from receiving appropriate damages. Secondly, in making an exception to our change to the no win, no fee conditional fee arrangements regime, the amendments would create inconsistency and damage the wider goal of our reforms—to restore sense to the costs of litigation, which have been substantially increased by the way in which no win, no fee cases operate, largely to the detriment of defendants.
Mr Djanogly
This is not a question of whether mesothelioma sufferers receive adequate legal support but of how much their lawyers get paid for providing it. We are saying that that must be more reasonably assessed, and that is the point of our reforms.
Let me remind hon. Members that the current regime of no win, no fee conditional fee agreements was meant to promote access to justice but has frequently ended up as something of a racket allowing risk-free litigation for claimants, inflated profits for legal firms, and punitive additional costs for defendants.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
Can the Minister tell us of one case in which a mesothelioma sufferer has taken something to court that did not deserve to go there—one case in which a sufferer from this horrible disease, which leaves them dying in a horribly painful way, has in any way abused the system?
Mr Djanogly
Let me repeat what I said: this is not a question of whether the person making a claim has a valid claim but of how much his lawyer gets paid. That is what we are looking at, and that is where the system needs reform. To be clear—I say that because I have heard that some hon. Members are not clear about this specific point—I emphasise that under our proposals the client’s lawyer’s costs will still be recoverable from the losing other side.
However, clauses 46 and 48 abolish the recoverability of the success fees and insurance premiums that have pushed up prices for everyone.
Helen Jones
Is the Minister aware that the lead asbestos case was very complicated and took six years to get to the Supreme Court? Does he really think that lawyers will take those kinds of cases without an assurance that their costs will be met?
Mr Djanogly
As I have just said, lawyers’ costs will be met in the usual way. What we are talking about is the success fee. That is where the problem has come into the system.
Mr Djanogly
No; if the hon. Lady listens, I will answer the question.
Our reforms are intended to redress the unfairness that exists in our civil litigation system between claimants and defendants. They will move conditional fee agreements back to the position that they were in before the Opposition’s disastrous reforms in the Access to Justice Act 1999. Our proposals are premised on the similar treatment of classes of cases, based on the costs or difficulty of bringing a claim. The Lords amendments would introduce a new unfairness between claimants, based only on the type of disease or illness, and essentially dependent on whether it was caused in the workplace.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
A number of my constituents who worked on the docks in Goole and in power stations have been affected by this illness. There seems to be a lot of confusion in this debate. For simplicity’s sake, will the Minister say whether my constituents who worked at the docks and who are suffering from this awful disease will receive more or less money in compensation under the Government’s proposals than they receive at the moment?
Mr Djanogly
That will depend on the arrangements that they make with their lawyers. Under the new system, for the first time since the Opposition’s reforms which did so much to create a compensation culture in our country, the client will have an interest in what their lawyer is being paid. Until we get back to that situation, there will be an ongoing ratcheting of costs, which is not in the interests of such claims.
The Opposition’s Lords amendments rate one sort of claim above another. Somehow, a mesothelioma claim is automatically more worthy than a personal injury claim. The Government simply do not accept that. I acknowledge the concern in the other place, which underpinned Lords amendments 31 and 32, that the new arrangements will prevent lawyers from being willing to take mesothelioma cases and leave claimants out of pocket, but I believe it to be mistaken.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
The Minister says that a mesothelioma claim is not, by definition, more serious than a personal injury claim. That obviously depends on the personal injury claim. However, every single mesothelioma claim is a serious matter. Will he at least acknowledge that there is a difference between all mesothelioma claims and some personal injury claims?
Mr Djanogly
All non-clinical negligence personal injury cases, including respiratory disease claims, have been out of the scope of legal aid since 2000—let us acknowledge that—under changes introduced by the last Government. Although some expert reports may be required in respiratory disease cases, the Government are not persuaded that they differ substantially from other personal injury cases in a way that merits the retention of the recoverability of after-the-event insurance premiums.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister may be aware that Barrow is the constituency with the second highest number of mesothelioma suffers in the country. Does he not understand how insulting and potentially distressing it is to those sufferers to be branded as part of a compensation culture?
Mr Djanogly
As I said, this is a question of what lawyers get paid. I am in no way assessing the vulnerability of the individuals whom the hon. Gentleman mentioned.
I point out to the hon. Gentleman that significant steps have been taken in recent years to lower the barriers to bringing compensation claims for these disastrous diseases. A fast-track procedure for mesothelioma cases has been introduced in the High Court. Over the past few years, various legal changes, including primary legislation such as the Compensation Act 2006 and judgments of the Supreme Court, have removed many of the hurdles for sufferers of respiratory diseases in bringing claims.
The legal climate in which such cases are brought has been transformed in recent years. Judgments of the Supreme Court have removed many hurdles, and a judgment only last month means that victims of this dreadful disease who are able to trace an insurer will now be paid and not miss out on compensation. As I said, a fast-track procedure has been introduced to ensure that claims are dealt with as quickly as possible.
A key outstanding barrier is identifying the employer’s liability insurer when an employer no longer exists, and the Department for Work and Pensions continues to work with stakeholders to see what more can be done to address that. Overall, however, cases are much less difficult to undertake than in the past, and there is no reason to believe that legal firms will stop bringing them, even under the new arrangements, or that they will be particularly expensive.
Kate Green
Does the Minister not accept, though, that some cases will now simply go unrepresented and unpursued, and that victims will instead have to rely on the Government’s own compensation scheme, in which the average payment is £16,000? This change will be an expensive choice for the Government, because it will lock people out of access through the courts.
Mr Djanogly
Decisions are made about such cases now, and even under the existing system, if there are large sums involved, ATE insurance companies want to know the likelihood of losing. A lawyer also has to make such an assessment. As things stand, the balance is not right, and we want to rebalance the situation.
Partly as a consequence of what I have said, I do not believe we should accept the view that critics sometimes advance that our reforms will leave victims of this terrible disease out of pocket. It is true that under our plans individuals will pay legal costs out of their general damages. Crucially, though, damages for future care and losses are protected, and general damages are being increased by 10% to offset a success fee capped at 25%. It is of course entirely up to the lawyer whether any success fee is taken from a claimant’s damages at all.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Even if damages for future care and losses are protected, the average life expectancy for advanced mesothelioma has been disclosed as being about nine to 12 months—so that is a great comfort. How can the Minister seriously tell the House that there will be no loss of damages given that the 10% uplift, which is very indistinct, is compensated for by a 25% loss of damages? We should not blame the lawyers, we should blame the Government, who are taking damages away from mesothelioma and asbestosis victims.
Mr Djanogly
I am actually saying quite the opposite. I am saying that damages are going to be increased, not decreased.
The aim of our reforms is to end the current situation whereby legal firms can get away with charging what they want because the claimants do not have a stake in keeping an eye on the bill. At a time when the cases in question are becoming easier to bring, we should not accept amendments that would reduce pressure on legal firms to cut their fees. Instead, our focus should be on cutting inflated margins, not making exemptions for one type of disease.
I understand claimants’ fear of being left liable for high defendant’s costs should they lose, but under our reforms, we are protecting personal injury claimants from the risk of paying such costs, including in industrial disease cases, by introducing qualified one-way costs shifting.
Helen Jones
Even if I accepted the Minister’s argument about plaintiffs keeping an eye on fees, which I do not, how would someone with no legal training who was dying of mesothelioma be supposed to keep monitoring their lawyers’ fees?
Mr Djanogly
People entering into a conditional fee agreement have a relationship with their lawyer, and it is quite right that someone who employs a lawyer has some idea of what is on that lawyer’s clock and what they are charging. That is very important. If someone is sick, they will have family who can help them through their sickness.
The Government are determined to see more proportionate costs in civil litigation, with greater fairness in the risks borne by parties. Without our reforms, high and disproportionate costs in civil litigation would continue. Moreover, if the Lords amendments were accepted, claimants in mesothelioma cases would have an advantage over others who may be suffering from equally debilitating conditions. That cannot be justified.
Mr Slaughter
I will be as brief as I can, because a number of my hon. Friends also wish to speak to the two amendments on industrial diseases. If appropriate, Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall say a brief word about the Lords amendment on metal theft as this is the only opportunity to do so—[Interruption.] In that case, I shall deal with it later.
The first amendment ensures that victims of respiratory industrial diseases—for the main part asbestos-induced diseases such as mesothelioma—will not have their damages taken away by lawyers and insurers. The second ensures that victims of industrial diseases as a whole are treated in the same way.
The Government plan to allow claimants’ lawyers to take up to 25% of industrial disease victims’ damages and for the victims’ insurers to take an uncapped additional amount. The current system says that the losing defendant or their insurer should pay the costs of bringing that case. They are still highly contentious and contended cases. Some 60,000 people in Britain will develop mesothelioma over the next decades because of past exposure, and almost 40,000 have died thus far—the highest levels in the world. The Association of British Insurers continues to obstruct victims of asbestosis in high-profile, Supreme Court cases to try to absolve insurers from paying out. After a recent ruling in favour of victims, the Insurance Times headline read, “Disappointment at pleural plaques ruling”.
Asbestosis is not the only problem, which is why the other place made two amendments. One amendment was specific to respiratory disease and the other encompasses serious industrial diseases. These are not slips and trips, minor accidents at work or road traffic whiplash cases; they are diagnosable medical conditions that can, with difficulty, be proved to have resulted from a breach of duty by an employer. Symptoms include deafness, blindness, spinal degradation, leukaemia, cirrhosis of the liver caused by exposure to chemicals, organ damage, loss of limbs and more.
The diseases are the by-product of hard and often manual work over decades. They are inflicted on people who have spent their lives contributing to the economy of this country in heavy industry, manufacturing and public services. Many of the diseases do not manifest for years—they are the legacy of our heavy industries and of our proud traditions of manufacturing. In time, modern industries will cause diseases as yet undiagnosed.
The Minister has repeatedly said in debates on the Bill that the aim of part 2 is to fix the “compensation culture” or to lower motor insurance premiums, but whose car insurance is affected by mesothelioma sufferers getting their full and just compensation?
Eighteen noble lords from all parties and none signed a letter supporting the amendment. I shall not name them all, but I should mention Lord Alton and Lord Bach, who moved the amendments in the House of Lords, Lord Avebury, and the late Lord Newton, who spoke so powerfully to the amendments. They demonstrated the depth of feeling that the Government should be so crass as to treat mesothelioma sufferers in the same manner as those affected by whiplash. As the noble Lord Avebury said:
“Unscrupulous claimants may be able to fake road traffic injuries, but not mesothelioma or asbestosis. It is impossible for the victims of these horrible diseases to launch a frivolous or fraudulent claim, and it is unconscionable that people on their deathbeds should be mulcted of thousands of pounds out of the damages that they are awarded by the courts.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 14 March 2012; Vol. 736, c. 313.]
The Government contend that that is not relevant and that they are trying to get people to shop around for the best rates, but who, diagnosed with mesothelioma, with perhaps months to live, will shop around for the lawyer that takes the least damages from him—the so-called skin in the game so beloved of the Minister? On average, cancer caused by asbestos exposure kills in about 12 months. General damages are, on average, about £65,000. The victim’s lawyer will now receive up to 25% of that sum. The after-the-event insurer, who insures the claimant in case his action fails, will take an unlimited sum for the premium. Because insurance companies fight mesothelioma cases to the end—often until after the victim dies—such cases are inherently risky to bring, and the cost of insuring the claim can be huge.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
The dangers of asbestos and the risks of asbestosis and mesothelioma have been known since the 1920s. Successive Governments of both persuasions have ignored them. In the London fire brigade, in which I served for 23 years, we used asbestos equipment regularly. Every firefighter who worked with the London fire brigade or any other fire brigade has had their personal files annotated with “Exposed to asbestos”. The Government—whichever Government—have a responsibility to those workers, because we have failed to protect them. Is my hon. Friend saying that, in rejecting Lords amendment 31, the Government are not accepting their responsibility to people who have been exposed?
Mr Slaughter
I hear cries of “Shameful!” from the Government Benches. There should be a little humility and a little humanity from Government Members on these issues. We are talking about debilitating diseases, with the longest gestation periods of any diseases—they strike after many years, when it is often difficult to trace employers and when insurers evade their responsibilities—and they kill quickly and painfully. Those are the targets for the Government in this Bill.
The Association of British Insurers’ briefing for this debate—as well as that of some defendants’ lawyers—which claims that the amendments reduce the damages for victims and expose them to the risk of adverse costs is demonstrably false. We have raised that issue with the ABI, which claimed that Members of this House already knew that damages would be reduced by the Bill, hence it did not address that issue. Such tactics do the insurance industry no credit. This Bill does the Government no credit, and neither does resisting these amendments. We ask for full and proper justice for those who have given their working lives—and often their lives—to some of the most painful and debilitating medical conditions. They should not become victims of lawyers, insurers, unscrupulous employers or this disgraceful Government.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
I wish to speak only briefly. I am inclined to support Lords amendment 31 this evening, but I intend to listen to the debate carefully before the Division. In the meantime, I hope to make clear my views on this issue.
I ought to start by placing on record the fact that I used to work for one of the UK’s largest insurance companies. My views might therefore surprise many, particularly on the other side of the House. I have always felt that we as a nation have simply not done enough to support mesothelioma victims, but that includes all parties—Government, insurers and lawyers. I have views on mesothelioma—but not on other asbestos conditions—that are different, in part, to those of the insurance industry. With meso, people die quickly and painfully, and often with good cause for compensation, but without any early settlement in sight. A person can have mesothelioma only as a consequence of exposure to asbestos; therefore, it is impossible to bring a fraudulent claim. It is clear that all parties should be working together to ensure that, when a victim passes away, they are able to provide financial security for their family.
It is not my insurance background that drives my real interest in this issue; it is on a constituency basis that I care most. Medway has been highlighted as a hot spot for mesothelioma, which is unsurprising given that the towns have historically provided the industrial hub for Kent, and that the Chatham dockyard was one of the biggest employers for many decades. Shipbuilding and ship repairing have long been associated with asbestos-related conditions, and the predicted figures for future cases of mesothelioma in Chatham follow the pattern of other areas with a shipping past. However, we must not forget that other professions, not least teachers, are coming forward with the condition—including a constituent I met recently.
Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)
My constituency, like that of my hon. Friend, has a higher than average incidence of mesothelioma. We have no shipbuilding, but there has been significant employment in other asbestos-related industries across High Peak. I praise her for pointing out that other professions are involved as well.
Tracey Crouch
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. It is clear that this disease affects many people.
In recognition of the high number of cases of mesothelioma, and of the swift and horrible deterioration in the health of its victims, my local primary care trust continues to invest in providing specialist nursing for meso victims, including dedicated Macmillian nurses and support staff. That is hugely welcome for those who suffer directly, and for the families who support them through their dying months. I should like to thank them for their commitment and dedication in often very difficult circumstances.
I should like to see everything possible being done to support mesothelioma victims, especially in regard to providing financial peace of mind before they pass away. Anecdotal evidence shows that sufferers often pass away long before their claim has been settled, leaving their grieving families to settle the claim. Sometimes, the stress of doing so is too much and the claim is no longer pursued. Much has been done on the employers’ liability tracing office, but not much has been done on the insurer of last resort, the employers’ liability insurance bureau—ELIB. That is disappointing. Each party is blaming the other for the lack of progress, as is always the case. The people who lose out are the victims and their families. Although this involves a different Department, I hope that if the Government take away one message from my short contribution today it is that there should be no more delays. It is time to resolve the issue and set up ELIB now. Too much time has passed on consultation, and it is time for action.
If I have one concern about Lords amendment 31, it is its breadth. I want to see meso victims receive a fair package of compensation, and I am concerned that the Bill as drafted will cause a significant sum of their compensation package to be lost in success fees paid to lawyers. The amendment is not meso-specific and could be interpreted as relating to other respiratory diseases—hence my slight hesitation in wholeheartedly supporting it. However, meso claims account for over half of all asbestos-related claims, so, on balance, it is an important addition to the Bill.
I recognise that the proposed Jackson reforms include a 10% uplift in general damages. I note the Association of British Insurers is warning that mesothelioma sufferers might not benefit from those reforms if the amendment goes through. I do not believe that, and I want to issue the counter-warning that, on fatal industrial diseases such as mesothelioma, the Government will be judged on what they do to help victims, whether through financial or other types of support. The 10% uplift is necessary and right.
I know that others are keen to speak and, as promised, I shall listen to the rest of the debate with interest. I pray that I never contract a disease as nasty as mesothelioma, but I also pray that the Government do all that they can to support those who do, including by providing easy access to justice and ensuring that full and fair compensation is paid to the victims as quickly as possible.
John Woodcock
It is an honour to follow such a powerful and brave speech from the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch). She spoke incredibly well on the subject.
I wish to speak briefly in support of Lords amendment 31, and I hope that the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) will listen carefully. I also hope against hope that he will reconsider his decision, because the sight of him sitting there laughing while this subject is being discussed, and labelling victims in my constituency and across the country who suffer horribly as being part of a compensation culture and a racket, does a gross disservice to those people, and ultimately to the Government he represents.
Let us be clear—as the Bill stands, individuals who have contracted horrific and rapidly life-shortening diseases could now be required to pay the cost of bringing their case out of the damages they receive rather than have the defendant meet the costs. This represents a major change to the underlying principles of criminal damages cases in the UK, creating the potential for unlimited costs to be borne by successful claimants. In extremis, it could lead to a defendant, having successfully proven that their employer’s negligence has left them with an almost certainly fatal disease, being left with a bill to pick up for bringing the case.
Mr Djanogly
It is important to get this right. The particular disease falls within the Government’s proposals to introduce one-way cost shifting, which will mean that losing claimants will not pay defendants’ costs.
John Woodcock
As the shadow Minister has made clear, it does not cover disbursements. The Minister has not been able to set out a proper case. He has tried to claim that compensation will go up as a result of these reforms. Frankly, all the people looking at this—I see the Minister nodding his head now—do not agree. Given the level of concern and alarm expressed by victims who contract the disease incredibly quickly, many thousands of people are left wondering when they are going to be struck, and the families left behind cannot understand the Government’s attitude towards this incredibly difficult subject.
On average, those who successfully pursue claims for mesothelioma see compensation in the order of £65,000. Under the unamended Bill, their lawyer could receive 25% of that. On top of that, their after-the-event insurer could take an increased premium, and because mesothelioma claims are risky, those premiums can be very high indeed.
From my own constituency, I have seen the appalling impact of mesothelioma on the lives of those who suffer and their families. The industrial tradition of Barrow and Furness means that shipyard workers are particularly affected because of the historic use of asbestos in ship construction. This has left the town, as I said in my intervention, with the second-highest mortality rate from this disease among males anywhere in the country—topped only by West Dunbartonshire, which is, of course, another shipbuilding area. These people served their country through the fine ships they built to defend our shores. They were failed by successive Governments, and this Government now have a duty to address that wrong. That is why sufferers have pushed and pushed for better compensation, and that is why it would be a travesty for this House to vote today to reduce the payments they can get.
Toby Perkins
I start by echoing the distress expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) about the tone of the Minister’s remarks, which showed a real lack of empathy with the situation that mesothelioma sufferers and their families face. What happens in so many of these cases is that victims become aware of the illness many years after they been exposed to asbestos, and often after the organisation responsible for that has long since disappeared. They face a troublesome problem in identifying who was responsible in the first place and they are then faced with the shocking news that their lives are shortly going to come to end and they are going to experience agonising circumstances in the run-up to their deaths.
For many of the people who have been on that journey, the last thing on their minds when they receive this appalling news is the idea that they need to embark on some complicated and potentially costly hunt for compensation. People who work with victims of asbestos-related diseases, such as mesothelioma, say that it is hard to persuade them to make claims because they are so heartbroken by their recent experiences. They tell me that if those who seek advice learn that there may be a cost impact, many are likely to choose to let the matter drop. It would be a real dereliction of duty on the part of all of us if we allowed that to happen.
Anna Soubry
As you have probably gathered, Madam Deputy Speaker, I did not plan to speak in this part of the debate. However, after I had listened to a couple of speeches—notably that of my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), and what I could hear of that of the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins)—I was struck by the fact that the issues do not sit comfortably together.
There is genuine concern about the possibility that people suffering from what is indeed a horrible condition will lose out in some way, but I have to say, quite bluntly, that I do not understand why on earth the Government are involved in this aspect of disputes between people and their employers. One of the real problems is employers who do not have the guts, decency and honesty to admit liability, stop messing about, sort out compensation, pay it as swiftly as possible, and let people die in dignity and security.
Many hon. Members are aware that I am a lawyer, and as such I say that we must be honest about the other problem. I will always defend my profession and the other profession involved, that of solicitors. The real problem is not just that employers are not doing the honourable thing; we have to make sure that we, as lawyers, also do the honourable thing. It cannot be right that we do not behave honourably when we are representing somebody. We must make sure that the fees we charge are the right ones.
I say bluntly that I have looked at solicitors’ websites, including only today, and been horrified by how they advertise themselves. They say, “This is the money we can get you.” I do not believe—I know that some Opposition Members are solicitors—that that is the way solicitors should work. I will always defend good, honourable lawyers, but what I have described cannot be the right approach when bringing an action on behalf of somebody in real need of our assistance—that is what lawyers often do. This idea that we are all heartless and just in it for money is simply not true. In my experience, most lawyers, certainly those at the criminal Bar, are, most of the time, social workers with wigs on, and we do a lot of hard work pro bono. However, I am sorry to say that there is a section of lawyers who see this as a way of making money out of other people’s pain and distress. So we want employers to do the decent thing and we want the Law Society to be far more honourable and to regulate its own members far harder. Perhaps if we could achieve that, we would not face this farce.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
Given what the hon. Lady has said, does she think it is appropriate to leave it up to the victims of mesothelioma to be the people who police what lawyers are charging? What the Minister said earlier, in a shockingly insensitive remark, was that the victims can watch the lawyer’s clock; it will now be the job of people whose lives are running out to watch the lawyer’s clock.
Anna Soubry
That is a strong point, but I have sympathy with the Minister’s argument, because everyone who is engaged in litigation has a duty—some of us have been engaged in litigation in difficult emotional times, with divorce being a very good example—to ensure that things are being done on their behalf in the right way. Some hon. Members are muttering from a sedentary position. Of course when somebody is sick it does seem heartless and cruel to say that they should be watching the clock, but we hope that they would be taking an interest in the conduct of their case. I respectfully suggest that that would include the costs. Often these people have families, who would also want to ensure not only that the costs are being properly calculated, but that the case is being properly conducted. That is what I would say on that point. I just hope that somewhere along the line there will be some way of sorting this out, given all the various submissions that have been made.
Ian Lucas
I shall be brief, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have read an excellent letter from my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) to the Lord Chancellor, which set out an unanswerable case against this proposal. It is wrong, in principle, that the Government are proposing this evening to reduce the damages of a successful mesothelioma claimant. I am a solicitor, and I did not go into the law to take damages away from a dying person, pending the outcome of a claim.
I have been very much strengthened in my conviction by the words of my constituent Marie Hughes, whose husband, Phil, a massively respected head teacher in Wrexham, died from mesothelioma, having worked for four years at the Brymbo steelworks in his youth. She has written to me explaining, in her own words, why she thinks this proposal is wrong, and I am going to read this out to the Minister, whom I respect. I hope that he will listen. She says:
“Had we had to undergo the further anxiety of financial implications we would not have attempted to claim. The thought of ‘shopping around’ for deals on success fees like other claimants as the Government suggests would be an unimaginable burden. Any monies available were needed to sustain our day to day costs, my inability to go to work while my husband was ill, and the need for travelling/sustenance funding when receiving treatment away from home, also supporting our family in further education. If there was a chance of treatment, we could not gamble with our savings as the stakes were too high. By the final 3 months of Phil’s life, tumours had also developed on his spine resulting in paralysis from the chest down—and all this while he was fighting to breathe.
My husband was not there to proudly escort his daughter down the aisle, though he had spoken of this dream several times during our precious time together. He never saw grandchildren. He bravely bore his condition and battled to the end but Mesothelioma takes no prisoners.”
I appeal to Government Members to reconsider their position. They should listen to the Lords and accept the amendment. To take damages away from these victims would be an appalling act of which the Government should be ashamed.
Mr Llwyd
I agreed with everything the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) said. His views are shared by many Members on the Opposition Benches—and one or two on the Government Benches as well, I am sure.
I want to speak briefly to amendments 31 and 32. I am sure I am not the only MP who has received many representations on the important issue in question. Lawyers should not skin people who are dying. I was a lawyer—both a solicitor and a barrister—and I would be ashamed of taking back as much as possible from the damages claims of people who may not have long to live. That is disgusting, but there is a very real worry that the Government are creating that problem in attempting to address what they call the compensation culture. Many of us do not recognise that such a culture exists, but even if it does, it involves petty claims such as whiplash injuries and people tripping up, or pretending to trip up, on pavements. In trying to sort out that problem, the Government are creating a problem for industrial injuries cases.
Under clause 43, a success fee under a conditional fee arrangement will not be recoverable from a losing party in all proceedings. Instead, it will be paid out of the damages of the injured person, meaning they may lose 25% of their damages.
Mr Djanogly
I should address this point as it has been raised about half a dozen times. The 25% is a maximum. Because under the current system people will always pay the lawyers the maximum, Members seem to be assuming that under the new system the maximum will still be claimed, but under the new system people will be encouraged to pay their lawyers less, not the maximum.
Mr Llwyd
Well, that is what a person such as the Minister thinks will happen, as he believes in the market ideology. He was a commercial lawyer, and never got his hands dirty as some of us have had to do over the years.
Clause 45 removes the recoverability of the after-the-event—ATE—insurance premium from the losing defendant. Therefore, that premium will in many instances be taken out of the damages awarded to the injured party. The amendments passed in another place would exclude industrial disease claims from these provisions, thus allowing the claimants to keep 100% of their compensation. We must uphold those changes and exempt such individuals and therefore prevent what would be a glaring miscarriage of justice.
Industrial disease cases are utterly different from road traffic claims. Cases centring on diseases such as asbestosis and mesothelioma are complex and require intensive research before liability is admitted. As a result, fraudulent industrial disease claims are almost an impossibility. Because of their complexity, such claims cannot be dealt with by inexperienced litigators, but if there is neither the uplift required to allow a solicitor to take a case on a CFA nor a recoverable ATE premium, many experienced solicitors will be unable to take on cases where the chance of recovering their costs is low without the client having to pay them from their damages. That is particularly true of low-value cases in which the additional liabilities may dwarf the amount of damages awarded, leaving the claimant worse off than when they started.
The potential for injustice, I am afraid, is huge. The defendant in such cases is often a multi-million pound organisation with access to teams of lawyers. It is also worth noting that after-the-event insurance also pays for additional expenses such as medical reports, without which industrial disease claims would fall at the first hurdle. Thus, without expert reports, which are necessary to prove liability, and the support of experienced solicitors who know this area of law thoroughly, claimants will simply be unable to proceed with their cases.
Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
I begin by paying tribute to Lord Alton and those who supported him in proposing amendment 31. We have had a number of powerful contributions to this evening’s short debate, but none more so than that from the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), who made a thoughtful and compassionate speech that was listened to carefully. I urge the Minister, even at this late stage, to show some compassion and to listen carefully to the expressions of concern that are not just reserved to the Opposition, but are being expressed publicly and privately on both sides of the House.
What this issue boils down to is: who pays the legal fees when a claim for damages is concluded? As we have heard from the Minister, legal aid is no longer available. Since 1999, the losing defendant has paid; now, the Government are saying that the claimant must pay. I have to be completely honest and open with the Minister: if he was proposing to switch the burden to claimants for road traffic claims only, which account for 70% of personal injury claims, I would not be contributing to this debate. It would remain to be seen whether he was right to think that that would drive down costs, but I do not have evidence to argue to the contrary in those cases.
However, amendment 31 is not about whiplash cases; as we have heard, it is principally about people with a fatal respiratory disease: mesothelioma. These are people who, frankly, expect to be dead within one year of their diagnosis; who face the prospect of excruciating pain and difficult medical treatment; who have to cope with the trauma and upset that they and their families feel. These people are not ambulance-chasers; they are not part of a compensation culture, and they deserve justice.
The truth is that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) alluded to earlier, many of these people do not claim now, such is the trauma they have to face. If the Government’s proposal is enacted, it will drive that number down still further. How can the Minister expect such victims and their families—people who have received the diagnosis and know they are going to die—to shop around for the cheapest possible lawyer when they need every ounce of their energy to fight their disease?
I want to draw the Minister’s attention to comments made by the widow of someone who died from mesothelioma, which were brought to my attention by Tony Whitston from the Greater Manchester Asbestos Victims Support Group. These are compelling remarks and I ask the Minister to reflect on them. The widow says:
“I know the mere talk of legal action, court cases and costs was the farthest thought from mine or Peter’s mind. Whilst you are trying to cope with the physical and emotional trauma that comes with the words terminal illness you cannot contemplate the extra worry and anxiety that claiming compensation would bring. Mesothelioma sufferers are in constant pain and always fighting to breathe, they suffer horrendously and they and their families are traumatised at what the future holds.”
It is up to the Minister to bring some hope to people in that situation, not injustice, yet Ministers want to make successful claimants pay up to 25% of their award for pain and suffering as a success fee to their lawyer. I know that that success fee is not a bonus for the lawyer but is meant to cover the costs of other cases, but why should the successful claimants—the mesothelioma sufferers—have to pay? Surely their former employers and their insurance companies should have to pay.
The Government say that there will be a 10% uplift in general damages in the awards, but that is an estimate and cannot be guaranteed. Even so, those who were awarded payments would still pay thousands of pounds in a success fee. Ministers also talk about qualified one-way cost shifting, but that does not take account of the disbursements that are often required in these complex cases, costing on average £8,000 a claim.
I have never believed that compassion belongs to one party in this House. I believe that it can be found all around the Chamber and Members of Parliament from all parties are concerned about the issue. I finish my speech by urging the Minister to listen, even at this stage, to the voices of those who have spoken in tonight’s debate and those who might speak to him after the debate in more private surroundings. I urge him to listen because what the victims of mesothelioma want from him is not only compassion but justice.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
It is 43 years since I started work as a coal miner, and during the many years for which I was a union rep I saw some horrendous accidents: men who had their legs cut off by broken ropes or broken chains; a man buried alive under thousands of tonnes of coal; a man impaled on the roof of a coal mine by a machine; and a man whose pelvis was broken by another machine. I represented people with stress-related illnesses. I represented thousands of people in my 35 years as a trade union representative and I sat on social security tribunals, went to social security tribunals and sat on industrial tribunals, but nothing could convince me that anything is more pernicious than the situation for people who are suffering from mesothelioma.
Mesothelioma is an exceptional case, because of what the disease does. When I first became aware of mesothelioma, I asked a solicitor, Ian McFall from Thompsons Solicitors in Newcastle, to explain to me exactly what it was. He said that one fibre could go into someone’s lung and lie dormant for many years, but when it becomes active there is no alternative—that person suffers horribly and then they die. There is no cure, no remission and no element of survival; they die, and that makes it a special case. Everybody who gets mesothelioma will die an agonising death.
The real real reason why mesothelioma is an exceptional case is that the problem was known about for more than a century. Asbestos was identified as a poisonous substance in 1892 and has been banned for use in this country for almost half a century, yet employers knowingly exposed their workers to it day in, day out. They knew the dangers and ignored them for decades. They were eventually held accountable, but ever since the first successful case against the employers and their insurers on asbestos-related diseases, the employers and the insurers have kept coming back to the courts and to this place.
The hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) asked why we in this place were involved in this issue, but we constantly have to rewrite the law because people are using the law and this place to get away from their responsibilities. The decision on pleural plaques a few years ago was welcomed by KPMG because, as it said, that was a £1.4 billion handout to the insurance industry in this country. Those were the people who were clapping their hands on that day, not those who have asbestos-related diseases.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that that is why the constituents whom we have been speaking to feel so angry? They cannot understand why the Government are on the side of negligent employers and their insurance companies instead of on the side of mesothelioma victims.
Mr Anderson
What can I say? Someone said earlier that no empathy is being shown, but I think that empathy is being shown—to the insurance companies. We can take our guidance from that.
The Minister talked about the compensation culture, but it is very easy to stop that culture: tell employers to stop killing people at work and to stop poisoning people at work. Then people would not be able to claim compensation. That is exactly what needs to be done. We are talking about employers who have contempt for workers and their families. They let workmen go home in dirty work clothes that their wives then washed, and became infected with mesothelioma through doing so. What happened was known by employers. We are talking about employers who were using young kids in Namibia to fill plastic sacks with raw asbestos. They put young kids of seven, eight or nine in the sacks to tamp the asbestos down. That is the type of people we are dealing with—people with no regard for human life. Some successful cases were brought by a trade union in South Africa and they got £38 million in compensation. That £38 million was welcome but it did not save the lives of any of those kids.
We have had 42,000 people die in the past 40 years in this country and 60,000 more will die in the next 50. That is more than 1,000 people a year and more than were being killed in the coal mines in this country in the disastrous years of the 1930s. That is why this is a special issue. We should be looking to people such as Chris Knighton in the north-east of England who has led a campaign on behalf of her husband who died 15 years ago—a man who was fit enough to ride from Newcastle to Berwick on a bike on a Sunday morning and think nothing about it. He fell down one day in the local club and when he went to see the doctor, the doctor told him, “You’ve got mesothelioma.” He asked, “What does that mean?” The doctor said, “It means you’re going to be dead in nine months’ time.” Those are the people we are standing up for today. We are not standing up for big business or insurers—we are standing up for ordinary people who have been exploited for years. If we do not support the amendments to this legislation we will be letting those people down. I say to the Liberal Democrats in particular, “If you ever want to claw back from where you are now, support these amendments tonight. You will never be forgiven if you don’t.”
Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)
I rise briefly to support Lords amendment 31. It cannot be right, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) and others have said, that victims of asbestos-related diseases should be required to surrender a quarter of the damages they have been awarded to pay for legal costs. Those damages are awarded to recognise and compensate men and women, if it is at all possible to compensate them, for the pain, suffering and life-shortening illnesses they got from their work. In my constituency, the number of cases of asbestos-related diseases is far too high. The link between mesothelioma and exposure to asbestos in the shipbuilding industry is well known, as we have heard tonight. There is a common pattern involving high levels of mesothelioma and areas of shipbuilding or areas that contain ports and dockyards. Hartlepool is a former shipbuilding area and it is the 16th-worst affected place in Great Britain for deaths caused by mesothelioma.
In considering Lords amendment 31, I ask the Minister to consider one harrowing case out of many from Hartlepool. Mr C was diagnosed with mesothelioma after he had complained of breathing difficulties and a pain in his rib cage. Originally it was thought he had pneumonia but a CT scan and a bronchoscopy showed that he had mesothelioma. Mr C had left school at 16 and worked at South Durham Steel and Iron Company for the best part of a quarter of a century. He was regularly exposed to asbestos dust in the air and was not provided with any protective clothing or equipment. He was awarded £67,000 in compensation in recognition of his excruciating pain and suffering. He died five months after receiving that award.
The Government’s argument against the amendments—that the Bill protects against frivolous or fraudulent claims—is offensive in the extreme. The idea that these constituents of mine are ambulance chasers or people looking for a quick buck is risible. The notion that tens of thousands of pounds of damages should be taken from workers and their families who have suffered the harsh effects of a painful illness is another insult and injustice to them.
In a little over 10 days, the country will observe workers memorial day to commemorate those who lost their lives as a result of injury or neglect at work. Having listened to the Minister tonight and seen him in his place, I have to say that he does himself no credit with the smirking and the body language that are offensive to every single sufferer. The best way in which he could make amends is by honouring the spirit and values of workers memorial day, accepting Lords amendment 31 and getting rid of this huge injustice.
Helen Jones
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. During the last debate, many of us were dismayed by the conduct of the Minister, who giggled and grinned through descriptions of people dying of mesothelioma and what they suffered. I have to say that in almost 15 years in this House, I have never seen conduct that so demeans a Minister of the Crown and is so damaging to the reputation of the House. Is there anything that you can do to ensure that in future Ministers pay proper attention to such serious debates and conduct themselves as would be expected from a Member on the Treasury Bench?
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her point of order. The Minister is welcome to respond if he wishes, but he is not under any obligation to do so.
Mr Speaker
No, he is not going to respond.
The hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) will know that I came into the proceedings relatively late, and in those circumstances it is not for me to act as umpire on the matter, which would be wrong. However, her observations, sincerely expressed, have been noted, and all I would say is that each and every one of us in this place is responsible for his or her own behaviour and for the impression that we give in the conduct of debate. Let us leave it there for tonight.
Business without Debate
Mr Speaker
With the leave of the House, we will take motions 6 and 7 together.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),
Postal Services
That the draft Postal Services Act 2011 (Penalties) (Rules for Calculation of Turnover) Order 2012, which was laid before this House on 9 February, be approved.
That the draft Postal Services Act 2011 (Disclosure of Information) Order 2012, which was laid before this House on 27 February, be approved.—(Angela Watkinson.)
Question agreed to.
European Union Documents
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 119(11)),
Financial Services Credit Rating Agencies
That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 17308/11 and Addenda 1 and 2, relating to a Draft Regulation amending Regulation (EC) No. 1060/2009 on credit rating agencies (CRAs) and No. 17329/11 and Addenda 1 and 2, relating to a Draft Directive amending Directive 2009/65/EC on the coordination of laws, regulations and administrative provisions relating to undertakings of collective investment in transferable securities (UCITS) and Directive 2011/61/EU on Alternative Investment Fund Managers in respect of the excessive reliance on credit ratings; notes that these proposals, known collectively as CRA3, seek to address key reform areas associated with CRA ratings which, according to the Commission are not sufficiently addressed through existing regulation; supports the Government’s view that the financial sector’s overreliance on credit ratings should be reduced, the ratings process and methodologies made more transparent and competition strengthened; and further supports the Government’s view that there should not be a harmonised civil liability regime imposed on CRAs across Europe.—(Angela Watkinson.)
Question agreed to.
Petitions
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
I am very grateful for the opportunity to present a petition on behalf of the residents of Cumbria who oppose plans to outsource Cumbria emergency fire controls. Along with my signature, the petition contains 18,247 signatures of people from throughout the county who are concerned that the outsourcing and regionalisation of our control centre will lead to a threat to the safety of everybody in the county and the millions of people who visit us every year.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of Cumbria,
Declares that the Petitioners oppose the decision by Cumbria County Council to outsource services currently provided by Cumbria Emergency Fire Control to Cheshire in 2012 and eventually a regional facility in 2014.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to encourage Cumbria County Council to re-consider their decision to outsource Cumbria Emergency Fire Control services and ensure that before any further decisions are made, all plans, including a full breakdown of the financial business case are made available through a public consultation.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001017]
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
I am pleased to present this petition, which is signed by 10 businesses in Hackney South and Shoreditch—the signatures are fewer in number than those for the previous petition, but these businesses are sorely affected by their precise location close to the Olympics zone, and face considerable disruption to their activities before and during the Olympics and Paralympics. Because of that, they fear for their future and the jobs of their employees.
The petition states:
The Petition of Michael Spinks of Essex Flour and Grain Co. Ltd.,
Declares that the Petitioner is concerned that during the period of local road closures for the Olympic Games, local businesses (including Essex Flour & Grain Co. Ltd) may be forced into liquidation as a result of an inability to receive and dispatch goods and that this may result in job losses.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to encourage the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games to take all possible steps to ensure freedom of access for private and commercial vehicles to businesses in Lee Conservancy Road, Hackney Wick and the immediate neighbourhood during the period of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
And the Petitioner remains, etc.
[P001018]
Cigarette Packaging
(12 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)
May I first thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting us this debate this evening? Despite the lateness of the hour, I am pleased to see you honouring our debate with your presence and lending it the importance that we attach to it.
I want to emphasise at the beginning that the anti-smoking campaign and public health campaigns have always been and will remain all-party issues. There are no party politics as far as I am concerned. It is good to see the Minister with responsibility for public health in the Chamber, preparing to reply to the debate. Like all those who have been involved in such campaigns over the years, I am pleased that the Government have renewed the importance that the previous Government, individuals and parties have attached to reducing smoking through public health campaigns.
We should recognise at the outset how effective public health campaigns can be. They have been effective in respect, for example, of seat belts as well as in reducing the prevalence of smoking. It is fair to say that the previous “Smoking Kills” campaign was extremely successful—smoking fell by half among children and by a quarter among adults. However, smoking remains the major cause of premature death and disease, killing more than 100,000 people in the UK each year, more than the next six causes of preventable death put together. However, the rate of decline has slowed in recent years, as the Government pointed out in their paper on the consultation, in which they say that since 2007 the figures for the prevalence of smoking have hardly moved. That stubborn resistance to getting the figure below 21% means that the issue is not going to go away. We have to confront it. As the Government’s paper rightly says, we have to see what further measures can be taken that are effective and acceptable to the country as a whole.
The other important point about the smoking campaign that we have to bear in mind is that although public awareness is vital to its success, the problem starts with children, usually before they are 18. Indeed, two thirds of smokers first pick up the habit when they are under 18. Every year, 340,000 children in the UK are tempted to try smoking. Although these facts are well known, they bear repeating. They provide the background to our debate, compelling our attention and bringing us to the consideration of plain packaging. However, “plain packaging” can be a misleading term, as some right hon. and hon. Members have pointed out. It is anything but plain in Australia, for example, which is ahead of us in pursuing a plain packaging strategy. Indeed, it can lend itself to the sorts of graphic images on the covers of cigarette packages that have proved so successful and that were at the centre of the effective “Smoking Kills” campaign. Those of us who back that approach—I shall call it “plain packaging” for the sake of simplicity—believe that it is the next effective step that could be taken, following the ad ban, putting tobacco out of sight in shops, increasing the age of sale from 16 to 18, and increasing the size and impact of the warnings on packs.
It is remarkable that the figure still stands at 21%, despite all that we have done and despite the great public support that the campaigns against smoking have successfully awakened. We realise that getting rid of the glitzy packaging in itself is unlikely to have much impact on addicted smokers. However, the systematic review of the evidence that the Government published yesterday, when they launched this welcome consultation period, suggests that there is at least some evidence that plain packs are less attractive and appealing, particularly to young people.
Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)
Most sensible people would welcome the Government’s consultation on this serious issue. However, one consequence of plain packaging is that thousands of people could lose their jobs printing cigarette packets. May I therefore ask the Government, through my hon. Friend, to explore all options to safeguard the jobs of those who print the cigarette packets?
Mr Robinson
I am grateful for that intervention. The concern about jobs in the printing and packaging industry will be shared by many, particularly Members from Northern Ireland, who still have a fairly large tobacco-related industry in their constituencies. We can come to that in due course, but the fact is that none of us wants to stop the progressive reduction in smoking, and if it seems a reasonable presumption that reducing the attractiveness of the packaging will help, we must face up to the jobs implications. However, I hasten to add that, having considered the issue in the round, I do not think that the implications will be so severe, because after all, as I have pointed out already, we are not talking about “plain” packaging. The same inventiveness and printing of graphic images that have already been brought to bear will continue; indeed, they will be put to much better use than trying to encourage youngsters to try smoking because it seems attractive or because cigarettes are packaged as lipstick, or any of the other advertising gimmicks that have been used.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing this matter to the Floor of the House this evening, as many people are concerned about it. Cancer Research UK has been working with its campaigning partners to explain why plain packs are needed and to rebut the myths circulated by the industry. Does he feel that plain packaging will reduce the number of deaths resulting from smoking? If it saves lives, the Government need to introduce plain packaging legislation as soon as possible.
Mr Robinson
The cancer campaign’s research to which the hon. Gentleman refers has come out strongly in favour of the proposal, as have Action on Smoking and Health and most other related parts of the health industry, in the public sector and the NHS in particular. They have all made the case that the proposal is plausible and that it should represent the next push in a campaign that has been effective but has now faltered. Since 2007, the figures have levelled out; there has been no further reduction in smoking. I think that that will come as a surprise to many people, and it makes the next step an important one. In my view, the next useful step would be plain packaging.
Mr Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South) (Lab)
I understand the argument that my hon. Friend is putting forward, and we all understand the horrors of tobacco. He is talking about the hard core of 21% who continue to smoke. Is the problem not going to be that, given the levels of duty and taxation, as well as plain packaging, people are going to be forced into the black market? A number of people in my constituency deal in illicit tobacco and in buying cigarettes at a very low price. How can we get this right?
Mr Robinson
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing up that point. It was the staggering figures about the illicit tobacco trade in Coventry that first prompted me to consider that there could be adverse, unintended consequences to the measure that I am proposing with the good intention of reducing smoking.
Let me give the House the figures for the illicit trade in Coventry. My constituency is one of the three that make up the city of Coventry. In 2011, an Empty Pack survey was carried out. Its evidence was pretty reliable; I do not think that it has been seriously disputed. I am pleased to see the Minister nodding in agreement. It found that the illicit trade had increased from 14.5% of total sales to 30.3%, meaning that one in three cigarettes were being sold on the illicit market. That is well above the national average. The figure for the west midlands was only 17.2%, and the national average was 15%. Those are both high figures, but the problem is clearly approaching epidemic proportions in Coventry. I therefore remain concerned that we should do everything we can to prevent the problem from spreading further and that we should do so through the introduction of plain packaging.
When we consider all the covert measures that have been tried out by the Government, with the industry reluctantly co-operating, we realise that the present system cannot be very effective if the figures are as high as they are. If the figure is already 30%, it is hard to see how our countermeasures are being effective against the illicit trade in tobacco. We therefore have to take another approach.
That idea led me to read about what is happening in the north of England. There is a strong argument by the industry that the problems that have been mentioned could indeed happen. There is a plausible presumption that they might. In the north, people have realised that the present measures are ineffective, and they have set up the north of England tackling illicit tobacco for better health programme. It has brought together key agencies such as Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the UK Border Agency, the police, local authority trading standards departments and the NHS to take part in a comprehensive action plan covering all those areas of government. It illustrates linked-up government working together at local and regional level. At the conclusion of this debate, I shall be writing to Coventry city council to recommend that it initiates and co-ordinates such an attack on what is clearly a big problem in Coventry and the west midlands.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
It concerns me greatly that the hon. Gentleman appears to be advancing an argument that is based on a wing and a prayer, and a proposition that he hopes will get rid of counterfeiting. Is he not concerned that the counterfeiting of cigarettes across the United Kingdom amounts to a multi-billion trade—worth £3 billion at the last count—by criminals? They are not just any criminals; they are among the nastiest, most contemptible criminals in the world. The proposal that the hon. Gentleman is advancing is not going to stop them, and the idea that plain packaging will do away with the problem is not being advanced here tonight.
Mr Robinson
I am grateful for that intervention. I do not think by any measure that I could be thought to be suggesting that plain packaging is going to be a magic wand to deal with counterfeiting in itself. It is not, so I agree that it will not be enough in itself. The point I am making—it seems obvious to me—is that the extent to which measures are failing at the moment clearly shows that prevalence is increasing and will increase further unless we get effective action by Government agencies. This is where the Minister has a key role to play in the Department. I shall try to prompt local government in Coventry and the west midlands to get active in this respect, but the Minister has an overriding responsibility to deal with the problem for the whole country, as it is indeed a major problem.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is making a powerful case, with which I completely agree. Does he agree that one problem is that the industry has gone about deliberately marketing its products to young people in the form of lipsticks, CD covers, thins and other ways that attract young people to take up smoking, which they can then never cure?
Mr Robinson
I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman, and I am very pleased to say so. He mentions some of the advertising gimmicks and marketing subterfuges to which the industry has stooped. The evidence that this is achieving success lies in the fact that two thirds of those currently smoking started when they were younger than 18. That is why we have to deal with this matter and take measures to deal more effectively with the counterfeiting problem.
Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)
Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?
Mr Barron
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Some countries have managed to deal with counterfeiting quite well. There are barcodes on all cigarette packages; the problem is the policing of them. Counterfeit cigarettes are not all sold out of car boots, as they are sold in some retail outlets, too. We need enforcement in those areas and to confiscate any smuggled cigarettes.
Mr Robinson
I agree entirely that the barcoding and other anti-illicit sales measures are not being policed readily enough, which brings me back to the need for Government action at the local level in enforcing the required measures. That can be done only when the group of agencies that I mentioned work together with that sole purpose in a truly linked-up manner. It will not work on any other basis.
I have given way many times, but I know that our debate is restricted to half an hour. I am sure that we will have occasion in future to debate the issue more fully on the Floor of the House almost certainly at the end of the consultation period. I look forward to those debates and to my participation in them. Let me make my own position clear, as all right hon. and hon. Members, the Government, the Opposition and other parties will have to do the same. On balance, I believe that plain packaging would help to reduce smoking, which we desperately need to do. Indeed, I would go further and say that plain packaging could be an important milestone in making cigarettes and their brands pariah products—a status that is richly deserved.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anne Milton)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) on securing this debate on a topic so vital to the health of the nation. The number of Members who have stayed here late to listen and, indeed, to contribute to this debate is a testament to that.
As the hon. Gentleman rightly pointed out, smoking kills more than 100,000 people in the UK every year. Fully half of all long-term smokers will die prematurely from a smoking-related disease. Smoking, of course, harms those around smokers, too. The Royal College of Physicians estimates that about 2 million children currently live in a household where they are regularly exposed to cigarette smoke. The cost of this level of ill health is huge. In England, about one in 20 of all hospital admissions among adults aged 35 and over is down to smoking. Of course, it is not just a question of the financial cost; there is a human, and often tragic, cost as well.
Although smoking rates have declined over past decades, in recent years the fall has lost momentum. Most smokers take up the habit before they turn 18. This year, in England alone, 330,000 children under the age of 16 will try smoking for the first time. Reducing the uptake of smoking by children and young people remains one of the key public health goals. We want to prevent those young people from turning into adult smokers. Most smokers say that they want to stop. Quitting can be difficult, but smokers who kick the habit for good can quickly reduce their risk of contracting smoking-related diseases and lead longer, healthier lives, irrespective of their age.
Our approach to reducing tobacco use is comprehensive and evidence-based, and much has already been achieved, including—as the hon. Member for Coventry North West pointed out—many cross-party initiatives. We have introduced a comprehensive ban on advertising, and picture warnings on packs; we have raised the age for the sale of tobacco to 18; we have ended the sale of tobacco from vending machines; from April the open display of tobacco products in supermarkets has been banned; tobacco taxes were increased significantly again in this year’s Budget; and, of course, there is a ban on smoking in public places. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) for his role in the introduction of that ban when he was Chairman of the Select Committee on Health.
It is recognised that the UK has the best “stop smoking” services in the world, and I feel proud when I go abroad and am congratulated on all that we have achieved. However, we clearly need to do more. Given the existence of all the measures to which I have referred, it is surprising that about 20% of people still smoke.
Mr Sutcliffe
I congratulate the Minister on the work that she is doing. However, as she is aware, a small number of people will continue to smoke because of the illicit trade. What does the Minister think we can do to stop that trade?
Anne Milton
I shall say something about the illicit trade shortly, because it is an important issue. However, it should not be confused with the separate issue of plain packaging, which is also important and on which we are to consult.
In March last year, we published “Healthy lives, healthy people: a tobacco control plan for England”, which described how our programme of tobacco control would be delivered over the next five years within the framework of the new public health system. The tobacco control plan included a commitment to consult on options to reduce the promotional impact of tobacco packaging, including standardised packaging. There is strong, consistent evidence that the advertising and promotion of tobacco can influence young people in particular, from the first puff to full addiction.
I am pleased to say that yesterday we published a UK-wide consultation document, with the agreement of the devolved Administrations. The consultation will consider what measures could be taken to restrict or prohibit the use of logos, colours, brand images or promotional information on packaging other than brand and product names displayed in a standard colour and font style. At this stage, we have an open mind about the introduction of standardised packaging of tobacco products. We hope that the consultation will help us to establish whether there is evidence that it would have an additional public health benefit, over and above the existing tobacco control initiatives.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
I do not approach this issue with particularly strong views in either direction, but it occurs to me that if I were a counterfeiter, I would probably welcome the introduction of plain packaging. I know that that is a bit of a euphemism, but for want of a better term, I would welcome it, because I would find it easier to copy than other packaging.
It also concerns me that in the illicit trade some really nasty substances go into the cigarettes. Tobacco is bad enough, but the other substances that are added are even worse.
Anne Milton
I will come on to deal specifically with that point. Like the hon. Member for Coventry North West, I am sure that this will not be the last debate we have on this issue. It will be important to dispel some of the myths, and this week Cancer Research UK has put out a good piece of information that does so.
As I say, the Government have an open mind, and it is important that we hear everyone’s views. We will keep that open mind until the consultation closes. The consultation has four aims: to reduce the appeal of tobacco products to consumers; to increase the effectiveness of the health warnings; to reduce the ability of tobacco packaging to mislead consumers about the harmful effects of smoking; and to have a positive effect on smoking-related attitudes, beliefs, intentions and behaviours, particularly among young people and children. The consultation will be open from 16 April to 10 July, and I encourage all hon. Members, and any other person, business or organisation with an interest, to respond to it.
Jim Sheridan
As chair of the Unite union parliamentary group, which includes an awful lot of health service workers, who agree wholeheartedly with what the Government are trying to achieve, I wrote to the Department some weeks ago seeking a meeting to discuss the jobs implications. Is there anything the Minister can do to expedite a response to that request?
Anne Milton
I will certainly look into the matter, and I apologise if the hon. Gentleman has not received a timely response. I would hope that we would always give him such a response, and I will make sure that he gets one. He mentions jobs, but we have also to consider the human costs of smoking-related disease. If breadwinners in families die prematurely, that has an implication for families. This is not just about jobs.
Any decisions to take further policy action on tobacco packaging will, as I say, be taken only after full consideration of the consultation responses and of any other relevant information or evidence, which is emerging all the time. In addition, we will explore any implications relating to the sale of illicit tobacco, a matter that has been raised. I point out that existing packs are very easy to forge; covert markings are already used to distinguish illicit cigarettes and this proposal will make absolutely no difference to the situation.
Our tobacco control plan explicitly complements Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the UK Border Agency’s strategy to tackle the illicit trade in tobacco products, which was published in April 2011. There is absolutely no room for complacency, but thanks to the hard work of HMRC, local councils, the NHS and civil society, good progress is being made in reducing the amount of illegal tobacco products finding their way on to the market. According to the latest information collected by HMRC, fewer people are using illicit tobacco. Illicit sales of cigarettes were down to 10% in 2010 from 21% in 2000—that is a marked reduction. The figure for hand-rolling tobacco remains high, at 47%, but it has reduced from 61%. So the trend is in the right direction. I particularly wish to compliment the north of England tackling illicit tobacco for better health programme—some of these programmes have ghastly names, do they not? None the less, it is an example of how organisations can work together to tackle the supply of and demand for illicit tobacco. In coming to a view on the impact of standardised packaging, the availability of illicit tobacco will obviously be important, but we do want to see good, hard evidence on this.
Ian Paisley
I thank the Minister for being very generous with her time. Has she given any thought to the view that if the Government are ultimately successful and stop people smoking, the Treasury will lose £11.1 billion in resources? How will that gap be filled?
Anne Milton
I will happily cross that bridge when we get to it; of course the Treasury would lose revenue, but as Minister with responsibility for public health, my aim is to improve the public’s health. Premature deaths would be prevented, and there is a huge human cost, let alone the financial cost to families, of people dying early.
Under the terms of the World Health Organisation’s framework convention on tobacco control, to which the UK is a signatory, we will be asking all respondents to consultations on tobacco control measures, including the consultation on tobacco packaging, to disclose whether they have any direct or indirect links to the tobacco industry. Responses from the tobacco industry, or from those with links to the industry, will always be carefully considered alongside other views received.
I hope Members will make their constituents aware of the consultation. The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Jim Sheridan) raised the issue of jobs, and we must take that into account. We must also make sure that this consultation is real and meaningful and that the public know that we value their input.
I welcome having had a chance to discuss this matter, and I hope this will not be the last opportunity to do so. I look forward to hearing the views of all Members.
Question put and agreed to.
Ministerial Correction
(12 years, 7 months ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Tax Avoidance
(12 years, 7 months ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hanson
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many promoters HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has required to disclose tax avoidance schemes since May 2010; how many such schemes have been (a) investigated and (b) closed (i) since May 2010 and (ii) in each year since 2005; and how many schemes are under investigation by HMRC.
[Official Report, 19 October 2011, Vol. 533, c. 967-8W.]
Letter of correction from David Gauke:
An error has been identified in the written answer given to the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) on 19 October 2011.
The full answer given was as follows:
Mr Gauke
Since 1 May 2010 78 promoters have disclosed tax avoidance schemes under the Disclosure of Tax Avoidance Schemes legislation.
To remove any doubt about a scheme's effectiveness, legislation has been changed in relation to the following numbers of disclosed schemes in each year since 2005:
Number | |
|---|---|
1 June 2005 - 31 May 2006 | 223 |
1 June 2006 - 31 May 2007 | 173 |
1 June 2007 - 31 May 2008 | 101 |
1 June 2008 - 31 May 2009 | 40 |
1 June 2009 - 31 May 2010 | 18 |
1 June 2010 - 31 May 2011 | 17 |
Legislative changes are, of course, just one of the ways in which HMRC may respond to disclosures.
All disclosures received by HMRC are subject to close examination. It is the returns of scheme users that are potentially subject to inquiry rather than the scheme disclosure itself and each disclosed scheme may have multiple users. Many users of the schemes are subject to further investigation by HMRC's teams of tax specialists. Although information on investigations is held by HMRC, it is not collated centrally in the form requested and it is not possible to provide details within the time and cost constraints.
The correct answer should have been:
Mr Gauke
Since 1 May 2010 78 promoters have disclosed tax avoidance schemes under the Disclosure of Tax Avoidance Schemes legislation.
To remove any doubt about a scheme's effectiveness, legislation has been changed in relation to the following numbers of disclosed schemes in each year since 2005:
Number | |
|---|---|
1 June 2005 - 31 May 2006 | 224 |
1 June 2006 - 31 May 2007 | 177 |
1 June 2007 - 31 May 2008 | 104 |
1 June 2008 - 31 May 2009 | 40 |
1 June 2009 - 31 May 2010 | 15 |
1 June 2010 - 31 May 2011 | 9 |
Legislative changes are, of course, just one of the ways in which HMRC may respond to disclosures.
All disclosures received by HMRC are subject to close examination. It is the returns of scheme users that are potentially subject to inquiry rather than the scheme disclosure itself and each disclosed scheme may have multiple users. Many users of the schemes are subject to further investigation by HMRC's teams of tax specialists. Although information on investigations is held by HMRC, it is not collated centrally in the form requested and it is not possible to provide details within the time and cost constraints.
Petition
Redevelopment of Tesco Site in Linwood (Renfrewshire)
Westminster Hall
(12 years, 7 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Budget (North-East)
(12 years, 7 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I need to make it plain before we start that I have applied to the office of the Chairman of Ways and Means for a time limit on speeches. A significant number of Members have written to the Speaker indicating that they wish to participate, and even more Members are present. Given that we will need to call the Front-Bench spokespeople at 10.35 am at the latest, I suspect that we will be down to four minutes per person, but that rather depends on Mr Mearns.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
I thank the Speaker’s Office for allowing me to initiate this debate, and also the many Members who have come along. The debate has created significant interest, particularly in our north-east region.
In the Chancellor’s millionaires’ Budget, which will hand back tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of pounds to some of the richest people in our society, including some of his Cabinet colleagues, it is clear who will suffer the most. It will be the poorest, those looking for work when few new jobs are available, pensioners, families, the hard-working, the squeezed middle and the working poor.
Following the Chancellor’s Budget speech, the Treasury produced a briefing highlighting the measures that will benefit the north-east of England. The region has borne the brunt of this Government’s policies. February 2012 figures show that unemployment in my constituency has risen from 8.3% to 10.5% since the coalition took office, and in the latest Office for National Statistics survey, up to January 2012, the figure for the north-east as a whole has risen to 10.8%, yet the Treasury’s briefing runs to a grand total of three measures that it claims will specifically benefit the region.
Although the first measure—the increase in personal allowances—is welcome, it can hardly be regarded as specific to the north-east. The second measure is that Newcastle will receive the princely sum of £6 million, and become a super-connected city. Perhaps the Chancellor and the Treasury do not realise that Newcastle, as important as it is to the entire region, is not the entire region—in fact, it has about a tenth of the region’s population. Finally, in the month when the north-east is losing its regional development agency, its local enterprise partnerships will receive a paltry £10 million from the Growing Places fund.
In the Budget statement, the Chancellor notably consigned to the dustbin of history the phrase, “We’re all in this together.” The imbalance in this Budget means that most of us are in this together, but the few at the top of society will be exempt from it all. The regional disparity is all too plain to see. In the three south-east regions— London, the south-east and the eastern region—nearly 195,000 taxpayers will reap the benefit of the Chancellor’s higher-end tax giveaway, but in the north-east the figure will be fewer than 5,000, and about 4,000 in Wales.
James Wharton (Stockton South) (Con)
Is it not the case that nearly 1 million taxpayers in the north-east will benefit from the personal allowance increase, and that it is the poorest taxpayers in regions such as ours who will benefit?
Ian Mearns
That would be the case if it had not been for the hikes in VAT, which as an indirect tax particularly disbenefits the very poor in regions such as the north-east. There are significant figures showing the genuine disbenefits of that for poor people.
When William I sought to quell the north following the Norman conquest, he developed a slash-and-burn policy to subjugate the unruly barons and the Saxon citizenry, and the people of the north-east could be forgiven for thinking that the Government had developed exactly the same approach—a 21st-century scorched-earth policy for the north. In just two years, they have abolished our Minister for the north, our local authorities have had to deal with massively disproportionate cuts, our regional development agency has been eradicated and there has been a miserly investment in transport and infrastructure projects, at the same time as disposable income has been sucked out of our pockets and our high streets. My local Gateshead authority has had to cut £70 million from its budget—equivalent to £88 per head of population—losing 1,500 staff into the bargain. The average cut for the 12 north-east councils was £84 per head of population, while the 12 least-deprived local authorities in England, including Windsor and Maidenhead, Richmond upon Thames, West Berkshire and West Sussex, each lost an average of less than £20 per head of population, so we are clearly not all in this together.
Almost every aspect of the Budget looks as if it was designed to have a negative impact on the north—on our people and on our businesses. VAT on takeaway food not only most affects people with the lowest incomes but has reduced the value of Tyneside businesses, including Greggs plc, which saw £20 million to £30 million wiped off its share value when the “pasty tax” was announced. I have no doubt that the measure will also have a negative impact on the work of the Greggs Foundation, which last year donated £1.4 million to support breakfast clubs for 65 north-east primary schools, at least four of which are in my constituency. The foundation also supports youth groups in some of the most deprived communities of the north-east, and also in Scotland and Wales. So much for the big society.
In addition, the Government’s welfare benefit changes will have a massively disproportionate impact on regions such as the north-east. Currently, 11,000 people in Gateshead claim incapacity benefit and, together with the numbers on jobseeker’s allowance, almost 24,000 people are claiming out-of-work benefits. National figures show that of those people undergoing the work capability assessment, 37% have been found fit for work and 34% have been placed in the work-related activity group of employment and support allowance, but for the vast majority of them in the north-east there is no real prospect of work in the near future. If the national figures are mirrored in Gateshead, almost 8,000 people will be moved off incapacity benefit and receive lesser benefits, if anything at all.
I am told by Gateshead council that the introduction of universal credit will result in 14,500 tenants having to manage a larger personal contribution each week, which will increase demand for budgeting and money management skills, and risk more tenants being unable to manage their household budgets and resorting to expensive borrowing, including legal and illegal loan sharking. The risk of non-payment of rent, based on a calculation rate for sums not covered by housing benefit, could result in an additional £20 million not being there to be collected by local authorities, which are already struggling to cope with the punitive cuts they have endured.
Benefit reductions for under-occupancy will affect 3,478 of our current tenants in Gateshead—18% of all those with the Gateshead Housing Company. Of those, nearly 3,000 have an extra bedroom and could therefore face a 10% to 15% reduction in their benefit, and the 815 who have an extra two bedrooms could face a 20% to 25% reduction. If we magnify those numbers across the region, we could be dealing with a widespread social crisis.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Is the bedroom tax not an example of how much the Government are out of touch with real people? It is not just about the costs. People who have lived in a community for decades will be forced to move because they will be unable to afford to live there, and everything they have built up over many years will be thrown away as if it means nothing.
Ian Mearns
My hon. Friend hits on an appropriate point. Regarding how out of touch the coalition is with the vast majority of people in regions such as the north-east, its lack of understanding of how the housing market works in such places is absolutely spot on.
I am a north-east Labour MP, so I suppose that no one will be surprised to discover that I am not impressed by the Chancellor’s support, or lack of it, for the region. However, the north-east’s business community is equally unimpressed. The North East chamber of commerce has said:
“The extra cut in corporation tax is welcome and will help stimulate investment in the UK. However, relatively few North East firms will benefit from this, and we would have preferred to see a greater focus on strengthening investment allowances and cutting employment taxes, to address the two key weaknesses in the North East economy.”
Although it does not deal specifically with the north-east, the Federation of Small Businesses wrote to me when it found out that I had secured this debate, asking that I highlight its concerns. The FSB said:
“We asked for a Budget with long-term measures to help to instil confidence, rather than a barrage of micro-measures that have a limited impact on the ground. We are pleased with some of the actions to cut the burden of red tape, help to get our young workers into employment, and measures to improve access to finance…However, petrol prices remain a major concern for small businesses and we would have liked some further action on reducing the level of fuel duty to help struggling small firms.”
The cost of fuel, although important to all UK businesses, is crucial to maintaining competitiveness in regions such as the north-east. One local business that makes plastic milk bottles informed me that its biggest cost is the cost of fuel. Let us face it: in effect, that business’s biggest cost is transporting its product, which is 90% fresh air, around the UK. Given the geographical location of the north-east and the vital importance of manufacturing employment, was it too much to ask that the Government reduce fuel costs for businesses and maintain jobs in the regions?
The Federation also commented that it welcomed the enterprise finance guarantee scheme, but said that recent figures clearly show that lending under the scheme is falling rather than rising, and that the Chancellor must do a lot more to encourage banks to increase their lending to small firms without requiring the excessive personal guarantees that deter small businesses, particularly in areas such as the north-east.
The Association of North East Councils, which represents the 12 north-east authorities, was also unimpressed, reporting that almost 50% of businesses in the region have no plans to increase staff numbers in the coming months but are hanging on before deciding on reductions. Weakening sales and poor service sector performance are still preventing much-needed growth to offset public sector employment cuts. Job loss in the north-east as a whole is four times deeper than in the rest of the country. None of that has been helped by the complete lack of recognition or action in the Chancellor’s Budget.
This Government are now doing to public services in the north what they did so successfully in the 1980s to our traditional industries of mining, shipbuilding and heavy engineering: bringing them to ruin and laying them waste. If the Government’s plan to replace those jobs is to build the private sector, why are they doing virtually nothing for the north-east? The main problem is not that they are doing nothing but that they are making things worse. For the young in particular, they are removing hope.
The Government have not recognised that for a region such as the north-east, geography and the new politics of the United Kingdom are realities that must be considered. Scotland is just over the border. The Scots at Holyrood still have economic development and tourism strategies and are still offering inward investment incentives, all important determinants whether a company invests in Scotland or the north-east, but the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills seem oblivious. For example, Amazon, despite considering a site in the north-east, has located in Edinburgh, purely on the basis of the grants available. Given the existing imbalance in Edinburgh’s favour, the decision to locate the Green investment bank there seems like a political and economic knee in the groin for regions such as the north-east of England.
In last year’s autumn statement, the Chancellor made much of the Government’s plans for our national infrastructure, emphasising the importance of capital spending on infrastructure to support the UK’s long-term growth prospects. He outlined £30 billion in spending, including an immediate increase of £5 billion in Government spending. As one of their central economic priorities, the Government have defined a number of ways in which they wish to rebalance the economy away from over-reliance on public sector jobs and towards private sector employment; away from over-reliance on financial services and towards manufacturing and export industries; away from over-reliance on the south-east and towards more balanced economic growth across the UK.
The Chancellor’s statement emphasised that every region in England will benefit from that infrastructure spending. He even listed a host of road and rail projects in England in his speech. However, research by the Institute for Public Policy Research on the detail behind the Chancellor’s statement paints a different picture. Behind the empty rhetoric and claims of rebalancing, we find that 11 of the 20 largest infrastructure projects will benefit London and the south-east, only five will benefit the three northern regions and more than half of regional transport projects involving public funding will benefit London.
Considered together, London and the south-east account for 84% of planned spending, compared with only 6% for the three northern regions and an unbelievably minuscule 0.04% for the north-east. That equates to £2,731 per head of population for London and the south-east, more than all the other regions combined, compared with £201 in Yorkshire and Humber, £134 in the north-west and just £5 in the north-east of England. A fiver is what we are worth, in comparative terms, in the UK of today. For each £1,000 of gross value added generated in 2009, £81 is being spent on transport projects in London, £38 in the south-east, £12 in Yorkshire and Humber, £8 in the north-west and less than 50p in the north-east.
This Chancellor and this Government have spoken in duplicitous terms, but I now wonder whether they have given up even trying to talk a good fight when it comes to rebalancing the economy. They have clearly been saying one thing and doing another, looking after their home patch while slashing and burning the regions of England. To make matters even worse, they prefer to exemplify the north-east as a basket case. Before this bunch came to office, nothing could have been further from the truth. Thanks to the support of its 12 local authorities and the regional development agency, the north-east had developed an economy that was strong, dynamic and diversified compared with when a Conservative Government last laid waste to it in the 1980s.
However, in a typically knee-jerk, ideological and spiteful reaction, this Government have abolished our RDA, despite the fact that during the last three months of 2011, the north-east enjoyed record high growth in exports. Goods worth £13.5 billion were sold overseas from the north-east, up from £12 billion the previous year. If every other region in the United Kingdom were performing as well in those terms as the north-east, we would be doing rather well indeed.
Only yesterday, I received e-mail confirmation from the largest private sector employer in my constituency—AkzoNobel, known locally as International Paints—that last year it received an essential grant from One North East to support the establishment of its fire protection research and development facility. Recently produced documentation on the legacy of One North East showed that during the past 10 years, the north-east enjoyed the greatest level of economic growth outside London, and that during the last Government, the development agency helped to increase the region’s employment massively and its number of businesses and GVA to among the highest in the country.
Before the RDA’s inception, our regional economy was falling further behind other English regions. Since it was established in 1999, only London has experienced greater economic growth, but this Government have replaced the RDAs with local enterprise partnerships, which have no powers and little or no funding, and the much-heralded regional growth fund, which has delivered only modest amounts of direct aid to companies in the north-east.
From 1999 onwards, employment in the north-east rose at the third highest rate in the country after London and Yorkshire and Humber, and 116,000 jobs were created, representing growth of 11.2%. We also had the highest growth in new businesses, 18.7%, and the highest growth outside London in GVA per head of population. Tourism, conferencing and inward investment were all significantly boosted by the RDA’s “Passionate people, passionate places” campaign. The agency’s work on low-carbon vehicle production and green energy generation are legacies on which we could build if only the Government had a credible policy for the economy.
We had a credible policy for growth in the region, a credible policy for jobs and a credible policy to rebalance England’s economy, which included the idea that the north-east is a place to do business. Sadly, this Government have none of those, and prospects for my region remain bleak. Disposable income is being sucked out of our communities through public sector job losses, wage freezes and benefit cuts.
Before the recess, the Newcastle Journal published an editorial headlined “Never mind a Heathrow runway”, which stated:
“It would be a terrible shame if the row over party funding deafened the Government to the findings of the OECD. Its report makes grim reading for the region, but not simply because it highlights the problems caused by rotten infrastructure, poor connectivity and the lack of continuity in government. No, what really hurts is that a Paris-based organisation has been able to recognise basic, obvious, well-known facts that should not have been possible to ignore. Yet successive administrations in London have managed that feat damagingly well. Never mind arguing about a third runway at Heathrow, how about helping the North East instead?”
What are the Chancellor’s answers to these regional conundrums—a brain wave, a stroke of genius, an innovative investment package? No, what we got was the concept of regional pay. If that is the direction that he wants to take, perhaps we could also ask him to consider regionally reduced utility bills for gas, electricity, water and telephones, and while we are at it, cheaper council tax and grocery bills. If the Chancellor or the Prime Minister fancy paying £250,000 for the privilege of dinner with the chief executives of Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons, they could ask them, “Could the supermarkets reduce the cost of shopping in the regions, please?” They could also ask representatives of the east coast main line to charge regionally reduced fares for journeys to London.
James Wharton
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way to me for a second time. When the previous Labour Government introduced localised pay for the Courts Service, did they also introduce the other measures that he has mentioned?
Ian Mearns
I am afraid that I am not familiar with the position outlined by the hon. Gentleman, but I am not convinced that he is entirely right.
Why do we not go the whole hog on regionalism and consider re-establishing the RDA and setting up a regional Parliament for the north-east? If regionalism is so much in the minds of coalition Members, let us go the whole hog.
The Budget’s impact on the UK regions demonstrates clearly the Government’s ideology. Despite the negative impact of the Budget and their lack of regional policy, the north-east economy still has vibrant and dynamic aspects, as testified by the expansion of the Nissan plant at Washington, which will make it the largest and most efficient car plant in the world; the growing strength of our offshore wind and green energy sector; and, of course, the relighting this weekend of the Sahaviriya Steel Industries steel blast furnace on Teesside. That good and welcome news, however, does little to offset the negative measures inflicted on us by the coalition. The developments are welcome but small compared with the damage that is being wreaked. We have many skills on tap and a willing supply of people who are currently being denied access to the basics of the fruits of a civilised society through work.
The north-east will survive the economic crisis, but it will have to do so without support from this Government. As a result, many of the region’s people will suffer in greater measure and in greater proportion than the constituents of most Government Members.
The Budget has demonstrated clearly the ideological drive of this Government of Tories and Liberal Democrats. It is not about fairness. It is not about, “We are all in this together,” and it is certainly not about pulling together for the collective good, the benefit of the whole country or for every region in the UK. Under this Government, the Chancellor has given millionaires tax cuts, while pensioners have to pay more. Cabinet members and their chums receive unwarranted and undeserved benefits, while hard-working families suffer. Frankly, the well-off and the well-to-do are looking after the interests of their peers—toffs looking after toffs, with little or no regard for the consequences for the millions for whom the experience will be negative, if not dreadful.
Thanks to the Budget, the north-east and the regions of the UK will continue to struggle to grow and maintain employment and prosperity. The vast majority of my constituents and my region condemn the Budget. We need to maintain and increase the pressure to provide the policy and taxation framework that this country and regions such as the north-east need. The framework has to be designed to secure growth, and to support businesses, regions and our most vulnerable and economically fragile communities. The north-east demands that the Government respond to that challenge. If they are not willing to rethink their outdated and massively inappropriate attitudes to our region and its people, they should get out of the way and make room for a Government who will.
Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)
Order. In view of the large number of Members who wish to participate in the debate, I will exercise the power granted to me by the Chairman of Ways and Means and limit speeches to four minutes. I intend to commence the winding-up speeches at about 10.40 am. The Opposition Front-Bench spokesman has kindly indicated that he is willing to curtail his remarks to about five minutes. It would not be reasonable to impose any such limit on the Minister, because of the large number of Members who want to participate and who will expect answers to the debate. Members will notice, if they do the math, that I have built in a five-minute leeway, so one way or another we hope that we will get to where we want to be. The same rules apply as to the main Chamber. We will add a minute to the four-minute time limit for up to two interventions, but Members will appreciate that if that happens, someone will fall off the end of the list.
This is an exception—we do not normally do this—but it might help Members if I indicate now the order in which I intend to call them, because a significant number have written to Mr Speaker requesting the opportunity to speak. Those who are not on the list will appreciate that I have to give priority to those who have taken the trouble to write to Mr Speaker. They may, therefore, choose to exercise their right to intervene, although that, of course, is not in my gift, but in that of the person speaking. The order for Opposition Members is Grahame Morris, Phil Wilson, Pat Glass, David Anderson, Ian Lavery, Iain Wright, Sharon Hodgson and Stephen Hepburn; and that for Government Members is James Wharton and Mr Swales.
Westminster Hall does not have the countdown clock system of the main Chamber, but we do have the high-tech alternative of a bell, which will be sounded at one minute prior to a speech’s conclusion. Without further ado, I call James Wharton.
James Wharton (Stockton South) (Con)
Thank you, Sir Roger. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) on his passionate speech and on securing such an important debate. The issue is important to all of us who represent the north-east, in whichever party.
It is important to be clear that the north-east is not a basket case. It is not the end of the world and it is not a place where economic activity does not exist. There are many good signs of progress and economic success in our region. Unemployment in the north-east has been falling for the past two months, against the trend in much of the country, in what Members will agree is a difficult economic climate. There are many examples of significant good news stories, such as the relighting at the weekend of the SSI blast furnace on Teesside. That is very good and positive news, due in no small part to the sterling work of my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Ian Swales), who has fought long and hard to see steel-making return to that part of our region.
Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman also acknowledge that the work to get SSI to purchase the Corus steel plant began in the summer of 2009 and was largely due to the work of the trade union on the site, which led the “Save our steel” campaign, in conjunction with Labour Ministers, who regularly met plant representatives, unlike this Government’s Ministers, who refused to meet work forces at Rio Tinto Alcan and—these are not in the north-east—at steel sites in Kent, such as Thamesteel?
James Wharton
The hon. Gentleman’s generosity in wanting to ensure that everybody who played a part is adequately recognised is testament to his character. The unions played a significant role, as did the Government of the day, when the plant’s closure was announced, as have the Government of today, in delivering the success. It is something about which we can all be pleased in our region and I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s comments.
We have also received the good news that Hitachi will come to Newton Aycliffe to build trains. Nissan has announced that more jobs are being created and more work being done. In my constituency, Nifco has just opened a new factory in Eaglescliffe—a smaller but none the less significant manufacturing investment—and is already considering options for expansion because it is doing well.
More than 47,000 private sector jobs have been announced in the regional media since the last election. Articles in the press report what is said and announced, the levels of investment and the positive news, yet all too often all we hear are the negatives. I am sure that we all agree on a cross-party basis that it is important to take every opportunity to talk up our region and make it clear to anyone who is considering investing there that we are open for business and looking to do business, and that we welcome investment and we want to see the jobs and growth it would create.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
We all agree with the hon. Gentleman that there should be willingness to invest in our region, but does he not understand that it is deeply problematic that only 0.1% of the extra capital investment announced by the Chancellor in his autumn statement came to our region?
James Wharton
I was, of course, referring to private sector investment. The hon. Lady makes an interesting point, but we have to look at the figures realistically. A lot of the spending that has been announced is for specific large projects, some of which are in London, such as Crossrail, and some of which will potentially benefit the north-east, such as High Speed 2. Although it is not yet coming to our region, the benefits are real.
The RDA has been mentioned. I have my differences with Opposition Members on that issue. I always felt that the RDA was too focused on Newcastle and as the hon. Member for Gateshead said, we must remember and acknowledge that Newcastle is not the entire region. I welcome the new local enterprise partnerships because they are more localised and more focused on the areas where the growth that we want to see needs to be delivered. From the growth that we are seeing and the investment that is being announced, the signs are that LEPs are already doing a good job. The LEP in Teesside is certainly doing an excellent job. It hit the ground running and is making a difference to securing the growth that we need in that part of our region.
There were, of course, a number of announcements in the Budget that will both directly and indirectly benefit our region. One of the most significant is the increase in the personal allowance. In total, across all the Budgets we have had so far from the Government, 82,000 people have been lifted out of income tax altogether in the north-east region. That significant and welcome benefit will make a real difference to the lives of tens of thousands of families across the north-east who are on the lowest incomes and who most need that support.
The increase in the personal allowance will also, of course, deliver improvements for our regional economy because that money is not being taken in tax and spirited away to London to be redistributed in accordance with the diktat of the Government—whoever they are. That money is staying in the pockets of families in the north-east, so that they can spend it in our local economy, provide a welcome economic boost and create jobs and growth, which is what we all want to see.
In the north-east, the income tax bills of nearly 1 million people will decrease, although some of them will not be entirely lifted out of income tax just yet. The child benefit tapering changes are a welcome mitigation of the impact of the need to control the child benefit bill because of the financial situation in which the Government find themselves. That will benefit 14,000 families across the north-east and is another welcome measure in the Budget that will leave more money in our regional economies and in the pockets of the people who live and work in the north-east and elsewhere. That policy will make a difference to our regional economy and the lives of those who live in the regions.
Negatives in the Budget do exist. Stamp duty land tax is increasing. However, we are lucky in the north-east because only 1% of the properties affected—
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I congratulate my colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), on securing this debate, the importance of which is testified to by the number of Labour Members present.
The Budget will have few positive benefits for the economy of the north-east, and there is no discernible regional support within the measures set out in the Budget statement. There are cuts in corporation tax and cuts in tax for the wealthy, but there is no credible plan for what is really needed in the north-east: a stimulus for jobs and growth.
The often used line that we cannot spend our way out of a recession has been shown to be an ideological mantra that flies in the face of economic reality. What the Budget has given us is rocketing unemployment and plummeting growth in regions such as ours. The north-east has the highest rate of unemployment of any UK region, at 10.8% of the economically active population. That is mirrored in my constituency where, despite the good news we have had from Nissan, large numbers of private sector job losses are in the pipeline. We are haemorrhaging private sector jobs at an alarming rate.
Regional economies such as the north-east will not make any headway without investment in a comprehensive and lasting economic infrastructure. That can only be done by the courageous state and by Government intervention. The north-east continues to suffer from the unfinished business of transition from heavy industry. However, that transformation has stalled as a consequence of the coalition Government’s policies.
The evidence supports the fact that Labour and our regional development agency, One North East, were making progress in transforming the economic landscape. An analysis from PricewaterhouseCoopers shows that, for every £1 spent by our RDA, an average of at least £4.50 of economic output was achieved. That rose to an output of at least £6.40 when future benefits were assessed.
Ministers have sought to propagate the myth that money spent in the north-east under Labour was wasted, but that is not supported by the facts. Based on the gross value added per head indices, the rate of growth in the north-east went from being the lowest of any region during the 1990s to being the second highest during the past decade. The facts and figures were alluded to by my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, so I will not repeat them.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his speech. Does he agree that another key role that One North East played in the region was to ensure that European regional development funding was drawn down and invested in the region? Some £329 million was made available, but £129 million remains un-invested directly because of the loss of One North East. No one is drawing down that funding and no regional funding can match that investment in the region.
Grahame M. Morris
Absolutely. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for putting that on the record. That was another vital element that the RDA contributed towards jobs and growth in the north-east, and it is sadly missed.
Although the Chancellor told us that the Budget is overall fiscally neutral, its impact by region, class or earnings is anything but. For example, VAT—a regressive form of taxation—remains at 20%, which hurts those who have no choice but to spend their wages on life’s basic essentials and depresses demand. The continuation of wage freezes throughout the public sector will make life even more difficult for ordinary people, as will the rise in fuel duty.
In his Budget, the Chancellor has failed the people whom I represent in Easington and in the north-east. There was the increase in VAT, the granny tax, the pasty tax, the philanthropy tax, increases in fuel duty and the loss of tax credits for modest earners. My right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), the Leader of the Opposition, was right to call it a Budget for millionaires when what we need is a Budget for jobs and growth in the north-east.
Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)
It is a pleasure to speak in the debate and I congratulate the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) on securing it. Labour Members’ contributions will no doubt be selective so I will not repeat them; instead, I will say a few things that they probably will not.
The increase in the tax threshold that my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) mentioned has taken another 35,000 people out of paying tax in the north-east and given 940,000 workers a tax cut. Those workers, including people who are on the minimum wage, would be paying an extra £400 a year under Labour’s tax plans. It would not have been a Lib Dem priority to cut the 50% rate to 45%, but let us remember that Labour’s love affair with the 50% rate lasted for one month out of the 13 years it was in power. For the other 12 years and 11 months, the top rate was 40%. The rate remains 5 percentage points higher than that.
Grahame M. Morris
Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that, in my constituency of Easington, 1,400 families on modest incomes will lose all of their child tax credit, which is worth around £545 a year? In addition, 350 working couples in Easington who earn less than £17,000 a year will lose all of their working tax credit, which could be worth up to £3,870 a year, if they cannot increase the hours they work from 16 to 24.
Ian Swales
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has his statistics correct.
I will go on to talk about high-rate tax. The Government have cut from £250,000 to £50,000 the amount of pension contribution that can be claimed against tax. They have put a new limit on reliefs, raised capital gains tax from 18% to 28%, put a new tax on expensive houses and clamped down on tax avoidance. Labour has opposed those measures and charged the rich less in tax.
Let us talk about business. As soon as the Budget was delivered, Glaxo announced £500 million of investment, including a new factory in Cumbria and new manufacturing facilities at Barnard Castle, Teesdale. That was a direct result of the Budget provisions on pharmaceutical patents. As AstraZeneca has also shown, that will lead to huge investment in—
Helen Goodman
The key factor was the patent box changes, which were initiated by the Labour Government in 2010.
Ian Swales
I am sure the Minister will respond to that.
Of course our region needs specific help. I welcome the extra £1 billion for the regional growth fund, which has already helped 93 companies in the north-east and is targeted specifically at regions such as ours. Last week’s announcement of help for up to 1,000 jobs in Wallsend in the offshore wind industry was especially welcome.
These occasions usually include a lament from the Opposition for the RDA. However, I shed few tears for an organisation that, in the two years before the general election, spent £148 million on 96 projects in which the directors had to declare an interest, spent nearly £400,000 on gagging orders for 12 staff, and, according to Experian, left Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, and Redcar and Cleveland as the three areas of the country, out of 324, least able to cope with austerity.
Ian Swales
I have given way twice already.
I congratulate the Tees Valley LEP on the excellent start it has made and I welcome the further £11 million in the Growing Places fund announced for north-east LEPs.
The press has picked up on certain items in the Budget, so I will finish with three questions to the Minister. I have spoken to the directors of Greggs. Will the so-called pasty tax not move rather than remove the anomalies? I do not relish asking the Greggs staff to feel the temperature of my sausage roll before deciding the price. Secondly, to those worried about charitable giving, tax relief on charitable contributions that would otherwise be taxed at 50% effectively means the Government will match donations pound for pound. Should that use of taxpayers’ money really be unlimited? Thirdly, how do the Opposition justify a situation in which young people on the minimum wage, who are trying to make their way in life, are paying £600 more in tax than their grannies who are on the same income? As we move towards a threshold of £10,000 for all, is that not a matter of fairness? Budgets cannot please all the people all the time, but help for business and the big reduction in tax for basic rate taxpayers means that this one has a lot going for it.
Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) on securing the debate.
People talk about investment in the region, and three examples of investment have been mentioned. GlaxoSmithKline in Cumbria, which also has a plant in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), SSI in Redcar, and Hitachi in my constituency have one thing in common: they would not be there were it not for a Labour Government. They were the result of initiatives established and settled under a Labour Government and which came to fruition after the general election. From personal experience, I know how much time and effort went in to ensure that Hitachi came to the north-east of England—it was not certain that it would.
I set a “We are all in this together” test for the Budget, and it did not pass that test. Some 57,000 households in the north-east will lose tax credits. I met a young mother at the weekend with twins—two little boys—who will start school in September. She has lost more than £300 in tax credits every month. That is a lot of money for someone with a young family. I know that 940,000 people will be better off under the new tax threshold, but let us not forget that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that the changes coming in this month will mean that on average they will be £511 worse off.
Tom Blenkinsop
My hon. Friend gave three examples of programmes starting under the Labour Government: SSI, Hitachi and GSK. That is also the case with DigitalCity in Middlesbrough, where public-led investment increased private-led investment. The hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) referred to information from Experian in relation to Middlesbrough, Hartlepool and Redcar being the hardest-hit areas, but those statistics related not to the RDA, but to an investigation post this Government’s autumn statement.
Phil Wilson
My hon. Friend is right. That proves how much we have to celebrate what the previous Labour Government did for the north-east of England. The hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) mentioned the minimum wage. The minimum wage has been frozen for people under the age of 21. It has gone up by only 11p this year as a consequence of the decisions made by this Government. At the same time, 4,000 to 5,000 taxpayers on the 50p tax rate in the region will on average receive a tax cut of £10,000 each. If that does not show that we are not all in this together, I do not know what does. The Government put VAT on pasties, but they did not put VAT on caviar.
The 40p tax rate has been ignored by many people. The threshold has been reduced from £42,475 to £41,450, so that 300,000 people will be brought into the 40p tax rate. How many more people will lose a proportion of their child benefit because of the reduction in that threshold? Will the Minister indicate whether she knows that figure? By reducing the threshold, the number of people paying the 40p tax rate in the region has gone up by 8%. There are now nearly 110,000 people paying the 40p tax rate. Little by little, the Government’s fairness agenda is being found out—actually, we are not all in this together.
I am very concerned about regional pay. The hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) mentioned the flexibility in local pay in the court system, but we reduced the number of bands from 40-odd to five; we did not increase the number of bands. The latest survey by the TUC states that 68%—more than two thirds—of Conservative voters do not believe that regional pay in the public sector will boost jobs in the private sector.
The Budget is divisive. It is also complacent. It does nothing for growth, not just in the north-east of England, but in the rest of the country.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) on securing the debate, which has allowed so many hon. Members from the north-east to talk about the impact of the Government and the Budget on our region. It is disappointing that we have such a poor turnout among Government Members—one Tory MP and one Liberal Democrat MP. That is less than 50%. It is amazing to hear them speaking with one voice—“We are all Tories now”—and to hear the Liberal Democrat MP defending the 50p tax rate, the granny tax and tax cuts for the rich. Either the Liberal Democrat hon. Members have Stockholm syndrome, or they have no principles and never did. I think that we would all say yes to that.
The Prime Minister, before the 2010 election, talked a lot about the need to rebalance the economy from the south to the north and for the north-east to be less reliant on public sector jobs. However, if we have seen any rebalancing of the economy at all, it has been from the north to the south. Public spending cuts have had a massive impact on jobs in the north-east in particular. The north-east now has the highest unemployment rate of all the northern regions at 10.8% and has received higher than average cuts to local government grants and services. In my constituency, unemployment has doubled since 2010. The hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) said that unemployment has fallen in the region. I do not know what he defines as the north-east region, but it certainly does not cover the area that I represent. Youth unemployment in my constituency is now dangerously high, and the Minister needs to be aware of that.
I can tell the Minister that despite a lack of growth in the economy generally since 2007, there have been some areas of real growth in the north-east. I visit companies in my constituency all the time, and there has been something of a renaissance in engineering and manufacturing, but at the high-level specialist bespoke end of the market. In those areas, manufacturers have told me that what they needed from the Budget was more highly skilled toolmakers and specialist engineers, to enable them to take on more of the work that is out there. The Government failed to deliver that in the Budget.
Chemical companies in my constituency have also told me that they have full order books but need more highly skilled chemical engineers to take on more of the work that is out there. The Government’s shabby excuse for an apprenticeship programme will not deliver the skills that those companies need. The Government again failed to deliver on that in the Budget. Other companies—good companies with good products—are struggling.
Ian Swales
Does the hon. Lady agree that nothing done three weeks ago will deliver a chemical engineer to a company tomorrow and that the previous Government’s failure to deliver the skills agenda over the past 10 years is the problem for manufacturers and engineers in the north-east?
Pat Glass
The Budget is a good opportunity and a good place to start, but if this is going to be done, now is the time to start. Did we see that? No, we did not.
Good companies with good products are struggling to get investment. They tell me that, despite the Government’s rhetoric, banks are refusing to invest in good companies that would give a good return. Banks still prefer to spend our money in the speculative markets, risking it, because that brings high rewards and gives bankers bonuses. The Government failed to do anything about that in the Budget.
I am on the doorstep all the time, knocking on doors. When people open their doors, I do not have to say anything: they tell me that the message from the Budget is that the Government are giving tax cuts to millionaires at the expense of pensioners. The Government do nothing and have been a disaster for the north-east region. If they cannot do something about that now, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead said, they need to move over and allow a Government who are interested in the regions to take over.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
I shall break with the habit of a lifetime and say something good about the Government. I welcome the news about what is happening with Nissan, but the context is that without intervention from our Government four years ago, Nissan might not have been in the position that it is in now. We introduced the scrappage scheme and reduced VAT. We gave grants so that battery electric cars could be developed and brought forward the training budget, which kept people from being laid off. Compare that with what the present Government did in respect of the building schools for the future fiasco. In Gateshead alone, £80 million was earmarked for five schools in March 2010, but the Secretary of State for Education took that money away in May, despite recognising, in meetings with me and my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), that the schools needed to be refurbished and rebuilt. The crazy thing is that, although the money would have gone to Gateshead council, it would just have passed it on to the private sector to build and furnish the schools and put the infrastructure in. So now everybody loses, including the public sector, the children and the private sector.
The RDAs have been mentioned a lot. The RDA was successful in the north-east of England. We have been here before; this is not new for us. Exactly the same programme and attitude that we saw in the 1980s and ’90s is being repeated now. People are being thrown on the dole with no hope or support, no way forward and no framework for intervention. The RDA worked because people came together—unions, employers and the public sector—partnership building, working together, bringing in international support and making things work. That is why it is a real shame that the RDA has gone and has been replaced by the regional growth fund, which is nothing more than a farce and a joke.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
My hon. Friend tells me that during discussions on the RDAs in the main Chamber, on more than one occasion senior Ministers—in fact, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills—said that the RDA in the north-east was the flagship RDA and was working very well indeed.
Mr Anderson
I could not agree more. People will remember when they could believe what the Liberal Democrats said, although that was some time ago. The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills now says that he supported the RDAs, but the leader was not sure. It is now clear that the Liberal Democrats are being dictated to for ideological reasons. Anything that smacks of being positive about the public sector has to go. That is why we are suffering in our region.
Look at chaos and incompetence that has come from the Budget. People at the bottom have been hit: people with disabilities, old people, vulnerable people, children and women. Benefits have been cut. Millionaires have had tax cuts while pensioners’ tax levels are frozen. Government Members talk about taking people out of tax. They have taken a lot of people in Gateshead out of tax: 1,600 people have been taken out of tax because they have been put on the dole by the cuts, and 710,000 people from the public sector are being put on the dole and will not be paying tax or national insurance and will not be buying goods and services. Lessons from the past have not been learned. These things will have an impact on the economy.
The pasty tax is, to some extent, a joke. However, I am worried that it is classed as a harmonisation and simplification of the tax system; if that is so, will the Minister tell me what else she is going to simplify and harmonise that does not have VAT on it? Are there any other plans to increase the scope of VAT? Will she give us a guarantee today that VAT will not be extended to any other part of the tax system?
We all know about the impact of the charities tax. Because the Government cannot control the people who are avoiding and evading tax, the charities that the Government expect to cover for the job and service cuts in the public sector will not be able to do so. Charities in my region tell me that they are already suffering because of funding cuts and that, if money does not come from private investors, they will go even further down that road.
The application of VAT to listed buildings has had a disastrous impact. Ryton Holy Cross church in my constituency magnificently raised £300,000 in 15 years. Now, it would have had to raise £360,000 to do exactly the same work. People are telling me that that fills them with despair.
This Budget exposed the Government’s incompetence. They are not up to the job. The best thing that they could do for our region and our country is to go now.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
The Budget is a great missed opportunity, not only for the north-east but for the whole country. It should have been a Budget for jobs and growth, but instead it was a Budget for tax cuts for the rich and the toffs.
Unemployment rates in the south-east of Northumberland—in my constituency—are alarming. According to the Library, statistics revealed last week showed that, on average, 22.2 people were applying for each jobseekers’ vacancy. Earlier this year, according to the Office for National Statistics, that figure was 55.5. Every time we mention the problems faced by unemployed people in our area, we are told that we should look at the positive signs, such as Nissan. Nissan has been and is tremendous, but it is a million miles away from where I live.
Grahame M. Morris
I am sorry to stop my hon. Friend in full flow, but it is important to place on the record that, although we welcome the additional jobs and the announcement about Nissan, it must be put in context. Does he agree that although 250 jobs are welcome, they do not go anywhere near even offsetting the private sector job losses in my constituency alone? Reckitt Benckiser has lost 500 jobs; Fortress Doors has lost 100; Carillion, Cumbrian Foods and, most recently—
Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)
Order. I am terribly sorry, but the hon. Gentleman is beginning to make another speech. This must be an intervention. I remind hon. Members that each of the first two interventions adds a minute to the time that the speaker is allowed. Hon. Members are in danger of pushing one of their colleagues off the end of the list, if they are not careful.
Ian Lavery
Thank you, Sir Roger. I agree with everything that my hon. Friend said.
We in the south-east of Northumberland are a million miles away from Nissan. The perceived jobs bonanza at Nissan is two bus journeys, a Metro journey and a further bus journey away. We wish that we had the same opportunities as there are at Nissan. We hope that they will come. We have not even got a rail service in my area: there is a railway line but no trains to run on it. We cannot even get to Newcastle, Sunderland or Middlesbrough city centre from where we live, because there are not the transport links and the much-needed transfer links.
I want to focus on a strong appeal to the Minister to hear the case of the people in south-east Northumberland. If we in Wansbeck are to have an opportunity for growth, a Northumberland extension of the North Eastern local enterprise partnership enterprise zone—the port of Blyth and the estuary—needs to benefit from capital allowances and rate relief at the same time. It is not enough to extend the enterprise zone without the provision of the additional allowances and incentives necessary to attract businesses and jobs. We need those guarantees. In addition, with the appropriate allowances and incentives, further extension to the enterprise zone is desperately needed, so that it stretches through Wansbeck as far up the coast as the Alcan site. A failure to do so will place Wansbeck and south-east Northumberland at a distinct disadvantage, by further damaging employment opportunities for our communities.
James Wharton
On a point of regional, cross-party unity, I echo the hon. Gentleman’s calls. The enterprise zones are a good initiative of the Government, and I should like to see them extended. Anything that we as a region can do to put pressure on Ministers to extend the enterprise zones and to give us further opportunities for growth is welcome.
Ian Lavery
Having enterprise zones surrounding areas such as mine only compounds the entire problem; basically, they incentivise people to stay away. May I appeal to Ministers, on behalf of the young and the old? Please listen, visit the area, help the anxious communities that we represent, give them fairness and a level playing field and give them hope and access to aspiration. Although not the most wealthy people in the country, we are most honest and most sincere. We need the Minister and the Government to act now to save what might be lost future generations.
Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Sir Roger. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) on securing this important debate.
We in the north-east have fantastic potential to lead the country out of recession into sustainable, long-term growth. In the Budget last month, however, the Chancellor failed to help the region fulfil its potential or address its challenges. I am critical of the Chancellor not only because of what was in the Budget, in which he showed the wrong policies, the wrong values and the wrong judgments, but even more because of what he left out. He failed to use the opportunity to grasp the enormous potential of our region and, perhaps most damning of all, simply neglected to remember the north-east at all. For example, there was nothing to mitigate the effect on energy-intensive industries or to incentivise businesses and to give firms in the region or elsewhere the confidence to invest their substantial cash piles in improving the productivity of our region.
On Friday, I met dynamic, energetic and ambitious entrepreneurs in the technical, digital and creative sectors in our region, running businesses such as Stick Theory, Love Your Larder and Sherpa. They have the potential to grow, to thrive and to create job opportunities. I asked them what was the one thing they wanted from the Government. They said improvements in transport infrastructure, making it easier to get on a train, to get to London, to make contacts and win businesses. In the Red Book announcement of £130 million for the northern hub rail scheme, however, no north-eastern town or city was even mentioned, let alone had any investment.
In the time available, I want to concentrate on the biggest neglect of the lot: unemployment, which is the biggest single social and economic factor affecting my constituency. The number of claimants in Hartlepool has risen month on month and year on year to reach 4,678 in February. The number of unemployed in Hartlepool is now higher than it was at the height of the global recession, and tomorrow’s publication of the March unemployment statistics will probably see a further rise. Contained in those figures, however, there is even bleaker news. Almost one in four young men, or 23.8% of 18 to 24-year-old young men, is claiming jobseeker’s allowance. When an area hits one in four young men out of work, it has reached crisis point. We last saw such statistics for youth unemployment back in the 1980s, when my shipyards and steel works closed down. For many lads coming to adulthood in that time, theirs was a lost generation who faced no pay or low pay, benefits and illness; they failed to fulfil their potential. My town, arguably, has not really recovered from the social and economic shock of the deindustrialisation of 30 years ago, yet we are in danger of experiencing that shock again because of the neglect of the Government.
The Minister must recognise the lessons of history and ensure that young people are helped into work and training. It is economically ignorant to suggest that public sector jobs are crowding out private sector employment and growth, and that the best approach is to cut drastically public sector employment. It is economically illiterate to believe that a region’s employment and growth prospects will somehow bloom if spending, resources and demand are withdrawn quickly, or will be helped if regional pay bargaining strips out regional income. The Chancellor had a perfect opportunity to do something in his Budget to encourage employment, especially for the young. Instead, he chose to provide tax cuts for millionaires. Despite the importance of youth unemployment, the Red Book contained only one, single, derisory new announcement—complete with spelling mistake—about such a huge social and economic issue. The announcement that the Government
“will pilot the best way to introduce a programme of enterprise loans to help young people”
is patronising, smacks of gimmick and gesture politics and will do nothing to stop a lost generation of young people. I ask the Minister to think again.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Sir Roger. I add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) on securing this important debate.
I hope that the Minister has brushed up on the geography of our region and where the north-east covers—the Government sometimes struggle with that. I will not repeat what the Minister has said, but other examples make interesting reading in Hansard. I am sure that the Minister will want to talk in her response about the recent good news of Nissan’s success. Nissan is in my constituency, and I am personally very happy about its fantastic success. The announcement was a great vote of confidence in the local work force in particular, as well as a reflection of all the hard work and sustained relationship-building with Nissan by Sunderland council over the past couple of decades.
A few other welcome gems of news in my constituency include the recent announcements by Calsonic Kansei and Rayovac. However, all those new jobs and pockets of investment in the north-east are not enough to mitigate the effects on tens of thousands of people of losing their jobs in the public sector and elsewhere in the private sector, or the reality of long-term youth unemployment in my constituency, which is up by 188%.
I want to focus my remarks on household budgets and family finances. At the start of this month, an estimated 1,400 households in my constituency were no longer eligible for child tax credits worth £545 a year. A further 355 households will lose their working tax credits, worth £3,870 a year, unless they find a way to increase their working hours by at least eight hours. Throughout the north-east, such changes will affect just short of 50,000 households—so that is 50,000 households having their budgets squeezed, spending less in local shops, pubs, restaurants and other businesses and with less money to have days out, if any, at local attractions. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that families with children will, on average, be £511 a year worse off, and that includes the token amount given back to them by increasing their personal allowances. Some parents may find, therefore, that they are better off not in work than taking up work if it does not make financial sense. What is the sense in policies that push people out of jobs?
We have yet to see the full impact of the changes, but no one believes it will be positive—certainly not our pensioners, who have worked hard and saved throughout their working lives to provide a modest pension for themselves in later life. They will be hit by the freezing of age-related allowances, the worst affected being those who retire next year. In total, Treasury figures state that the changes will take more than £3 billion out of pensioners’ pockets—again, £3 billion that will not be spent in local economies such as Sunderland’s. At the other end of the scale, however, those on more than £150,000 a year will get a tax cut; unfortunately, not many of them live in my constituency.
We needed a genuine plan for growth and real help for families; we did not get it. What we got was worse than nothing. We got measures that will deepen the north-south divide and, as usual, the lives of my constituents will suffer at the hands of this out-of-touch Tory-led Government. Has it not always been so?
Mr Stephen Hepburn (Jarrow) (Lab)
This Budget has been drawn up by a Chancellor with no perception or idea of what it is like to live in the north-east of England, and to have to live on a day-to-day basis. On one hand, the Budget cuts the wages and pensions of people in the north-east, and cuts their public services; on the other hand, it turns round and gives a tax cut to the richest 1% of people in this country. It is a Budget that will condemn thousands of families in the north-east to poverty, while it makes a priority of giving tax cuts to business by way of corporation tax cuts. It is a Budget built not on fairness, but on privilege.
This is not the Budget that we wanted for the north-east. We wanted a Budget for growth, to create jobs and the necessary economic activity to make the north-east alive again. Instead, we have a Budget that lines the pockets of the rich by cutting income tax and corporation tax. The Government say that they have changed tax thresholds, and that people will be better off, but that is more than compensated for by the cuts in tax credits and benefits, the scanty increase in the minimum wage, and the increasing cost of travel and utility bills for people in the north-east.
The move to regional pay will be a disaster. As the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills said, it will stigmatise the north-east as a region of failure. It must not be allowed to go ahead. The Government justify the regional pay policy on the basis that public sector pay hurts the private sector and curtails job creation. What nonsense. How come we live in a region with the lowest wages in the country, yet we still have the highest unemployment, with nine people chasing every job vacancy? It is nonsense.
Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a very good point about regional pay, but the situation is worse than he indicates because up to £1 billion could be taken out of the north-east economy, which would hit all sectors of industry in the north-east, particularly the service sector, cultural industries and retail.
Mr Hepburn
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. It is not just the pay of teachers and nurses that affects job growth in the north-east; it is lack of demand. The point that she rightly makes is that every 1% taken out of regional pay in the form of public sector pay cuts sucks an extra £80 million from the north-east economy, causing a spiral down and down.
I am pleased that the Budget is already beginning to implode daily, because people are catching on to the fact that because of tax cuts for the richest in society, charities will receive less, pensioners will receive less, and Greggs pasty eaters will have to pay more. The Budget will not help the people of the north-east. It is a Budget of the privileged, by the privileged, for the privileged. If we really are all in this together as a society, surely it is right that the better-off pay a little more and take the burden off working-class people in the north-east.
Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
This has been an excellent debate, thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), and we are left with one question, which was asked not just by my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr Hepburn), but by most contributors. Will the Minister dare to have the audacity to utter the phrase, “We’re all in it together”? I hope that she will. I want to give her ample time to respond to the debate, because so many points have been well made, including the impact on families with children and on single individuals, and the statistic that the typical family with children will be £511 worse off annually as a result of cumulative Budget measures. When people open their pay packets at the end of this month, they will see the impact not just of VAT, but the tax credit changes that will also hit working people exceptionally hard.
People are shocked at seeing a Government hit elderly people and pensioners by freezing age-related allowances and using that money to give a tax cut to the wealthiest in society. Those earning more than £150,000 and typical millionaires—if there is such a thing as a typical millionaire—will receive a £40,000 tax benefit. That is astonishing. Is it any wonder that the Government’s fortunes are plummeting? What is even worse—as my hon. Friends the Members for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson), for Jarrow, and for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) mentioned—is that there is no action of any substance in the Budget to tackle the crisis in jobs and growth. That is at the core of the issues.
The Government have taken a wrecking ball to institutions in the north-east that existed to try to help the economy, whether it was a Minister for the north, the regional development agency, or local authorities whose grants have been slashed disproportionately in the north-east compared with other parts of the country.
Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the lack of a growth strategy for the north-east is a complete travesty? Getting rid of the RDA and replacing it with LEPs and enterprise zones, fragmenting the whole support system, is not working. The Government are leaving the north-east without the support that it needs to keep regenerating itself.
Chris Leslie
The jobs crisis worries people, and all contributors today have talked about that, including my hon. Friends the Members for North West Durham (Pat Glass), for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) and for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery). The statistics that 22 people apply for every vacancy, and that youth unemployment in the north-east is rising by 155% are shocking. The Minister must react to that crisis.
Ian Lavery
What does my hon. Friend think about the fact that the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) refused to meet me to discuss the severe problems facing unemployed people in my district, saying that it was inappropriate at this point?
Chris Leslie
I have heard of similar cases. What sort of Minister refuses even to discuss such issues, and turns a blind eye to the problems? A pointless Minister, so what is the point of having that individual in that post.
Many issues have been raised—too many to mention. My hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead and others referred to the case for investment and infrastructure. There is the impact on the so-called big society, with major charitable trusts and others losing out. The Chancellor is taking away from them while staff who are being made redundant from Alcan and elsewhere have dug into their own pockets for their works welfare fund donations to local charities. Their example contrasts so much with that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Greggs was founded on Tyneside in 1939, and if ever a part of the country should be astonished at the Chancellor’s move to extend VAT, it is the north-east. The hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) referred to the temperature of his sausage roll, and he will have the opportunity to vote on the matter in the House this week. We hope that he will join us in the Lobby.
I do not want to take up any more time, because we want to hear from the Minister. She should listen to these exceptionally powerful voices from the north-east. People know what they are talking about. She should recognise the warning signs for jobs and growth, and change course now before it is too late.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Miss Chloe Smith)
This has been an interesting debate, and I thank hon. Members for their contributions, whether in a constricted four-minute speech or an intervention. The hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) spoke with great passion about his constituency and the broader region, and I hope in the time available to address some of his concerns and those of other hon. Members. With a smile on my face, that gives me a chance to place on the record the apology that I have already given to the hon. Member for Bolton North East (Mr Crausby) for having mistaken his constituency on the Floor of the House last month.
Roberta Blackman-Woods
Will the Minister say whether she has visited the north-east to look at the impact of the dreadful Budget on that area, and to refresh her geography at the same time? Perhaps more significantly, has she asked her officials to look at the impact of the Budget on the north-east, and to come up with measures that will support growth in the region?
Miss Smith
If the hon. Lady had let me press on, she would have heard the answer to much of what she asks a little sooner. Let me reassure her that I have often visited the north-east, although not since the Budget, so I look forward to a chance to do that, perhaps in the next recess. As many Members have said, it is a fine region and a great place that we should all seek to support.
Let me return to the matter in hand. In the Budget, the Government made it clear that they have three priorities: first, the creation of a stable economy; secondly, a fairer, more efficient and simpler tax system; and thirdly, reforms to support growth. The 2012 Budget, together with the national infrastructure plan that we published in last year’s autumn statement, set out the Government’s latest steps towards achieving those priorities, based on a model of sustainable and balanced growth, including, of course, in the north-east.
As hon. Members have made clear, the north-east faces difficult challenges. It remains, however, a significant contributor to the national economy, and I would like to reiterate and highlight the numerous good news stories that have been mentioned and involve companies that are already investing in the north-east and creating jobs for people in the area. For example, the Japanese automotive company Vantec has created 230 new jobs and secured 800 existing posts in Sunderland. Nissan has announced the creation of 225 jobs at its Sunderland factory and 900 more with its British suppliers. Both companies have been pledged money from the regional growth fund, which illustrates the difference that that initiative makes on the ground. I join other hon. Members in celebrating the relighting of the blast furnace at the SSI Redcar steelworks, which my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) mentioned earlier in the debate.
The reforms set out in the Budget will give businesses and individuals in the region a further boost on top of those private sector initiatives. Corporation tax will be cut by an additional 1% on top of the cuts announced last year. From April this year, the rate of tax will be reduced to 24%, and it will ultimately fall to 22% by 2014—a competitive rate when we consider our competitors around the globe. Let me reiterate that the Budget increases the personal tax allowance by £1,100, which will take 34,000 people in the north-east out of tax altogether. It also increases the Growing Places fund, which will provide additional funding for the infrastructure that is needed to unlock developments that lead to jobs and growth. Local enterprise partnerships in the north-east will receive a further £11 million.
I also confirm that Newcastle has been selected to become a super-connected city. I do not sneer at that; hon. Members may fail to welcome it, but the city will receive up to £6 million of funding to deliver ultra-fast broadband to residents and businesses, which is valuable. On top of that, the Budget includes investment of almost £28 million in stalled development projects within the north-east.
Hon. Members were keen to talk about capital spending in percentage terms, but let me provide some absolute terms and mention £4.5 billion for the intercity express programme; £260 million for the new Tyne tunnel; £57 million for the Tees valley bus network; £350 million to reinvigorate the Tyne and Wear metro; and £82.5 million for a new Sunderland bridge, which perhaps hon. Members will welcome.
Grahame M. Morris
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way as I know that time is short. However, she is reading out a list of projects that have already been delivered and were planned by the previous Government. Can she equate the £10 million in the Growing Places fund to a distance of new motorway, for example? Would it buy one, two or three miles of new motorway? We are talking about relatively modest sums of new money.
Miss Smith
I am afraid that my mental arithmetic does not extend to working out pounds per mile on the spot, but I will be happy to look into the hon. Gentleman’s question.
I will continue with my comments, which I hope will help hon. Members. I want to talk briefly about support in the Budget for individuals and families to buy new-build properties with a 5% deposit through the NewBuy scheme, and I wish to put it on record that the Budget increases the maximum right-to-buy discount—[Interruption.]
Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)
Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady. Hon. Members have participated in the debate and should do the Minister the courtesy of listening to her response.
Miss Smith
Thank you, Sir Roger. The new right-to-buy discount introduced by this Government is more than three times the current limit in the north-east of £22,000.
In his opening comments, the hon. Member for Gateshead used words such as “outdated”, and various other words have been bandied around today. I think that the hon. Gentleman, and other hon. Members, need to look around and see the threat to today’s economy, which in one word is debt. Debt is a problem both in the UK and globally, and this Government are determined to sort it out. Fiscal consolidation is necessary. Those in the Labour party seek to spend more, borrow more and owe more, and therefore to pile more debt on their children, and indeed my children. The hon. Gentleman, and those on the Opposition Front Bench, still believe that child benefit should be claimed by millionaires. We do not; we believe that there should be consolidation.
Miss Smith
I am afraid that I have no time. If we do not tackle our deficit, it will be worse for everybody. The really outdated view is to burden future generations with more debt, and for the Government to fail to take responsibility and consign all regions in the country to economic disaster. One need only look to the eurozone to get the picture. The Government’s actions have kept our interest rates closer to those in Germany than those in Greece, and made Britain a safe haven.
The topic of young people was raised by the hon. Members for North West Durham (Pat Glass) and for Hartlepool (Mr Wright). I am shocked that the hon. Gentleman thinks that it is patronising to believe that young people can start their own businesses and I disagree strongly. As a constituency MP, I make it my business to support Jobcentre Plus, the youth contract, the work experience programme and the Work programme—perhaps the hon. Gentleman acts differently in his constituency—and that is what I call working together to achieve things for our young people.
Miss Smith
No. I am afraid that I must move on. I know that the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues wish me to talk about regional or local pay.
Chris Leslie
It is a very quick question. I wish simply to ask whether the Minister will utter the words, “We’re all in it together”?
Miss Smith
The hon. Gentleman asks me to do that as well as to respond to other hon. Members in three minutes, but I value his Back Benchers more than he does, and I wish to talk about local pay. The hon. Member for Gateshead focused much of his contribution on that issue, and I wish to reassure him about something that he already knows. At this stage, the Government are not setting out detailed proposals; they are asking experts how public sector pay might better reflect local markets. Localising pay has the potential to improve the resources available to private sector businesses that need to compete with higher public sector wages. It can improve or reduce unfair variations in the quality of public services, and tackle a limit on the number of jobs that the public sector can maintain created by having to support disproportionate wages. The principle of local pay has already been established, and I confirm, as has been mentioned, that the Labour party did that in 2007.
I will move on briefly to pasties and the sausage rolls mentioned by the hon. Member for Redcar. The point is that the Budget closes loopholes and addresses anomalies to ensure a level playing field. The National Federation of Fish Friers states:
“There should be a level playing field. Why should the UK’s fish and chip shops have to pay 20 per cent. on all the hot food they sell…when the bakery next door sells hot pies, pasties and sausage rolls free of VAT?”
The Budget seeks to introduce that level playing field.
Miss Smith
I am afraid that I do not have time because I must respond to concerns about local government funding and the claim that local authorities in the north-east have taken disproportionate cuts. As I have made clear, the previous Government left an appalling economic and financial mess, and we have a moral obligation to pay back our debts as quickly as possible. Therefore, tough decisions are necessary. The hon. Member for Gateshead will know that the formula grant in his area will be nearly £555 per person in 2011-12, compared with an average of £372 across England. That reflects the higher level of need in Gateshead, and I expect him to welcome that. In the light of issues raised by hon. Members, the Government’s key priority is returning the UK economy to sustainable, economic growth.
Before time runs out, I want to talk about local enterprise partnerships. Such partnerships have radically reshaped the way businesses and the Government interact at local level, and they mark a sharp break from the top-down, politically driven regional policy of the previous Government. The winners of the first two rounds of the regional growth fund are expected to create over 13,500 direct jobs and 25,000 indirect jobs in the north-east, including at Gateshead college in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. The Government are taking forward an ambitious work programme that will assist with city deals for core regions, and I encourage all hon. Members present to engage with that.
Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)
Order. Will hon. Gentlemen and Ladies who participated in the last debate and are leaving please do so quietly? As they are doing so, I thank everyone for their courtesy and patience this morning, which has allowed every hon. Member to have at least some say.
Rural Communities
(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)
We now come to the next debate. Hon. Members who were not present for the previous debate will be unaware that the Chairman of Ways and Means has granted me the power to impose time limits on speeches. I notice that a significant number of hon. Members are present for the debate. Seven have already indicated to Mr Speaker that they want to participate, and others who have not written in may well want to contribute. I will therefore say now that I am imposing a six-minute time limit on all speeches, other than of course the speech of the hon. Member introducing the debate. That will carry with it a penalty of one minute per intervention for the first two interventions. Hon. Members can do the maths and work out how many of their colleagues are likely to be able to participate in the debate on that basis. It will be the intention of my successor in the Chair to start to call those on the Front Benches for the winding-up speeches not less than 25 minutes before the end of the debate.
Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)
Thank you, Sir Roger. I will keep my comments as brief as I can, given what you have told us. I begin the debate by thanking a number of organisations for making contributions that have been very useful not only to me, but to other colleagues—in particular, the National Farmers Union, the Federation of Small Businesses, the Countryside Alliance, the Dispensing Doctors Association and BT.
We have been told that the election in 2015 will be fought largely on urban ground, but I hope that in these opening remarks, I can persuade my hon. Friend the Minister that although we might be small in number in rural areas, we are certainly large in political significance. These days, 20% of the population either live or work in rural areas.
As good Conservatives and, I suspect, good Liberal Democrats, we are always pretty sceptical about the concept of an urban-rural divide, just as we are sceptical about a north-south divide. As good Conservatives, good Liberal Democrats and, as the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies), would no doubt claim, good socialists, we embrace cultures and traditions—[Interruption.] He is objecting to being described as a socialist, I suspect. Even some of the more quirky and weird traditions, we welcome and embrace and, hopefully, champion.
However, although rural isolation is a dream or an aspiration for some people, it is unquestionably a challenge or even a nightmare for others. I say that because the challenges facing rural communities are often the same as those facing urban communities; they just emerge in a slightly different way. Those challenges include deprivation, poverty—particularly fuel poverty, which I know other hon. Members want to touch on—the perhaps more limited choice of educational opportunities in rural areas and the cost of fuel, particularly as that applies to medical needs or basic provisions. Let us not forget that rural fuel can be up to 5p a litre more expensive than the fuel that people can buy in urban areas.
There are also challenges in relation to the availability of rural transport and affordable housing, particularly in national parks. I know that one or two hon. Members are lucky enough to live in or near very beautiful parts of Britain. Not surprisingly, the house prices in those areas are much higher and therefore much further out of reach of those who perhaps were born and bred there and want to remain there for the purposes of their job or family life. The availability of health care is often much more of a challenge in rural areas than it is in urban areas, and the fear of crime—not necessarily crime itself, because the incidence of crime is lower in rural areas—is higher, particularly among elderly people. The last challenge is access to financial services. That is a given if people are lucky enough to live in an urban area, but can become and is increasingly becoming a nightmare for people in rural areas. About 300,000 people in rural England do not even have access to a bank account.
There are also challenges for businesses in rural areas. We can take my own constituency of Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire as an example. Someone might want to make relatively minor modifications—minute improvements—to the infrastructure of their factory or depot. They might want to engage in some rather limited activity. However, if they are in a national park or another sensitive area, they have to prepare themselves for a long and expensive fight with the local planning authority, which in so many cases has as its default setting “You must be joking,” rather than “How can we help your business?”
In some places, if people want to compete with their European colleagues by means of an internet-based business, they can forget it. The same is true in relation to mobile phone coverage. I remember my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) mentioning that mobile phone coverage was better in Uzbekistan than in Cumbria. That is ludicrous. As I think I have mentioned in this Chamber before, I cannot talk to hon. Friends in adjacent constituencies because I cannot get mobile phone reception in west Wales. That is a ludicrous disadvantage, and we suffer because of it.
If a company is, as many companies are, a haulage-based business located in rural areas, often around the ports on the coast of England and Wales, what can it do about its overheads when its only two overheads are fuel and people? When it comes to its lorry fleet, what can it do to address the costs that current fuel prices are imposing on those important businesses?
This is an opportunity for the Minister to lay out the Government’s achievements—that will probably include the achievements of Departments other than his own, because this debate is deliberately wide ranging—and to ask himself, as we have asked ourselves, this question. Is rural patience being stretched at the moment? The Government have done well on broadband, food labelling, red tape in farming, and planning, certainly in England—not as yet in Wales, regrettably, thanks to the Welsh Government. I think that, in time, the Government will be seen to have done well on health and health provision, too. However, the rural jury is still out on affordable housing, post offices, mobile phone coverage, fear of crime and, more recently, on VAT on caravans, fuel poverty and transport costs as well. It is therefore not necessarily a rosy picture of Government enthusiasts in rural areas, but they are there for the picking.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
My hon. Friend is giving us a most interesting tour d’horizon of problems in rural areas. None the less, he has not touched for the moment on one important area—local government finance. Does he agree that the Government’s forthcoming review of local government finance across England should enable us to change the situation—to correct the anomaly whereby the Government spend about £200 per head in rural areas and about £400 per head in urban areas? Surely that is wrong and the forthcoming review of local government finance and, incidentally, of health finance as well should correct that anomaly.
Simon Hart
My hon. Friend is spot-on. He also highlights some of the difficulties that arise from the definitions of rural and urban. In the past, not just the previous Government but probably the Government before them struggled to get a proper definition that enables that anomaly to be ironed out.
We probably all agree, on both sides of the House, that rural people are entrepreneurial, innovative and, above all, patient. They feel that they perform well despite government, rather than because of it. That does not necessarily apply specifically to the current Government. It is just a general feeling on the part of rural people that they have the skill and determination to overcome the obstacles that sometimes the Government inadvertently put in their path.
Rural people are unquestionably the key to economic regeneration and job creation in rural areas. There is the statistic, which some people might say is trite, that if every small or medium-sized enterprise in Wales hired just one person, there would be no unemployment in Wales at all. That is the raw statistic. Of course it is simplistic, but we are not talking about anything that is out of the reach of most people who have aspirations for their business. Such people epitomise the strivers politicians from all quarters always talk about. We refer to them as if they were our friends. They are the people who are there to bring the country out of recession, and that, indeed, is what they are doing. Sometimes, however, I question whether we quite recognise the additional challenges people in rural areas face in running their businesses.
As the shadow Minister will recall, we used to accuse Labour of doing things to, rather than for, the countryside. That is the nub of my opening remarks, from which my questions arise. I hope the Minister will be able to describe to us how he will be part of a re-energisation of rural communities. I hope he will remind rural communities not only of the fact that the Government are on their side, but of how they are on their side.
I hope the Minister will also be able to tell us about the Government’s plans for broadband and mobile phone coverage in not only rural areas, but isolated rural areas. If the Government’s plans for 95% of the country go ahead, as I hope they will, the few people left in the furthest retreats of rural Britain—the other 5%—will, through a fairly obvious logic, be put at a further disadvantage.
Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)
My hon. Friend makes a fabulous point for rural communities. I view broadband as the fourth utility nowadays. Does he agree that companies will start to go back to urban areas unless we get broadband right? That would further exacerbate the difficulties rural communities face in surviving.
Simon Hart
My hon. Friend makes a good point well. The struggle to compete with their urban neighbours has already put that question in the minds of some companies and organisations. What a tragedy it would be if the things my hon. Friend talks about happened. That would go against every one of the principles of not only the Conservative party, but the Liberal Democrats and Labour, too. We should not go down that road.
I hope the Minister will set out the real prospects for fuel costs. I hope he will not say what various people who send us briefs from time to time tell us—that fuel would have been more expensive under Labour. That argument does not work in west Wales or, I suspect, anywhere else. We will start convincing fuel and transport-dependent rural businesses that we take their plight seriously only when the price of fuel comes down. I am not going to say to businesses in my area, “I don’t know what you’re complaining about. It would have been much worse had there been another Government.” Let us not deploy that argument; it does not work, it is disingenuous and it is disrespectful to companies worried about whether they can get through to the end of next month, let alone the end of next year.
I hope the Minister can persuade us that young families will be able to afford to buy a house in the area they wish to work in, the area they were born and brought up in or the area they want to stay in and continue to make a contribution in. Perhaps he can tell us how they will be able to do that.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend pay tribute to, and comment on, the opportunities rural communities have under the community right to build scheme to become developers? Small developments can help the affordable housing situation in villages, but many small villages have been prevented from undertaking any development in the past.
Simon Hart
That proposal is welcome. In some areas, of course, it has been subject to bigger planning obstacles than predicted, notwithstanding the improvements that have been made to the planning process, certainly in England. If my community is anything to go by—this is particularly true in the national park, although I do not want to get personal about the national park—even small developers have to pay a significant sum, almost by way of a hidden tax, to undertake such development, and that is a disincentive. I fully recognise my hon. Friend’s positive message, but there are some negative ones, too, and we need to address them if such proposals are to be universally fair.
Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend recognise that there is a fundamental need to distinguish between protecting and preserving the countryside, which are two different things? To protect the countryside, we need development and change so that communities can expand and look after their schools and shops.
Simon Hart
I wish I had thought of that myself because it is such an important point. We are sometimes distracted by the preservation argument, but the countryside is actually all about people, jobs and communities, and the landscape, which we are sometimes fixated by, is only a consequence of the tender stewardship of generations of dedicated enthusiasts of the rural big society. My hon. Friend is right to point out that unless we have the conditions and facilities to encourage that, everything else we, the nation and our foreign visitors admire about the countryside will be compromised.
My next question for the Minister—it is not a sarcastic question—is which bits of the recent Budget does he believe give hope and encouragement to businesses in rural areas? Which bits remind them that they should welcome life under the coalition and let them see some sort of vision arising out of the Chancellor’s recent comments?
In drawing to a conclusion, I want to refer to the views of voters and constituents in west Wales. I do not know whether I am unique in this respect, but voters in my area do not really give a damn where the Prime Minister went to school. They have no interest whatever in who he might or might not have to dinner, and they certainly have no interest in what might or might not be on his tax return. All they want to know is whether the Government are bold, trustworthy and competent, and whether the Government’s values are the same as theirs. Those are the things I get asked about—not all the other fluff and nonsense that floats around this place from time to time—and they probably reflect the views of rural, and indeed urban, people across Britain.
In my short opening remarks, I hope I have been able to provide an absolutely open goal for the Minister to aim at. I hope he can convince us that we can continue proudly to defend the reputation of the Conservative party as the party of the countryside.
Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)
Order. The reason for the slight pause is that I was looking to see who had risen to speak. [Interruption.] Okay, please sit down. Ten Members are seeking to speak, and others may seek to intervene. That being so, and despite the fact that I announced at the start of the debate that I wanted to curtail speeches to six minutes, I will actually curtail them to five minutes. That will allow the Front-Bench spokesmen to start at about 12.5 pm. It will also allow a little injury time for interventions. For those who came in slightly late, let me explain that the system is exactly as it is in the main Chamber. For each of the first two interventions, there will be an extra minute, so a five-minute speech could turn into a seven-minute speech. We do not have the same advanced technology as we do in the main Chamber, so I will indicate when Members have one minute left to go by ringing the bell in front of me.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
I will be brief, as you requested, Sir Roger.
This is a very worthy and great subject for debate, but we have not debated it often enough. Had there been time, I would have talked about a large number of issues, including fuel, taxation, transportation, post offices, broadband and much else. I will, however, confine myself to two issues that are particularly important to my constituents and, indeed, to constituents elsewhere in north Wales: health care and unfit housing.
I am glad the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) has raised this issue, and I warmly congratulate him on securing the debate. He has a fine record in Wales and, indeed, throughout the UK, on standing up for rural communities, and he is to be praised for that.
As I said, a couple of issues are particularly important in my constituency. The first is health care, which is very problematic. Some hon. Members might wonder why I, as a Welsh Member, am raising the issue of health, given that it is devolved. During the recent debate on health, however, sufficient attention was not given to the fact that many people in north Wales and mid-Wales access treatment on the other side of the border. I have raised the issue with Health Ministers over the past few weeks, but I am unsatisfied by their response. I have also raised it with the Secretary of State for Wales, who had a better understanding of it, but I still do not think it has been tackled properly.
The issue of health impacts on people in rural areas. Most of north Wales, and particularly north-west Wales, is rural. People from north-west Wales travel two and, sometimes, three hours just to access specialist treatment. Most of us will have had briefings on the debate, with references, for example, to an ambulance response time of just a few minutes. The reality in the area I represent is travel of two or three hours. I had a response from the Minister suggesting that we need to think of the issue as a problem of people registering with GPs just the other side of the border; but it is a great deal more than that. I ask him to bear that in mind. He will have a great many points to respond to, but I wish that the Government would take the matter more seriously. I see that the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) will speak for the Opposition, and I wish that the Welsh Labour Government would take the matter more seriously too.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) on securing the debate. Before leaving the question of health, does the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) agree with me on the importance of dispensing doctors practices in rural communities? They are particularly important for getting treatments to elderly and infirm people in rural communities such as the towns and villages south of Scunthorpe, which are served by the Riverside practice in my area. That is an important part of health care provision in rural areas.
Hywel Williams
Briefly, there are GP surgeries in my area that dispense, and that has been a vital part of the service to the population. It does not take two or three hours to travel to a pharmacy, but it is highly inconvenient, especially when bus services are so patchy.
I want to refer to housing, and to mention that we have many unfit houses in Wales. However, the repair and renovation of housing is subject to VAT, and I think that that is wrong. VAT is charged on repair and renovation, but it is not charged in the same way on new build. Plaid Cymru has repeatedly called for a tax cut. It might surprise some hon. Members to hear that a usually left-of-centre party has called for tax cuts, but that is a particularly useful one. It is a matter of equality between people, such as a young couple renovating their first house—adding a kitchen and bathroom to the back of a pre-1919 terraced house, and being charged VAT for it—and someone retiring, say, from the City to the home counties, and building a retirement home, free of VAT.
Mr Gray
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that some particularly unfortunate small print in the Budget was about VAT on the restoration of historic churches and houses? Because of that, it will be necessary to do away with the restoration of the church at Castle Combe in my constituency.
Hywel Williams
The hon. Gentleman makes a fine point. I had a hugely confusing conversation with the Welsh Government, some time ago, about historic and listed buildings being free of VAT. The conclusion, after 20 minutes of discussion, was agreement that they were free of VAT—but only for new build. Given that we were talking about historic and listed properties, the idea of building them anew seemed somewhat peculiar to me, to say the least.
I will conclude by saying that we have social housing in Wales, as elsewhere. Social housing is extremely valuable, but often it is of the wrong type, and in the wrong place. The ability of social landlords and local authorities to let houses in rural areas has been severely curtailed. In many villages in my area, social housing has been sold. It is not available. The proposed changes in housing benefit are unlikely to help. More people under 35 will be looking for houses in multiple occupation, of which we have few in rural Wales.
Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)
Order. Before we proceed, I now have a fairly definitive list of hon. Members who have applied to speak. Although it is exceptional to do so, it may help if I give the names of those people, so that hon. Members not on the list may consider whether to intervene. From the Government Benches, in the order of application, speakers will be Mr Rory Stewart, Caroline Nokes, Sheryll Murray, Glyn Davies, Roger Williams and Neil Parish; and now that Mr Hywel Williams has spoken the only name I have from the Opposition Benches is Mr Ian Paisley. Any hon. Member not on the list has not so far indicated a wish to speak.
Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)
I join everyone in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) on securing this important debate. The enormous number of people here is testimony to the importance of the subject.
Speaking on behalf of Cumbria, I want to say that we need to recognise, when we talk about Government support for rural areas, that there is already significant Government support for them. We cannot start the debate pretending that rural areas are somehow entirely neglected or forgotten. It is correct that there should be Government support for them, but we should recognise that in per capita terms—and of course, it is driven by our need—Government support can be considerable. In our part of Cumbria, for example, we run two district hospitals for a population of 300,000 people. We have the smallest high school and the smallest sixth form in England. That means that the per capita costs of running those services are high. That is a form of cross-subsidy from other parts of the country.
Therefore, we should not over-push the argument. We should not stand up again and again in the House of Commons and present ourselves as victims. To do so is dangerous. If we present ourselves as victims and demand more and more transfer payments, and start to take on board the arguments about productivity and the connection between rural areas and the City of London, for example, we will create unpleasant tensions. We will end up with people in London saying “Why should we subsidise rural areas?” We do not want to get into that conversation. We will, in short, find that we are having the same conversation that we are now having with Scotland, which has become poisoned by the question of how much money is moving north of the border, and how much is moving south.
Nor should rural areas try to imitate cities. One of the most dangerous things that we have been doing in Cumbria has been to pursue industrialisation policies that are entirely unsuitable for rural areas. Of course it is true, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) said, that we need to be sure that the economy flourishes in rural areas. However, that does not mean going into an area such as Penrith and The Border, where currently we have close to full employment, and building businesses for which we have no workers, shipping them in from other parts of the country, then saying we have a housing shortage and building another 400 houses, and then saying we do not have jobs for the people in those 400 houses, and building more businesses. That may be convenient for district councils that could generate money from that kind of operation, but it is not what is demanded by our area, our population, or our economy.
Instead, we need to look at the country as a single complementary unit—complementary in the sense that city and rural needs are different, but also in the sense that we are one community, one country and one nation. We are not about transfer payments. We cannot allow people in London to see themselves as some city state that is paying for the rest of the country. We must understand that our contribution is valuable.
Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)
I suspect that many people in London would, however, be surprised to find out that in rural areas such as mine people cannot get a school bus. I am thinking specifically of the 7.55 am bus from Sutton in Ashfield to Tibshelf, which has been removed, throwing mums’ lives into chaos. Would the hon. Gentleman agree that getting a school bus is not just desirable but essential?
Rory Stewart
Absolutely, and I thank the hon. Lady for raising that point.
With the caveat that we do not want to present ourselves as victims, it is essential to demand the basic services that other people in the country take for granted. Those could be buses, or access to hospitals or schools.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
I am so pleased that my hon. Friend is happy with the funding of education in Cumbria. As a Leicestershire MP I am not happy with the funding settlement for Leicestershire, which is the lowest-funded county, per capita, in the whole of Great Britain. We are in the bizarre situation, with no indication of any movement by the Government to repair the damage, in which the education of every pupil in the city of Leicester is valued at a stunning £800 a year more than that of every pupil in Leicestershire. That is untenable and cannot be perpetuated. To say that is not to plead poverty: there is a clear disparity between the education funding for rural areas such as Leicestershire and that for cities.
Rory Stewart
I am certainly not going to stand up in the House of Commons and say that I am happy with Government funding for education in Cumbria. There is not a single person in this Chamber who would say that they feel happy with the funding for their local area, but we need to strike a balance that is sustainable for the nation. There are two things that we need to do. Instead of focusing on money we should consider what the Government can provide—above all, I am thinking about infrastructure and getting the broadband in the ground and sufficient mobile coverage—and we must understand that Government could provide a lot more for rural areas if they gave space to rural communities to fill in the gaps. In our case, for example, the first responders enormously help the ambulance service, but they are not allowed to deal with children, which takes out a whole chunk of the population who could be served by volunteers within our communities.
In relation to our air ambulance service, the Government could do an enormous amount by exempting VAT on fuel. However, in relation to broadband, which is the most exciting area of all, it is about assigning responsibility. It is about the Government saying to communities, “This is what you ought to do and this is what the Government will not do.”
We should see rural communities not as victims but as the vanguard of Britain; as miraculous places that produce things that other parts of the country do not. In Cumbria, we have a magic alchemy that turns wet grass into productive protein, which we can sell around the world. If we get the broadband right, small and medium-sized enterprises from rural communities can challenge the rest of the world, but that involves education, focus and confidence. Importantly, we can provide an image for the 21st century on how to live in rural areas, and we no longer need to present ourselves as victims.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I congratulate the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) on securing this debate. We should celebrate the fact that this Parliament has been more rural centric in its attitude than previous Parliaments for a long period of time. Parliament is now starting to speak up for the countryside, which possibly reflects the fact that we are lobbied strongly by our countryside constituents who want a fair crack of the whip and that is something that should be encouraged. There needs to be a voice rising from the countryside for a vibrant, healthy agricultural industry, from the farmer, to the processer, to the consumer. That is what our countryside should be all about. We need policies that sustain our agricultural industry so that our living, breathing rural communities continue to contribute the most important thing—sustainable food produce.
My own constituency in Northern Ireland has an agricultural economy that employs some 20% of our workers. As the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) mentioned, we must move away from the public sector and towards a more balanced economy. That is happening; agricultural productivity is growing, which is positive, but it can only be sustained if this place starts to put in place some very strong policies to keep young people on our land; to encourage young farmers to stay in the industry; and to ensure that the key area increases in pillar two of the common agricultural policy should not be at the direct expense of pillar one, which supports agricultural productivity. Supporting agricultural productivity is the most important thing that can be achieved by EU and CAP policies. What the Westminster Government should be doing is putting money where it matters most to assist the farmer to produce sustainable, good, traceable food which is what our consumers want and need. That is the critical issue that out rural policies should be driving at.
However, this debate is more about rural communities and remoteness. I represent a constituency that also includes the inhabited island of Rathlin.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and I congratulate the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) on bringing this matter forward. It is a really good issue and we are all supportive of it. My hon. Friend mentions the island of Rathlin and has also talked about agriculture. Sometimes a poor relation in rural communities is the fishing industry. Does he think that the fishing industry needs help from Government, and that the fishing villages initiative is one way of getting money to those communities? It is important to create jobs at this critical time.
Ian Paisley
Absolutely. When we talk about agricultural productivity, we must not forget our fishermen who produce a harvest from our seas and who must form part of this important debate.
Nothing could be more remote than living on an island, off an island, off an island, and that is what happens in my constituency. Those people on Rathlin know what remoteness really means. They have to travel by boat to get to their mainland in Ulster. It is critical that we address the needs of that community. When rural post offices close or a bank closes in Ballycastle or Bushmills, it has an even bigger impact on a place such as Rathlin. Whenever fuel costs go up, the knock-on effect in Rathlin is twice as big as it is on the mainland. Whenever we speak about rural communities, we must understand that there is level of remoteness that is doubly remote and we must take that on board whenever we address this issue.
Some hon. Members have mentioned broadband. Broadband does not operate appropriately in areas such as Rathlin island. A GP comes over once a week by boat to see his patients, and when he finds that the computer does not work, he cannot order the prescription from the mainland of Ulster. What happens next? Those people who are already remote feel the real sudden impact of living on that island, off an island, off an island. We must ensure that the issue of broadband is properly addressed for our rural communities because it makes a difference. It allows young entrepreneurs who live in remote areas to create businesses. It also enables our tourism industry to flourish and our community to be driven forward.
I leave one thought with the Minister: rural proofing should be a golden thread running through all policy. Whatever Department is involved, it must consider how a policy affects the people in the rural United Kingdom, because they matter most.
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) for securing this important debate. I will keep my remarks brief. In the spirit of alliteration that we saw throughout the Easter recess, I will focus on the two p’s—planning and pubs. I am a little surprised that so far we have not had any comment on rural pubs. In my constituency, village pubs close frequently. In rural areas across the country, they close at a rate of six per week. In my constituency, we have seen the phenomenon of pub companies, where a leaseholder will have several pubs, one of which might be very successful, but most of which are failing. The failing pubs are dragging down the popular, well liked village pubs. This is a classic case for the community right-to-buy policy, whereby a village can step in and rescue a critical and important asset that provides not just a place to meet and have a drink, but a number of other services such as post office facilities and cash points. Without such services, that community might be very isolated.
I spent an entire day last summer recess with a pub company, visiting various pubs across the Romsey and Southampton North constituency. It may sound like a pub crawl, but I can assure hon. Members that it was not. Representing a constituency that has both rural and urban areas, I was struck by the stark differences between the two. I saw how easy and possible it was to run a successful and thriving pub in a suburb or in a city compared with running a pub in a village, where there is a much smaller customer base. I welcome the community right to buy policy, and I hope that we will see some progress in helping to preserve pubs in my constituency in the future.
Planning, the second area on which I wish to focus, is always something of a political hot potato. What I have seen in my constituency over the past six weeks or so, certainly as the local authority produces its core strategy, is the emphasis placed by local people on having a greater say in planning and more control. Test Valley borough council was at the vanguard—this will mean nothing to most people—of policy ESN 05. The clue is in the 05. Some years ago, the council introduced a policy that allowed local communities to propose small affordable housing developments that were specifically designed for local people. People had to prove that they had a coherent link to a village, to gain access to one of the affordable homes being built there. It is an excellent policy and I am pleased to see that, through the Localism Act 2011, it is being widened and used across the country. But of course, it produces something of a conflict, because ties to local areas generally have to be very current and we have a lot of people living in our towns and on the edges of the city of Southampton who may have been forced out of the villages years ago and now have great aspirations to move back to them. There also tends to be a little bit of conflict between villages, as people who live in a nearby village will try to claim that they have a good link to a village that has introduced an affordable scheme, so there is—as ever—an enormous balancing act to be done.
The key issue that I want to highlight is that of productive land. I was pleased to hear the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) talk about the importance of productive agricultural land, because that issue is certainly a huge concern around the edges of Romsey, where significant farm land could be brought into agricultural use very easily and would be very productive. But of course, landowners tend to look towards the opportunities that they can gain by providing their land for future housing development.
My big plea to the Government is to ask them to consider changing the rules to make the green belt easier to establish. Currently, it is very tricky to establish what is green belt. Many people in rural Hampshire actually believe that the county has many areas of green-belt land; it does not, and there is only one small corner of green-belt land in the county. Much of the countryside in Hampshire is just deemed to be ordinary countryside, without any special designation whatsoever.
I have a final plea to the Minister. Will he please give greater consideration to the beautiful River Test, from which an enormous amount of water is abstracted, to ensure that we have enough water for the new houses that are being built?
Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) for securing this important and timely debate today. The concerns of rural communities and how the Government can best support those communities is a very broad issue. Many of my hon. Friends have already mentioned the importance of rural communities in their constituencies, and I just want to focus on a few issues that affect my constituents in South East Cornwall.
Rural transport is very important. The Commission for Rural Communities noted that rural residents placed public transport as a top priority for improving their quality of life. In my constituency, four out of five electors use their own motorised transport. Around 80% of households in South East Cornwall own a car or van, with about half of those households owning more than one vehicle. In South East Cornwall, a car is not a luxury; it is a necessity.
There is no doubt that changes in taxation and legislation relating to the car hit the person living in a rural area much harder than people in a city, who frequently have transport choice. Also, having a 4x4 vehicle in a rural area is often a necessity, particularly for farmers, but it is penalised under green taxation. We accept that the Chancellor has changed Labour’s plans to introduce heavy fuel duty, which were in its forward budget; indeed, the cost of a litre of fuel would have increased by an additional 5p under Labour. The Chancellor has delayed the extra 3p per litre increase.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that, in places such as her constituency or mine, we have a real problem with fuel price competition? Just a few miles—perhaps four or five miles—down the road from my constituency, fuel can be several pence a litre cheaper than in my constituency. I have raised that issue with large retailers, including supermarkets, but they have said that they look at a small geographical area to set the price. Does that policy not mean that we have a problem in our fuel market for rural residents?
Sheryll Murray
We certainly do. I happened to travel to the midlands at the weekend and the price of fuel in South East Cornwall was 10p per litre higher than in Bristol. I wrote a letter to the Chancellor last night, outlining my constituents’ worries about fuel prices. I said that I appreciated the terrible economic situation that the previous Government had left us in, and I fully understand that there is little room for manoeuvre. However, the fuel situation is getting worse and causing many of my constituents great hardship.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
Has the hon. Lady reflected on the position of a lot of the smaller, independent, family-run filling stations? We are losing those stations by the hundreds every year, and in the process we often lose other valuable village facilities, such as a shop or post office, which are often incorporated in the business.
Sheryll Murray
The hon. Gentleman will accept that that is not a trend that has just begun under this Government. It started in the early 2000s, when we saw petrol stations in rural areas haemorrhage, which demonstrates that there was very little support for our rural communities under the last Government.
Public transport is weak in South East Cornwall; there are very few buses and there is little access to the railways. It is clear that the majority of the rural population drive, but it is also important to have some kind of alternative. Everyone has periods when they cannot drive, whether because of age, medical reasons or the car has broken down. Unlike in towns, where the local GP’s surgery can be a few hundred metres from someone’s home, in the country it can be a few miles away.
Similarly, in rural areas, train stations are often a great distance away from people’s homes and transport is needed to get to the station. So railways cannot be seen as a solution in their own right. However, we need to encourage people on to the railways and other forms of public transport. The train is often the best method for commuting to the cities, thus avoiding the congested roads that buses also travel along.
The March 2012 report, “Reforming our Railways: Putting the Customer First” said that the Government are allocating funding for additional capacity for people to commute to cities at peak times, including faster journey times, more frequent trains, more through-journeys, more reliable journeys and more cost-efficient journeys. I hope that the South West Trains franchise will make some of those improvements.
The lack of public transport and the increase in the price of fuel are major concerns for people in South East Cornwall. Wages in Cornwall are very low in relation to both the south-west as a whole and the rest of the country. In 2001, the average income per household in South East Cornwall was around £23,000. Since then, the figure has not changed significantly. Any increase in fuel prices is disproportionately felt in my constituency, as are increases to many other household bills. In my constituency, the average house price is around 10 times the average household income.
Transport is important in supporting our rural communities, and it has a knock-on effect on people’s standards of living. I am glad that the Government are committed to helping our rural poor. There are initiatives such as the Cott Yard community resource centre in St Neot in my constituency, where £330,000 was provided under the community and social enterprise, or CASE, initiative, which is a funding stream in Cornwall that was part of the rural development plan for England. That project is one such example of the Government helping rural areas. It provides rural workshops, a post office and a library run by volunteers, to deliver services in rural areas. Another such example is the fisheries local action group, or FLAG, initiative, whereby substantial funding is provided under the European fisheries fund. It has been enlarged to support coastal communities as a whole, extending out to one mile from the coast. I am really pleased that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has introduced those initiatives, and long may they continue and be built on.
We all accept the economic legacy left by Labour’s maxing out of our credit cards, and I hope that the two examples that I have just given will be built on, so that we have faster positive changes to help our constituents living in rural areas.
Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
Thank you, Sir Roger, for calling me to speak in this debate. Yet again, it is a pleasure to serve under your respected control.
I want to take a Welsh perspective and in particular a rural Welsh perspective. Rural Wales is where I have always lived and where I always want to live, and above all else I try to represent its interests in the House of Commons. That is why I am really pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) has secured the debate.
I have been involved in rural development for—frighteningly—about half a century, beginning with the local young farmers club. One of my proudest achievements was winning the bardic chair at a YFC eisteddfod and the speech that I made was on the future of rural Wales. The essay that I wrote advocated building a new town of 70,000 in the village of Caersws, smack in the middle of my current constituency. I would not continue to advocate that as a policy, but the underlying principle is much the same—a recognition that the traditional land-based industries in rural areas could no longer sustain a social economy. They did not employ enough people, and other forms of industry had to come in, which during the time that I have been involved have principally been manufacturing and tourism, although of course there are many others, which depend a lot on the development of broadband and on not falling behind urban areas, a point that other Members have made.
Many important issues are involved in developing these different forms of employment, but I want to talk about just two of them today, one of which, planning policy, has already been raised. We need an efficient planning services policy, and we must have attitudinal change. I was the chairman of a planning authority for about seven years, and at that time the purpose was to encourage development and do what we could to make it acceptable. Today, the position seems to be almost one of “How can we stop development?” It seems to be about making developers go through a whole series of hoops that cost them a fortune—making the process as difficult as possible. In my constituency, good projects that would provide employment are sitting in the planning department’s in-trays, and at a time when we are suffering recession and high unemployment across Britain such absolutely outrageous behaviour desperately needs to be changed.
[Mr Jim Hood in the Chair]
My other point is relevant to those of us who live near the England-Wales border. If we are to have development in rural areas, roads and efficient transport links are important. Between England and Wales there are at least three or four places where the advent of devolution has meant that projects have not gone forward. On the England-Wales border between Shrewsbury and Welshpool in my constituency a bad stretch of road is hugely inhibiting development, but because it is cross-border and committing money to its improvement is not a priority for the west midlands highways authority, the work cannot go ahead. We have to focus on Welsh and English Governments working together to overcome problems that inhibit development.
Rural Wales is a beautiful place, and that beauty is a great economic driver. To take full advantage of it, however, we must recognise its value and consider a wide definition of tourism rather than just the traditional ones. Where I live, in the village of Bettws there is a hatchery—a game shooting development—which employs 100 people. It is amazing. The income that shooting brings into Montgomeryshire and rural Wales is absolutely enormous—many tens of millions of pounds.
Last week I visited a new fish pass in Felindre near Llanidloes, which people might say is a small development; it cost £152,000, and was built by the Environment Agency, but it has hugely increased the size of the salmon spawning area in Wales. The Welsh salmon fishing industry contributes £150 million to the economy. The fish pass is a small development. It fits in. It is beautiful to look at and has a massive economic benefit. It is not just public authorities that are doing such things. On the same day, I called in on an osprey observation point close by. Nora and Monty, two ospreys that arrived many years ago, came back last week. I was the 350th person to visit that day, and 700 people had visited during the previous weekend. When the ospreys nest and have chicks, visitor numbers will increase. The development is a huge economic driver because of all the people coming in. [Interruption.] I see the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) nodding in agreement. On the same day, I travelled a little further into his constituency, stopping at Bwlch Nant yr Arian to watch the red kites feeding, as do hundreds of other people. Forty years ago I spent half a day in his constituency, at Pontrhydfendigaid and Cwmystwyth—this could be testing the Hansard people; I might have to check the report later. I sat there for half a day to watch one red kite half a mile away—
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
It is a great pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. I congratulate the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) on securing the debate. I have fond memories of his constituency. Back in 1999, I stood in the first Assembly elections and managed to come fifth. The good people of his constituency were not ready for me then, but I enjoyed the experience and the fantastic countryside there.
The hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire has made the topic of this conversation deliberately wide, and Members have taken advantage of that. I want to mention one or two issues that perhaps have not been covered. First, I congratulate the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on its determined efforts to eradicate bovine TB in this country, which I know are appreciated by the farming people here. They do not bear comparison, however, with what is happening in Wales, where the farmers are almost despairing about what can be done to alleviate their problems.
I want to talk a little about financial services in rural areas. I have recently had the honour of introducing two debates in this Chamber on the closure of banks in rural areas, which is an important issue because rural communities want to attract not only tourists but businesses, and without banking facilities that can be difficult. I think that not just in rural areas or in Wales but more widely, the relationship between small businesses and banks has never been at a lower ebb.
Mr Mark Williams
Will my hon. Friend also reflect on the banks’ usual retort when asked about the diminishing number of branches, which is that online banking is a growing occurrence? In some parts of our constituencies that is not a reality because we have no broadband at all, let alone the superfast type.
Roger Williams
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and it is not only the absence of broadband. Sometimes, older people do not have the facility or the aptitude to take advantage of online banking, so we still need the face-to-face presence and advice that bank customers greatly value.
The issue also goes a little further. Today, I was sad to see that the number of complaints about banks made by small businesses to the Financial Ombudsman Service has gone up by 10% in the past year. It is only very small businesses that can use the ombudsman facility, so we have a number of such businesses being badly treated by their banks. For instance, not only are overdraft or loan requests turned down but the terms and conditions of such facilities are changed midway through. The Government once again need to sit down with the banks and say, “If we are all in this together and we are going for growth, you have to play your part.”
I think that the Government sometimes do not really understand the structure of business in this country. Whenever they trumpet support for business they talk about reducing corporation tax. That is much valued, but out of the nearly 4 million businesses in England only one third are incorporated, so the other two thirds will not benefit from the reduction in the tax, and the £100,000 reduction in capital allowances will particularly weigh on businesses that pay their tax through self-assessment—sole traders and partners.
On the role of independent filling stations, one operator in Sennybridge in my constituency has brought me evidence that the wholesale operation of the petrol supply chain is concentrated in a small number of hands, which could lead to difficulties with competition and access. He has sent information to the Office of Fair Trading, and I will send a copy to the Minister. This is a dangerous situation. Many of our independent filling stations have already closed, and if the process continues, a lot more could do so.
I am looking at the time, Mr Hood. The clock says that I have spoken for 11 minutes already, so I am not sure how much longer I have.
Roger Williams
I commend the legislation introduced in England by the Government on small businesses’ right to buy. I point to two examples in my constituency. The Shoemakers’ Arms, a pub in Pentre Bach that was closed, has been taken over by the local community and is now flourishing. The community in Llanbadarn Fynydd have done the same with their village shop and filling station. Those are examples not of short-termism but of sustained success. They show what communities can do if given the opportunity.
I promised to mention the traditional makers of cider in my speech, so I will do so in the last 10 seconds. For goodness’ sake, do not let us push them out of business in trying to deal with alcohol abuse in our society.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to serve under you, Mr Hood. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) on securing this debate on rural poverty and the rural countryside.
We must talk up the countryside, because we are sometimes victims of our own success. One reason why house prices are so high in the countryside is that people who come on holiday to Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and other places—they even venture into Wales occasionally—retire there. Of course, we welcome retired people, but they do drive up the price of houses. Then people who work in the countryside, where wages are usually about 12% to 15% lower, have great difficulty buying properties. That is why affordable homes and planning are important. We must enable local villages, hamlets and communities to have affordable homes. I would like not only affordable homes but shared ownership, which gives people a chance to buy a share in a property and later, perhaps, to buy the whole property. It allows more people into home ownership.
Andrew Bridgen
Is my hon. Friend aware that the average age in rural communities is seven years older than in urban communities? Is it not an option for exception sites—I will be pushing for my parishes in North West Leicestershire—to provide retirement bungalows for people, with qualifications? Often, a widow or widower who has lived in the village all their life may own a large family house. They no longer require all that space, but they do not want to lose their friends and relations in the village. If they moved to a retirement bungalow, they could free up a house so that a new family could move into the village.
Neil Parish
I agree with my hon. Friend. Managing housing stock effectively is absolutely right. We need a supply of retirement bungalows so that people can move out of three or four-bedroom houses and live in their own area. I am a great believer in encouraging people to move, not browbeating them. It is essential to have such housing in an area.
I congratulate the Minister on what the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been doing about red tape in farming and agriculture. We want to extend that beyond farming to all small businesses. We are a nation of shopkeepers and small businesses, and nowhere are they more essential than in the countryside. We need much less regulation so that businesses can thrive.
Food prices are rising. Although many people might not welcome that, it is a stimulus to the countryside in many respects. It stimulates not only agriculture but food processing. I would welcome the Government announcement that we hope for in the Queen’s Speech of a grocery trade adjudicator to ensure that the right proportion of the prices that we pay in shops returns to those who produce and process the food. That is absolutely essential.
I know that I will not make myself entirely popular with those who represent constituencies involved with the oil industry when I say that what has driven up the price of petrol at the pumps is the fact that crude oil prices have risen. If crude oil prices have risen globally, the companies are making vast profits, because their investment has not increased. We should tap into that a little more in order to reduce fuel prices in the countryside. Fuel is not a luxury; it is a necessity. I do not care how much money the Government invest in rural bus services; in many places in my constituency, if one waited for a bus, it would never come, and if it came, it would probably be going in the wrong direction. That might be facetious, but it is absolutely true. We must face up to the reality that in many small rural areas, bus companies will never run efficiently. Where we can make that happen, we must, but we need to consider it.
Tourism is hugely valued and is linked with agriculture and the countryside, and we must help it. I welcome the Government money for that in Devon, Cornwall and Somerset.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
I return to the start of my hon. Friend’s speech, which is positive about our rural communities. I agree that they are absolutely thriving. Over the Easter period, I visited an engineering business in my constituency that is expanding so fast—it has 70 workers now—that it cannot find premises. We have 11 micro-breweries in my Yorkshire constituency, and a new dye house—so there is lots of vibrancy in our rural communities.
Neil Parish
I welcome my hon. Friend’s comments. I want to ensure that we do not leave this debate thinking that everything in the countryside is doom and gloom. There is much going on. That leads me to broadband and superfast broadband. The Government have invested £30 million in Devon and Somerset. We want to ensure that that delivers broadband to isolated areas as well, so that the easiest areas to get at are not picked off and the rest left. That is essential.
My final point involves school funding. Devon is 247th in the league; it is among the least funded in the country. We talk about fairness. I am not griping or grouching. We need fair delivery of funding throughout the country. Rural schools are small and cost more to run, so we need a fairer system.
I welcome this debate. The presence of Members from all parties shows how strongly we feel that the rural community deserves great support.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Mr Hood. I congratulate the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart)—whose constituency might, sadly, disappear, like many others—on securing this debate. It is a fine opportunity to ask the Minister for an update on the Government’s progress or otherwise towards sustainable rural communities.
I congratulate all the Members who have made speeches and interventions; I am afraid that to mention them all would take my whole contribution, but they include the hon. Members for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, for Arfon (Hywel Williams), for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray), for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies), for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) and for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish). They spoke splendidly on behalf of their constituents and about constituency matters. I particularly want to mention the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley), who introduced a new concept to the parliamentary lexicon: an island off an island off an island. That is an extreme example of rurality.
The Minister and others here today will undoubtedly have received a sound schooling in the classics and will be familiar with the words of the esteemed Roman poet Virgil, who wrote 2,000 years ago—I apologise in advance for my limited Latin—“Quo moriture ruis?”, or
“Whither art thou rushing to destruction?”
At times in recent months, this Government, intent on the destruction of rural relationships built up over many years and of the countryside itself, have seemed to epitomise Virgil’s question. They have been seen to support rural communities only in the same way that Herod supported juvenile population control.
I refer of course to the national planning policy framework and its rushed, appallingly crass and ill-thought-out proposals for development. It seemed that the countryside, our green belt, our precious natural environment and our communities were set for destruction in a free for all, profit-driven rampage of executive homes, whereas the crying need in rural areas is for a range of homes, especially affordable homes for local people. The situation is worsening under this Government.
Concerns have been publicly and forcibly expressed by local authorities throughout the land, including Conservative-controlled authorities in the constituencies of the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell), the Minister for Housing and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps) and, for good measure, the Chancellor himself. The sorts of organisation that one would be happy to take home to meet one’s mother, such as the National Trust and the Campaign to Protect Rural England, suddenly found themselves in complete opposition to the Government and vilified by them. It is not often that the National Trust is painted as a pinko, lefty, subversive group, but ConservativeHome, that megaphone for Tory tendencies on the web—if that is not mixing my technologies—described it as
“some demented Marxist agitprop outfit”,
while Government Ministers described its work as “risible”. Indeed, the eminently quotable and often-quoted Minister for the Cabinet Office weighed in by saying that
“our position is right. I think this idea that creating a presumption in favour of sustainable development is somehow a massive erosion of the ability to conserve, is—”.
The Minister then used an expletive that was deleted from reports. It was a vernacular term that I believe to be mid-18th century slang derived from the German for “balls.”
Those same Ministers have been forced by their own MPs and the voice of middle England into a series of humiliating U-turns. What was a seeming rush to destruction—not just of the countryside, but of the self-styled party of the countryside—has been barely rescued from disaster at the last moment. That is just one U-turn fiasco, which followed hot on the heels of the forestry sell-off fiasco. My advice to the Government and to Ministers is to think things through. If there are too many U-turns, the Government, not to mention the public, will not know which way they are facing on any issue.
I thank the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire again for giving the Under-Secretary the opportunity to make clear where the Government stand on key areas of support for rural communities. Local enterprise partnerships have been noted for their variable quality and for their scant attention in many areas to rural economic development and farming. Does the Under-Secretary agree with those concerns and, if so, what is he doing about it?
The Government profess localism in every breath, so will the Under-Secretary guarantee that in the provision of housing on farms, local planning authorities will be given the flexibility to allow generational succession, in recognition of the worrying age profile of active farmers and the need to do everything possible to encourage new entrants? In response to the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire, who made a good speech, it is a question of attitudinal changes on the ground and of positivism towards the development of agricultural holdings. The Welsh Government have delivered such localism. Will the Westminster coalition Government do the same?
In every other breath, Ministers from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs profess the critical need to enhance food security for the UK, so will the Under-Secretary explain why food production does not feature in the core principles of the national planning policy framework?
Rural living and working have many advantages, particularly if remote working and advances in remote communications can be harnessed. What assessment has the Under-Secretary made of the brake placed on rural economic development by the emerging digital divide, whereby the expansion potential of rural businesses is frequently inhibited, the productivity of home workers is affected, and farmers have difficulty completing online forms because of broadband not-spots and slow broadband speeds? In that respect, I commend the Farmers Weekly “Battling for broadband” campaign. Is the Under-Secretary worried about the potential for a growing digital divide between superfast urban areas and super-slow remote rural economies? The latter could benefit so much more from good broadband access.
When I was a DEFRA Minister, I had the privilege of visiting tremendous communities and people who had come together to save their village shop, pub or library, or who had filled a transport gap by creating diverse community transport schemes. Increasingly, local people are being asked to do more and more to sustain the vitality of their communities, but since this Government came to power, support from regional development authorities has been lost because they were unceremoniously scrapped, the community-owned pubs support programme has been cut and local authority budgets are under pressure. As has been said, cuts to local authority funding hit rural communities hardest, because of the added cost of provision of services in rural areas. What are the Government doing against that stark backdrop to help a greater proportion of communities to save their pubs, shops, banks, post offices, libraries and other services?
More than 4 million UK households—the majority of them in rural areas—are off the main gas grid and rely on heating oil, liquefied petroleum gas, solid fuels, mains electricity and microgeneration. The average cost of heating a typical three-bedroom home in the UK can be 50% higher when using heating oil, and as much as 100% higher when using LPG rather than mains gas. What are the Government doing to support home owners in our rural communities, who are more exposed to household poverty because of rising off-grid costs?
May I ask the Under-Secretary when or whether we will see firm proposals on petrol pricing in rural areas? He and his colleagues spoke eloquently and regularly about the issue in opposition, yet the very selective trials in the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the islands in the Clyde, the Northern Isles and the Isles of Scilly, which offered a discount that was described at the time by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury as
“terrific news for communities which have long suffered the effects of high fuel costs”,
are already jeopardised by the overall rising cost of fuel, which threatens to wipe out the discount. That view is not mine, but that of the Chief Secretary’s Lib Dem comrade, the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael). It is indeed “terrific news”, but I do not anticipate it appearing on Lib Dem fliers.
What has happened to wider plans on rural petrol pricing? Are they just another victim of the Chancellor’s relentless, one-eyed focus on deficit reduction above growth? What assessment has the Under-Secretary made of the impact on rural petrol retailers and of the warnings of Brian Madderson, chairman of Retail Motor Industry Petrol, the forecourt association, that with rural petrol already up to 8p a litre more expensive than at urban stations because of delivery costs, up to 250 of the current 1,900 rural forecourts could close in less than a decade, leaving “petrol deserts”? Does the Under-Secretary take that threat seriously and, if so, what specific discussions has he had with Ministers at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, who have direct responsibility for ensuring adequate coverage of petrol stations for strategic purposes across the UK?
A fifth of all bus services in England face the axe this year, thanks to the Government’s cuts to funding for local bus services. The issue is affecting the elderly and the young, increasing social isolation and impacting negatively on employment and training opportunities. Indeed, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) is emphatically earning a deserved reputation as the Beeching of the buses.
This Government are out of touch with the reality of rural lives, rural jobs and businesses, and rural services. [Interruption.]
Huw Irranca-Davies
Thank you, Mr Hood. Has DEFRA or the Under-Secretary made any assessment of the wider national impact of the withdrawal of Government support for UK-wide programmes, and of the deep, fast cuts agenda on rural communities? Will he confirm that all the cuts have a disproportionate effect on rural areas? Closures of court houses in small rural towns affect not only the individual, but local law firms. Will the NHS Commissioning Board take into account rurality when allocating resources? How does the much-vaunted—at least by the Lib Dems—pupil premium take into account the extra challenges of rural school provision? Costs for access to jobs and benefits advice and training are usually between 10% and 20% higher for those in rural areas. Any diminution in services or increased travel to work as a result of fewer job opportunities will worsen the effect, as will closures of Sure Start centres and poor access to child care and so on.
The Under-Secretary is a member of a Government who are out of touch. Their policies are incoherent, as Baroness Warsi said on “Newsnight” last night. Nothing epitomises this out-of-touch Government more than what has become known infamously as the pasty tax. I pay tribute to the campaigning stance of local papers such as the Western Morning News, which has highlighted the potential impact on jobs and the economy in places such as Cornwall and the south-west. I ask the Under-Secretary directly, for the record: what representations did he or other DEFRA Ministers make to the Treasury on behalf of the food production sector and workers in Cornwall and elsewhere? Will he intervene to set the record straight? Were any representations made—a meeting, a letter or an e-mail?
I began my speech with a reference to Virgil, cautioning the impetuous against the dangers of undue haste and rushing headlong to destruction. I can only guess that this Conservative-led, Lib Dem-partnered Government are pinning their future on another of the Latin poet and philosopher’s maxims:
“Hope on, and save yourself for prosperous times.”
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)
I think that we all enjoyed the comedy act put on by the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies). Listening to the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman talking about rural matters is the absolute epitome of incoherence, which was a word that he used. It reminded me of the Judean People’s Front sitting around asking, “What have the Romans ever done for us?”
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) for giving me this great opportunity to talk about some of the things that the coalition is doing for rural areas. I pay tribute to him for securing the debate and for the powerful speech that he made.
I will put on the record the ambition that DEFRA Ministers and the Government have for rural communities. If someone who is elderly, sick, mentally ill, out of work or on a low income lives in a rural community, the problems imposed by rurality are increased by isolation. Those are obvious points that we all understand. Therefore, the Government’s policy must recognise that and ensure that we are delivering services fairly and equally, so that the rurality in which that those people live does not adversely discriminate against their circumstances.
There has been talk of the sense of victimhood being felt by those who live in the countryside. That is legitimate to an extent because one might see a village that in every other sense looks idyllic, but there may be three or four homes—or 30 or 40 in a larger village—that contain people who are suffering deprivation, which is less visible than in a gritty city environment. We have to be nuanced, clever and careful, and focus our policies like a laser beam on helping those people.
That is one side of the issue, but the other side is equally important if we want to raise the aspirations of those who are suffering deprivation. We need to have a positive view of how the countryside can provide a driver for the economy of the country, and we need an uplifting view of the contribution that rural communities and the rural economy can play. That is the view we in this Government have. An idyllic, rural landscape is not just about the trees, the fields and the beauty that we see; it is about the noises of activity, business and life. It is also about children playing in a village school yard, a shop that is operating and, if we can roll out broadband, a creative industry operating out of a set of redundant farm buildings. That is what a true rural landscape is about.
For too long, Governments have imposed policy on rural areas using what the Americans call an “inside the beltway”—or within the M25—mentality. The view has been that if something is right for inside the M25 or within an urban setting, it must be right for the countryside. That is why the previous Government lost the faith of those living in the countryside and why it is ridiculous to hear the hon. Member for Ogmore, who is better than the speech he just made, try to pretend that somehow rural communities were better before.
In the short time I have left, I will try to address as many points made in the excellent contributions to the debate as I can. DEFRA is the rural champion within the Government. Our role is to help Departments understand the rural context and the issues that face rural businesses and communities. We have set up the rural communities policy unit right at the heart of DEFRA to encourage Departments to ensure that their policies and programmes meet rural needs and interests. That unit has been in operation for a year and is engaging effectively at an early stage in the development of policy across the Government.
The hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) rightly referred to rural proofing. That is a subject for a debate in itself and is something we are taking seriously in our cross-Government role of ensuring that policies are not just considered within the beltway and that the impact on rural areas is understood.
The RCPU is working hard to engage proactively and communicate with rural communities and their representative organisations and to stimulate debate about rural needs and propose solutions. That work is critical to ensuring that evidence and intelligence from our rural stakeholders informs Government policy and its delivery. After the debate, I will attend the first annual meeting of the new rural and farming network, which involves chairs of all the rural and farming networks that we have set up around the country coming to meet Ministers. That is a welcome change and something that Lord Taylor, my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and I thought up in opposition. We have now implemented the initiative right across England, so that there is a real direct connection to Ministers and a two-way street of communication. We can therefore ask those involved how policies are working in their area, and they can tell us about their problems as well. Those new networks are a welcome and important addition to communication and to trying to ensure that rural communities do not feel isolated and not listened to, as they have undoubtedly been in the past.
We also work closely with Action with Communities in Rural England, so that the Government benefit from regular access to up-to-date local intelligence about rural areas and from talking to experts who can offer practical advice on the design and delivery of programmes and policies. The RCPU also regularly meets the Rural Coalition, which is under Lord Teverson’s chairmanship, to facilitate strategic input into key policy areas across the Government.
On ensuring that policy is connected, let us consider one example of why the previous Government got it wrong. The Rural Payments Agency encouraged farmers to fill in their forms online. A lot of farmers live in areas where there is lamentable or no broadband signal, so they ended up having to take their forms down to the pub on a memory stick to download their data to the RPA. That is one of many past examples of how not to do policy, and it also shows why broadband is so important.
Let us consider broadband in the wider context. Broadband is much more than just a deliverer of jobs; it is about social inclusion. In this debate, we have talked about health, education and skills and about wanting to get more young people living and working in our rural communities. Broadband is about providing opportunities for those young people. However, it is also about an elderly person being able to shop online and someone being able to have access to information that can improve their needs if they are, for example, out of work.
It should be—and it will be and it is—our absolute ambition to ensure that someone who lives in a remote part of, for example, the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) can set up and run a creative industry requiring a fast broadband speed as easily someone in one of our cities. That is our ambition. DEFRA has rolled out a rural broadband fund to try to get to those hardest-to-reach groups. Wonderful work has been done, not least in my hon. Friend’s constituency, which I visited recently. I saw the enthusiasm among local people to work with Broadband Delivery UK and other agencies to make sure that the roll-out of broadband is working. I entirely understand that when we make a bold announcement, people might feel frustrated and start to ask, “When is it going to happen? When will you start to deliver it?” Our commitment to have the best broadband across the country by 2015 is on track and it is important that we continue to maintain DEFRA’s role in reaching the hardest-to-reach groups of people. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) when he talked about broadband being the fourth utility.
My hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire who initiated the debate asked whether we could make sure that the Government are doing things not to the countryside but for the countryside. That is how we see ourselves in DEFRA. We are a team of Ministers with a real commitment, and we are driving the issue forward with key groups of people, such as the RCPU, so that we can make a difference to how people live.
In the minute that I have left, I want to cover health care. Under the Health and Social Care Act 2012, there is a commitment—a duty—on NHS commissioning boards to prevent health inequalities in local areas, which is a concern for a lot of people. For example, it is much easier to deliver stroke care therapies in a large city than in rural areas, where doing so is more expensive. That is just one example of Government policy. We want to ensure, working across the Government, that we propose effective policies in rural areas.
Many hon. Members made other points, but I am afraid that I am running out of time. I want to give this commitment. What we are talking about in supporting rural communities is both a positive, optimistic view and the need to recognise that there are very serious problems. We will need to have frequent conversations in the House about how successful—
Death In Service Inheritance Tax
(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood.
The debate relates to death in service inheritance tax and the case of Nigel Lawrence Thomas. The debate goes to the heart of how we treat our servicemen and women who risk their lives on our behalf and who, like Nigel Thomas, pay the ultimate price.
Mr Jim Hood (in the Chair)
Order. May I ask the people at the back of the Chamber to leave without chattering?
Mr Hanson
Thank you, Mr Hood.
I have secured the debate to highlight an unfairness in the existing legislation that prevents some members of the armed forces who die in service from being exempt from inheritance tax, despite receiving conditions while on active service from which they later die.
Before I go into the facts of the case, I want to pay tribute to the family of Nigel Lawrence Thomas. His parents are my constituents, and they are still grieving over the loss of their son. They have asked me to ask the Minister to look again at the law on death in service inheritance tax. I am happy to do so, and I hope the Minister will also be happy to do so. I have been particularly humbled by the way in which Mr and Mrs Davies, who are the parents of Mr Thomas, have gone about raising this issue. They accept that it may be too late to see their situation revised, but they want to ensure that such circumstances do not occur in the future for other grieving families.
The facts are simply these. Nigel Lawrence Thomas served in the Royal Air Force from 1980 to 2004. At the time of the first Gulf war, between 1989 and 1992, he was stationed in Cyprus. For this service, he received the Gulf medal. I remind the Chamber that the Gulf medal was awarded to recognise
“service in the Gulf with special regard to the hardships and dangers which have accompanied duty there.”
While on active service in Cyprus, Nigel was exposed to radiation, following an accident. In March 1992, he was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukaemia. Following the accident, he suffered from that illness for 18 years. Mr Thomas died on 28 March 2010.
A letter given to me by his family from the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency, dated 12 November 2010 and signed by Mrs E. Milligan, states clearly that, according to his death certificate, he died from
“intracranial bleed, which was secondary to thrombocytopenia; which in turn was secondary to the chronic myeloid leukaemia.”
The letter goes on to state that the chronic myeloid leukaemia is
“accepted as attributable to service”.
According to the letter that the family received from the SPVA, therefore, his death was
“due to or hastened by service”.
As a result, the SPVA agreed to meet the funeral expenses following Nigel’s death in March 2010.
Mr Thomas’s family have also provided me with a letter dated 16 July 2010 from Richard Clark, professor of haematology and consultant haematologist at the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen university hospitals. These letters have previously been supplied to the Minister and the Ministry of Defence. Professor Clark confirms:
“there is clear and incontrovertible evidence that radiation can cause chronic myeloid leukaemia.”
He also goes on to confirm that the chronic myeloid leukaemia was
“undoubtedly what caused his untimely death”.
Those are the facts. Mr Thomas was a long-serving RAF pilot. He was stationed in Cyprus during the first Gulf war. He was supporting our war effort when he was exposed to radiation as the result of an accident. That exposure to radiation led to his untimely death two years ago, after suffering from cancer for 18 years.
Nigel Thomas’s funeral expenses were granted by the Ministry of Defence and the SPVA. On the basis that his death, as described in the letter, was due to service, the family applied for exemption from inheritance tax under section 154 of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984. The section disapplies the relevant inheritance tax provisions for death on active service of those who have
“died from a wound inflicted, accident occurring or disease contracted at a time when the conditions specified…were satisfied.”
Those conditions, specified in subsection 2, are that the disease was contracted
“(a) on active service against an enemy, or b) on other service of a warlike nature or which in the opinion of the Treasury involved the same risks as service of a warlike nature.”
My constituents looked at those provisions and felt that they should apply for the exemption, given that the death of Mr Thomas was, according the letter from the Ministry itself, due to service.
In a letter dated 13 August 2010 from the SPVA, which had granted funeral expenses, the claim for inheritance tax exemption was turned down. It said:
“we do not consider he was operating in a hostile or warlike environment and irrespective of whether your son’s illness can be linked to his military service, his service does not meet one of the key qualifying criteria for an exemption under section 154 of the Inheritance Tax Act as it is apparent that his condition was not sustained by service of a warlike nature.”
As a result of that decision, the family were liable for an inheritance tax bill of £33,011 on Mr Thomas’s estate. Incidentally, that figure includes £9.22 interest payable for late payment—the state certainly knows how to treat those who died in its service. The sticking point appears to be that the SPVA has determined that
“his condition was not sustained by service of a warlike nature.”
In a letter dated 7 February 2011, the Minister—who was elected on the same day as I was 20 years ago last week—reiterated the position set out by the SPVA:
“his service must be of a warlike nature and regrettably this key qualifying criteria for exemption has not been met.”
I wish to challenge that position today.
First, on the claim that the leukaemia from which my constituents’ son died was not sustained by service of a warlike nature, I remind the Chamber of the facts. My constituent served in the RAF for 24 years. At the time of his exposure to radiation, he was supporting operations in the first Gulf war. I argue that that was active service as set out in the 1984 Act. The Gulf war campaign in which my constituents’ son served was issued a campaign medal by the Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals to recognise
“service in the Gulf with special regard to the hardships and dangers which have accompanied duty there.”
My constituent qualified for the Gulf medal for his service, yet he did not qualify for an inheritance tax exemption. He was exposed to radiation in an accident that occurred at that time. There were considerable dangers. In serving his country, Mr Thomas contracted the leukaemia that, as has been agreed, killed him. Medical evidence from those who treated Mr Thomas also says that it killed him. He was exposed to radiation only because he was stationed in Cyprus, serving his country during a war, which leads me to a second point.
If we accept that the circumstances in which Mr Thomas was exposed to radiation could not be constituted as being of a “warlike nature”, or indeed “active service”, surely the legislation needs to be looked at again and amended. It is now 28 years old, and it is right that we review it, so that it is fair to those who die as a result of their service. If the legislation is so tightly defined as to exclude Mr Thomas from the inheritance tax provisions, I truly believe it is not fair to the families of those brave service people who give their lives in the service of their country. I am discussing the matter with the Royal British Legion, which will take an active interest in the debate today and will look carefully at the Minister’s response to what I have said in support of my constituents.
There were considerable dangers for Mr Thomas while supporting operations in Cyprus during the Gulf war, which were recognised through the Gulf medal. It cannot be fair that, although he performed an integral supporting role in the operations, he is not entitled to the exemption, as those who fall on the other side of section 154 of the 1984 Act are. It is beyond doubt that Mr Thomas died of a condition contracted while serving his country during the Gulf war.
I ask the Minister to look again at the legislation, so that other families do not fall foul of its provisions. We should do all that we can to support families who have lost a loved one as a result of active service protecting our shores. I have several questions for him that I hope he will reflect on to look at the matters in detail again, if not in today’s debate, then afterwards. It is important that I ask him again to review the claim made by Nigel’s family, following his death in March 2010. I appreciate that he has reviewed it, as he said to me in a letter at the time, but I ask him to do it once more. He has a duty to look at it once again, because Nigel Thomas died of leukaemia contracted through radiation in service.
Mr Thomas’s death was a tragedy for the family that raises wider issues, so, more importantly for the public and the wider armed forces, will the Minister commit today to reviewing the operation of section 154 of the 1984 Act? I want him to focus particularly on the use of the word “active”, as it remains my view that service can cause death, and if it is proved to have caused death, that should be sufficient for the exemption to apply. At the moment, the focus is on “active service”, and we could debate all day whether service in Cyprus in support of operations in the Gulf was active service. It could be interpreted as active service. If the wording was simply “service” rather than “active service”, I believe that Mr Thomas’s family would have been exempt from inheritance tax and that could have saved them a bill of £33,000 at a time when they were coming to terms with the death of their son.
I humbly suggest that the review focus on the current appropriateness of section 154. There have been a number of conflicts since 1984, and they have become ever more complex, with a range of issues to examine. The legislation is 28 years old and is worthy of review by the Minister. Will he assess the anticipated demand from revising the section? He can look at how many claims like that of Nigel Thomas’s family have been made and how many the SPVA has turned down. I am not aware of that many. I do not believe that there will be a massive flow of cases giving the Government a liability of millions of pounds, but I would welcome a review to examine whether such cases have been brought and how many. I would also welcome the Minister consulting the Royal British Legion and other parties on the provisions of the 1984 Act. Will he report to the House, either by letter or written statement, on the outcome of the review, so that he can at least tell me and those who are interested in the case, but more importantly Nigel Thomas’s family, that he has gone the extra mile to look at whether they were treated fairly in the period following Nigel’s death?
The loss to Nigel’s family is immense and a grievous blow, but they hope, and have asked me to ensure, that raising Nigel’s death in this way, having raised it with the Minister in correspondence, will lead to a change, so that families in future do not have to face the same injustice that Nigel’s family have had to endure. Nigel Thomas gave his life in service to his country. Had he died by bullet, his estate would not have paid inheritance tax; but because he died from cancer caused by radiation, his estate has not been exempted. It is a grave injustice that I hope the Minister will redress today.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Andrew Robathan)
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship for, I think, the first time, Mr Hood. The topic is important and sensitive, and I am grateful for the opportunity to respond.
We in the Ministry of Defence strive very hard to provide appropriate support to bereaved families when one of our serving or former service personnel loses their life. I am always saddened to hear of cases in which families feel that they have not received the support that they should at the time of their loss. The background to the case of Mr Thomas is a tragedy and I extend my sympathy to his family, who are still most upset about his death and the issues raised. The passing of time does not always ease the pain of bereavement, particularly when it is worsened by the feeling that the support provided at the time was not sufficient. I assure the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) that the support provided to next of kin and other grieving relatives continues to improve.
When a service person dies in service, an appropriate representative will be appointed from the casualty’s own service as the prime point of contact for the next of kin, and in some instances the emergency contact, if considered appropriate. That person will be a dedicated officer known as the visiting officer, and they will guide and assist the next of kin in repatriation and funeral procedures—I regret to say that that is all too often with Operation Herrick—and will help with any questions the family may have. The visiting officer provides a crucial liaison between families and the services, which continues for as long as it is needed. A veterans’ welfare officer will also be appointed from within the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency to assist the dependants of the deceased. They can provide advice and guidance on the comprehensive package of benefits that may be available under the armed forces pension and armed forces compensation schemes, brought in by the previous Government, of which the right hon. Gentleman was a member, and on other more wide-ranging issues, such as housing and benefit entitlements from the Department for Work and Pensions.
Although some defence charities, such as SSAFA Forces Help or the Royal British Legion, cannot make direct or unsolicited contact with service families, they can provide long-term support to bereaved service families who approach them, including a support group consisting of bereaved relatives meeting on a regular basis to offer support to each other.
The whole Government recognise that service personnel such as Mr Thomas warrant special consideration in acknowledgment of the particular debt of gratitude owed to them for service given in the cause of national defence and international peace. We are aware of the sacrifices made by those who have risked their lives and suffered hardship in facing the challenges of military service. On 16 May 2011, the Secretary of State for Defence published the armed forces covenant—a new tri-service document and the first of its kind. It sets out what service personnel and their families can expect from the Government and the nation in recognition of what we ask them to do to keep us safe. The Government are determined to remove disadvantages encountered as a result of service and, by publishing the covenant, we have established the right direction of travel.
The case of Nigel Lawrence Thomas is a very sad one and, again, I extend my condolences to his parents and other family members. Mr Thomas proudly served his country as a member of the Royal Air Force until he was discharged in 2004. His life was then tragically cut short by chronic myeloid leukaemia and secondary conditions in March 2010. From previous endeavours on behalf of Nigel’s mother, Mrs Davies, the right hon. Gentleman will be aware that, subsequent to the sad loss of her son, she first made enquiries about an exemption from inheritance tax at the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency in June 2010.
In recognition of the particular debt of gratitude that we owe to our former service personnel, it is only right and proper that in certain circumstances special consideration be given as to whether a deceased person’s estate should be exempt from inheritance tax. The right hon. Gentleman described some such conditions. A deceased service person’s estate may be exempt from inheritance tax if, under delegated authority from the Secretary of State for Defence, my officials certify that section 154 of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984 applies. Under the Act, such certification can be given when the deceased has died from a wound inflicted, accident occurring or disease contracted at a time when they were on active service against an enemy, or on service of a warlike nature. Certification may also be given in instances in which a service person dies from a disease contracted at some previous time if the death were due to or hastened by the aggravation of a disease during a period of such service. If such certification is given, my officials will recommend to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs that an estate should be exempt from paying inheritance tax. There is, however, no automatic exemption from inheritance tax for veterans. Deaths in retirement resulting from natural causes, road traffic accidents, or injuries or illnesses that were not contracted during or aggravated by war or warlike service do not qualify for an exemption. Equally, if individuals have a wound or illness arising from their service that might have eventually killed them but they die from a wholly unrelated cause, if the wound or illness played no part in their demise, their estate cannot be certified as exempt from inheritance tax.
Mr Thomas served in Cyprus from 1989 until 1992, and it is recognised that for at least part of that period he was operating in a role in support of operations in the Gulf during the first Gulf war. From his service record, however, it is evident that during that time he did not undertake deployed service in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Iraq, or come into direct contact with Iraqi forces. As such, my officials were unable to recommend that his estate be considered for exemption from inheritance tax, as the criteria defined under section 154 of the Act had not been met. A request by the family for the payment by my Department of funeral expenses in respect of Mr Thomas was approved because, in the view of an MOD medical adviser, it could not be demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that some aspect of his service did not cause the condition that led to his death. That is, however, a quite separate issue from the matter of whether an estate should or should not be eligible for an exemption from inheritance tax. The criteria involved are quite different, and it would be wrong to assume that the decision to pay funeral expenses undermines the decision by my officials not to recommend an exemption. Similarly, the award of the Gulf medal for the first Gulf war was made on the basis that people were supporting, full-time, the operation, and not on whether they were engaged in warlike service.
The right hon. Gentleman asked me to look again in particular at the legislation. I assure him that I will, on his behalf, because he has raised an important case. First, as requested, I will review the case and look in particular at the accident referred to in his speech. Secondly, I will review the operation of section 154 of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984, in conjunction with my colleagues in the Treasury. He particularly asked me whether I was happy to go the extra mile for the family of Nigel Thomas, whose case the right hon. Gentleman has articulated so well today. I certainly will and hope that he may be reassured by that.
Mr Hanson
If I may respond to the Minister’s comments, I thank him personally, on behalf of the family, for agreeing to review the case of Mr Thomas. I also thank him for his promised review of section 154 of the Act. In my speech, I asked whether the Minister could report back to the House. I should be grateful if he would confirm that he will either write to me or issue a written statement following that review so that we can have some clarity on the outcomes, and if he would let me know the time scale of the review.
Mr Robathan
I assure the right hon. Gentleman that I shall reply to him. Time scales, as he knows from his past as a Minister, can sometimes be what I might call slightly fluid, but I shall endeavour to be as timely as possible.
Railway Stations
(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood.
My constituency includes the rail stations of Stevenage and Knebworth, both operated by First Capital Connect. We have sought the debate today to illustrate some of our difficulties in achieving station improvements in small towns and cities throughout the country. I will focus predominantly on my constituency of Stevenage, but I know that other Members present wish to intervene.
Stevenage station opened on its new site back in 1973, which was a few years before I was born. That illustrates the age of the station. It is an important hub for Hertfordshire, with Stansted airport on one side and Luton airport on the other; many services to the north of the country run by East Coast trains leave Stevenage, and the station sees more than 4 million passenger movements a year, with Knebworth station seeing almost half a million a year. Stevenage is quite a large and important regional train service hub. Bearing that in mind, First Capital Connect will be operating a 100-day peak service before, during and just after the Olympics, as hundreds of thousands of people use stations in my constituency to travel to King’s Cross to get across London to the Olympics. I am also proud that we will welcome the Olympic torch to Stevenage on 8 July; I look forward to a large boost to our local economy as a result.
I take the opportunity to commend the present and the previous Government for the fantastic transformations to King’s Cross and St Pancras railway stations. Both are iconic. I commute into King’s Cross every single day, from Stevenage, which is less than 30 miles away. My personal experience is that the station has improved a great deal. A lot of scaffolding was up for many years, but it has now been cleared away and, once again, the sunlight can be seen. There are similarities with Gatwick airport, with its departure and arrival lounges, and the station is looking much better.
King’s Cross is a category A station, the gateway to London for my constituents and millions of others, and yet, of my stations, Stevenage is category C and Knebworth category E. The Minister might be anticipating a long moan about the lack of investment in local train stations by all Governments and expecting me to lament the challenges that my constituents face trying to travel less than 30 miles to London, negotiating their way through all the obstacles, but the journey experience for passengers from my area has improved over the past few years, mainly due to the thousands of extra seats available at peak times. Nevertheless, I would like to reiterate on behalf of passengers, including myself, how annoying the annual increase in rail fares is and that we resent it predominantly because we do not feel that we are getting value for money, especially with the local council earning millions of pounds out of exorbitant car parking charges. I am lucky enough to be able to walk to the train station from my home in Stevenage, but many of my constituents are not as fortunate and have to pay large car parking charges on top of the large rail fares. For a 30-mile journey from Stevenage to King’s Cross, an annual travelcard costs well in excess of £4,000.
I would like to remain as positive as possible, however, because I am proud of my local area, so I will set out some of the improvements we have seen over the past five years, to Stevenage station in particular. A gate-line installation massively improved security and revenue protection along the whole line. The overbridge at Stevenage has a new kiosk, the toilets have been refurbished, the ticket office now has induction loops, the station has been repainted and there are food and drink vending machines. The ticket office is compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, cycle parking has been improved twice—three or four years ago, and last year it was increased by another 55%, with a £36,000 investment—and the waiting rooms have been refurbished. We now have four CCTV cameras installed and one thin film transistor or TFT-enhanced LCD display screen, so that we can all see what time the train is coming and how long it will be delayed for. We have DDA-compliant handrails to stairways. The Cambridge capacity study has reviewed and launched installation of dispatch equipment to allow for 12-car trains, so if we can obtain the rolling stock, thousands more seats will be available for even more of us to have a seat on our commute to London.
Network Rail’s national station improvement programme has led to platform seating being renewed, and station signage has been replaced. A new customer information service screen has been installed in the waiting room on platform 1, so people can sit down and not get wet when looking to see what time their train will come. Meeting point signage systems have also been installed. There has been a host of further welcome improvements to security in conjunction with British Transport Police, and both my local stations—Stevenage and Knebworth— are now fully accredited as safer stations. That is all good news, and positive.
There are many more improvements to look forward to over the next few years, including plans to resurface platforms later this year. Network Rail plans to make minor extensions to the platforms so that we can have 12-car trains. Most important, access-for-all funding is allowing conversion of the goods lift to a fully automated passenger lift. That is costing £578,000, and disabled passengers will be able to use the lift, instead of waiting for a member of staff to unlock the goods lift, which is totally inappropriate. I welcome the additional funding, and that work is due to be completed in March 2014.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
I am listening with interest to the hon. Gentleman’s description of the improvements at Stevenage station. The hon. Gentleman also mentioned Knebworth station in his constituency. Does he share my concern that investment in stations to make them more accessible and modern will be completely wasted if the Government press ahead with plans to close ticket offices? Knebworth is mentioned in the McNulty report as a station that may have its ticket office closed. Many people rely on staff at stations to help them.
Mr Jim Hood (in the Chair)
Order. The hon. Lady’s intervention is too long.
Stephen McPartland
I understand what the hon. Lady is suggesting, and I assure her that we are running a campaign to keep Knebworth station’s ticket office open. I am pleased that First Capital Connect has assured us that it has no plans to close the ticket office. I will refer later to the Government’s Command Paper, “Reforming our Railways”, and to giving more power to train operating companies to keep some stations open.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The hon. Gentleman said clearly that it was important to have a good rail service and modernised stations. Does he believe that potential for tourism could be realised from that work, and that that should happen along with modernisation of stations?
Stephen McPartland
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that there is potential for tourism. Stevenage is home to Knebworth park, which is the largest outdoor venue for concerts. Robbie Williams performed there in front of 250,000 people. Large events take place in my constituency every summer, and the railway station is the gateway for hundreds of thousands of people.
Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate, and the passion with which he is advocating the case for Stevenage. Does he accept that in the modernisation programme for the railways, it makes sense for some stations to be relocated so that they are in a modern context and a true gateway to the city? One such case is Oxford, which I am pressing, and I am grateful for the opportunity to put that on the record.
Stephen McPartland
I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention. When the new Stevenage station opened in 1973, it was relocated half a mile down the line nearer the town centre. There is sometimes a case for relocating stations.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that work on the lift for disabled people at Stevenage in his constituency—the same is happening at Gloucester—has come later than we would have liked, because it was not done during the 13 years of the previous Government? However, it suggests that priorities such as helping disabled people on stations are finally in the right place.
Stephen McPartland
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I am a Conservative MP, and I do not want to be party political, but I agree with him.
My final point is that we have high hopes of receiving money to improve the concourse under the national station improvement plan. I am not sure that Stevenage station will look as good as King’s Cross station, but we can hope.
Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)
I know that my hon. Friend strongly supports commuters in Stevenage. Does he agree that modernisation of train stations is a wonderful opportunity to improve passenger safety, particularly at night? At too many stations, such as Stone Crossing in my constituency, passengers feel intimidated when they return home late in the evening, particularly in winter when it is dark, and that puts them off using the railways.
Stephen McPartland
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I am the founder of the Knebworth and Stevenage rail user group, which I set up some years ago when I commuted to London for my previous job. Installation of the gate line at Stevenage made a massive difference to station security. First Capital Connect employs people to work with British Transport police, such as police community support officers, and contributes to some of the cost so that we have designated officers on our line. The number of incidents has shown that crime on the line has been reduced as that revenue has been secured. Often, it is people who have travelled without tickets who engage in minor crime. I agree with my hon. Friend.
We have given the Minister an easy ride so far. I have spoken about the great things being done at stations that are collectively improving passengers’ experience at stations in my constituency. However, the changes are incremental, and highlight the fact that the current system does not work. Network Rail effectively owns and manages station improvements, so in reality the money goes towards the big iconic category A projects, such as King’s Cross, when local stations also need investment. There is much more to do at my local stations, but major works are constrained by the relationship between Network Rail and the train operating companies.
Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)
In my constituency in Wales, the platforms at Tenby and Whitland stations are the responsibility of one organisation, the track is the responsibility of another, the trains are the responsibility of yet another, and the car park is often the responsibility of the local authority. How can we achieve the desired solution when so many different people can duck their responsibility?
Stephen McPartland
My hon. Friend pre-empts two questions that I intend to ask the Minister at the end of my speech. They are excellent questions, which I hope the Minister will take on board. It is incumbent on all of us here to ensure that we move forward with the proposals coming down the line. The problem is that Network Rail is responsible for 2,500 stations throughout the country, and invests a huge amount of money in stations with low customer satisfaction and high footfall. Money will go to King’s Cross, where there are 25 million passenger movements a year, Leeds, where there are 21 million passenger movements a year, and other northern regional stations.
I welcome the Government’s Command Paper, “Reforming our Railways”, which was released last month, and is a huge step forward. The Minister of State for Transport welcomed the success of the national station improvement programme that was launched by the previous Government. The chairman of the Association of Train Operating Companies has said that it is a great example of what the industry can achieve by working together, and has exceeded the original objective. I understand that that was to improve 150 stations, but that 250 have been improved because the train operating companies used more money efficiently and locally.
We must go further and faster, and not waste the opportunity of the new, longer franchises that we are about to give to train operating companies. We must change the landlord and tenant relationship for stations by moving towards fully repairing leases, and making the train companies responsible for the whole station and its upkeep, not just certain parts of it as under current leases. That is what passengers and the train operating companies want. They want the train operating companies to have the ability to get on with the job.
I have two questions for the Minister. First, will he consider introducing fully self-repairing leases in franchises for category C stations and below, thus allowing Network Rail to retain responsibility for bigger projects, and train operating companies to retain responsibility for smaller stations that are, as in my constituency, important regional hubs? That would provide train operating companies with a visual demonstration of their brand.
Secondly, the Command Paper welcomes devolving decisions to local level, but that is to large bodies such as councils and local enterprise partnerships, which many passengers believe are out of touch and irrelevant to their journey needs. I want to give train companies the funding, power and responsibility to improve our stations, and I want them to be directly accountable to local people. In a written question, I asked
“what arrangements are in place for the removal of rail franchises where rail passengers are dissatisfied with the service provided by their local rail operators”.—[Official Report, 13 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 517W.]
and the basic premise of the response was that no such obligation exists for passenger satisfaction. I urge the Minister to consider creating that obligation as part of any new franchise arrangements.
John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)
I am delighted to take part in this debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) on securing it. It is an important subject that is relevant to many smaller cities and towns and their railway stations.
When we talk about communication, we often talk about the internet, broadband, super broadband, how fast it is and how much information we can download and how quickly. It is the modern way of communication and, quite rightly, its success is important to cities such as Carlisle and towns such as Stevenage, as well as to the country. If we go back 160 years, however, the railways were starting to achieve exactly the same thing. They were connecting the country, reducing the communication time between places, and bringing people and businesses together. At that time, rail was a transport, communication and economic revolution, and it still matters today.
Carlisle Citadel station in my constituency was built in 1847 and extended in 1875. At that time it connected Carlisle to all parts of the country, including the major centres of London and Glasgow and across to the east and Newcastle. The station is a great example of Victorian architecture and construction, and in many respects it is still a fantastic building and extremely relevant. It is an important communication centre for local people who wish to get to London or to Newcastle, and rail travel is important for both passengers and freight.
However good the internet is, people and goods will still need to move around the country and we will still need the railway network. On the west coast line in particular, rail travel has improved enormously and passenger numbers have increased dramatically. Credit must be given to the previous Government for the amount of money that was invested in much of the west coast line, and particularly the rail lines that received about £10 billion of investment. Substantial investment has also gone into trains, and new carriages will soon be in use on the west coast line. Service on trains has improved enormously—I can pay testament to that as I have gone up and down the west coast line looking at what Virgin has done, and I think it is a great improvement.
There is, however, a missing link regarding investment in stations, especially those outside the major cities. My hon. Friend alluded to the fact that although some larger stations have received substantial investment and improved enormously, many of the smaller stations have missed out. A 2009 report stated that overall train passenger satisfaction stood at 81%, although satisfaction with stations was just 65%.
A 2009 report from the Department for Transport stated:
“Stations cannot be seen in isolation—they are part of the total journey experience. This was dramatically demonstrated to us in Spain where the new high speed lines offer a consistent world-class travel experience from modern stations to modern trains and re-generated cities. Stations are deeply entwined with their local community and effectively act as the gateway to both town and railway. They leave passengers with their lasting impressions of both—a dilapidated station is bad business for both town and railway.”
I completely agree.
It is vital for our rail network that stations are modernised and that the passenger experience is greatly improved. If I may be parochial, Carlisle station has huge opportunities, but over the past 40 years it has seen little investment. The station now contains just two coffee shops and one newsagent, and not a lot else. It could be given an improved layout, and much of it could be refurbished which would enhance it enormously. New facilities such as shops and coffee bars could be encouraged, and there is the potential to create a transport hub by redesigning the entrances and the whole station. The transport network must work closely with local authorities to try and ensure that the passenger experience is greatly improved.
Such improvements are needed not only in Carlisle but in many of our stations and smaller cities and towns up and down the country. I would like to see the Government accept the need for such modernisation, and encourage stations, railway companies, local authorities and developers to work together to achieve improvements for our smaller stations. Where possible, seed money could be used to help kick-start such developments and improvements, but most importantly of all—this is critical—all future franchise agreements should include contractual obligations on rail companies to invest, upgrade and improve our stations, especially those outwith the major centres.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
With your indulgence, Mr Hood, I have three quick points. First, King’s Cross cost the same as the entire northern hub project, which would benefit the entire north; secondly, we must consider the importance of parking at our local stations—it is a nightmare at Marsden, Honley and Brockholes in my patch; thirdly, does my hon. Friend acknowledge the important role played by rail user groups and friends of stations in looking after their local stations?
John Stevenson
I completely agree with my hon. Friend; he is absolutely right. Just as broadband is vital to the future economy, so is the success of the railway network and its stations. I hope that the Government will ensure that the modernisation of stations is made a priority.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Norman Baker)
It is nice to see you in the Chair, Mr Hood. I remember that in one of my first outings in this place, you were chairing a deeply worthy Committee on some European legislation, of which I was a member back in 1997. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) on securing this debate on an important issue for many passengers across the network. Nine Members have already contributed to this half-hour debate, which shows the enthusiasm and interest in this subject felt by Members across the House.
The Government understand that the quality of stations is important for passengers, and we are committed to facilitating investment in station improvements through reforms to how the railways are run. We are granting longer rail franchises in order to give train operators the incentive to invest in the improvements that passengers want, including better stations.
To pick up one of my hon. Friend’s questions and the repairing leases to which he referred, we are committed to giving train operators full responsibility for the management and operation of many stations, and we are starting that process now in stations covered by the shorter Greater Anglia franchise, and the West Coast Railways franchise—my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson) will be particularly interested in that.
The comprehensive spending review secured funding for a range of major station improvements to be completed over the next few years, including at Reading, Birmingham New Street, Blackfriars and London Bridge. We are also continuing to fund other improvements through the national stations improvement programme, the Access for All programme, and the station commercial project facility. Further funding for station improvements for 2014-19 will be considered as part of the high-level output specification process, with an announcement about further investment expected in the summer.
Over the past two years we have seen record levels of investment in the rail industry; this is the biggest programme of investment since Victorian times, and it is set against the backdrop of a difficult economic situation, both for public finances and in the country more generally. As a rail enthusiast from the Lib-Dem Benches, I believe that this is the most pro-rail Government that this country has seen for decades.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage mentioned rail fares, and I hope he has noticed that the coalition Government have decided to retain the previous Government’s arrangement of RPI plus 1% this year, in recognition of the challenges that we face. A major programme of investment is taking place on the railways and it must be paid for. Part of the Government’s challenge is to drive down the cost of the railways to ensure that the public and the taxpayer get best value for money from investments across the network.
Norman Baker
I would like to make some progress and address the points raised by my hon. Friend, but if there is time at the end of the debate, I will give way to the hon. Lady. As my hon. Friend mentioned, Stevenage has already benefited from the national stations improvement programme, and almost £100,000 has been spent on new waiting shelters, seating and station signage. A further £150,000 is due to be spent on a full refurbishment of the concourse area, with work expected to commence later this year. Although Stevenage is already deemed to be accessible, as my hon. Friend rightly mentioned, we are ploughing in money from the Access for All programme to convert two of the goods lifts to passenger lifts, at a cost of £578,000. In addition, Access for All money has already been used to fund the installation of ticket office induction loops, a low-level, split-level ticket office counter, handrails to existing staircases and compliant “Meeting Point” signage.
Therefore, to pick up my hon. Friend’s point, I would not necessarily agree that the current system does not work. What I have outlined demonstrates that it does work. However, I would agree that transferring more responsibility to train companies is likely to improve matters even further. Network Rail, of course, has responsibility for some of the major stations in our country. It has done a fantastic job at King’s Cross and at St Pancras with Eurostar. We are now seeing the belief in railways restated. For a long time, stations were regarded as something to be embarrassed about by the railway industry. That was the case back in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. Now, there is a new confidence about the railways. The way King’s Cross has been re-engineered demonstrates that. However, it is right that we should have that benefit translated across the network and not simply at the big stations. My hon. Friend is right to make that point.
It is planned to spend £100,000 of money from the national stations improvement programme to improve the waiting shelters at Knebworth station. My hon. Friend will know that some Access for All money was used to fund smaller-scale improvements to the staircase and signage there as well.
The national stations improvement programme is a good example of the members of the industry working together to deliver benefits for passengers. It is the case that £150 million has been made available over five years to improve passenger facilities at busy stations in England and Wales that the public have identified as not up to scratch. The choice of schemes has been managed at local level, with Network Rail and train companies working together to agree the most efficient way to deliver the upgrades. About £101 million of that money has been spent so far on improving stations, and about 100 projects have been completed so far, benefiting more than 240 stations. In addition, many schemes have attracted third-party contributions, whether from local authorities or other funding bodies. The £26 million of additional money has allowed us to provide even more improvements.
NSIP is also helping to fund an information zoning initiative at stations in England. The aim is to make it easier for passengers to find appropriate information in different parts of stations, including information about local transport facilities for onward travel. We regard the end-to-end journey concept as very important if we are to make rail travel work as well as it can.
My hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle will know, I hope, that £450,000 of NSIP money has been spent on improving Carlisle station, including renovating the waiting room on the London-bound platform, refurbishing the existing waiting room and constructing a new seated waiting area and gateway to the historic Settle-Carlisle line. As I also hope he knows, we plan to spend a further £1.8 million of Access for All money on providing a new accessible route, with two new lifts, at Carlisle station. Works are currently scheduled to start on site in October 2013.
I should say that the Access for All programme is delivered with DFT money. Therefore, that is not in the gift of Network Rail. The coalition Government have made it a priority to try to improve disabled access at stations. That is why we have continued with that programme.
John Stevenson
On that point, does the Minister agree that it is important that we encourage the franchisees to invest their money in the stations, in addition to the taxpayers’ money?
Norman Baker
Yes, indeed. We agree with that point, and in relation to all the transport funding that we have identified, whether for railways or elsewhere, we have tried as far as possible to drive down costs and get better value for money, but also to unlock match funding, whether from local authorities, transport operators or wherever. We have been successful at doing that. If people look at the development pool scheme and local authority schemes, for example, they will see that we have managed to proceed with a huge number of those that would not otherwise have gone ahead, because of those approaches, which have driven down costs and got extra funding from elsewhere. We entirely endorse that approach.
Lilian Greenwood
How can the Minister claim that this is a rail-friendly Government when fares are due to rise by RPI plus 3% for the rest of this Parliament and 675 category E stations face losing all their staff?
Norman Baker
I am sorry that I let the hon. Lady intervene to disrupt what was a unified approach to improving the railways. Nevertheless, let me say for the record that the RPI plus 1% arrangement, which is the one in place this year, was introduced by the previous Labour Government for about 10 years. Indeed, they reversed RPI minus 1% and made it RPI plus 1%, so Labour Members are probably not in a good position to argue about rail fares. In addition, I will say that no decisions have been taken on closing ticket offices. There is a recommendation in the McNulty report about ticket offices. No decisions have been taken on that yet. It does not help the railway to talk down the railway and make up scare stories about ticket offices in front of constituents.
With regard to the Access for All programme, we are taking steps, as I mentioned, to allow better access for disabled people. The £370 million programme is designed to provide an obstacle-free route at 153 priority stations by 2015, and more than 70 of those projects have already been completed. To get the best value for money, that funding has been targeted at the busiest stations, although about one third of the stations were selected to ensure a fair geographical spread across the country.
To ensure that local or less busy stations are not forgotten—category 3, 4 or 5 stations are very important—we also offer train operators an annual fund to deliver smaller-scale access improvements. Since 2006, the Department for Transport has offered more than £25 million towards a total investment of more than £70 million for smaller-scale, locally focused access improvements at stations. More than 1,000 stations have benefited so far from a variety of new facilities, including accessible toilets, customer information systems, new ticket hall features and better signage and lighting. In the past year alone under this Government, 74 projects delivered improvements at 136 different stations.
Mr Andrew Smith
Will the Minister, with his officials, look at the proposals for relocating Oxford station that have been put forward by the Oxford Civic Society?
Norman Baker
I am certainly happy to look at those. We are increasingly devolving responsibility for transport matters down to local council level, and it is right to do that. People in Oxford are in a better position to know what is best for them than people in Westminster are, if I may say so. I would be interested in those proposals. There are, I think—I am speaking from memory—proposals to improve the situation at Oxford anyway by getting more trains running through it, and of course the electrification programme that the Government announced will hugely benefit Oxford and points west. We therefore have to ensure that we do not now spend money that will be rendered useless by further changes subsequently. However, I will be interested in proposals for Oxford. It is a station that I know quite well, not least because my mother-in-law lives there—not at the station, but nearby. [Laughter.] She is not the station mistress.
There is also the station commercial project facility, to which I referred. Up to £100 million of Network Rail funding has been set aside for commercially focused projects at stations through the station commercial project facility. That programme has been successful and a third and final tranche of bids are currently being considered for the fund. So far, the scheme has awarded about £82 million of funding to 38 individual schemes across the country, including improved car parking, better station retail and commercial facilities and new gate lines.
I should also mention perhaps the local sustainable transport fund, for which I am responsible. It is a brand-new fund that this Government created; £560 million is being distributed to improve local transport. That is an increase even above all the amalgamated pots of money that the previous Government had. It is an increase for local sustainable transport. Funding has been used across the country in certain locations where local councils have bid for it appropriately in order to improve rail facilities at local stations and, in at least one case, to reopen a station—at Stratford-on-Avon. That is another fund that is available for station improvements and it has been used for that purpose.
We are keen to improve cycle-rail integration—to improve cycle facilities at stations. That is important for the end-to-end journey. On 7 February, I announced £15 million of new funding for sustainable travel projects that will be hugely beneficial to communities and cyclists up and down England, helping to create jobs and reduce our carbon footprints while making cycling safer and more convenient.
As well as the £8 million for projects to enhance walking and cycling routes across England given to Sustrans, £7 million is being allocated through the cycle rail working group to improve integration between cycle and rail at stations. The position is that 30 cycle-rail schemes covering improvements at 141 stations will provide 7,500 new cycle spaces. Of that money, £145,000 is going to Letchworth, St Albans and Royston for almost 250 additional cycle spaces, and £500,000 is going towards a cycle hub at Cambridge with space for 3,000 bikes.
Network Rail has agreed to invest a further £7 million of the money that it has available in improving cycle facilities at stations, including safe routes and access. Part of that funding is being used to deliver innovative cycle hub schemes at Liverpool, Sheffield and York. The Department contributed £500,000 towards the first cycle hub, at Leeds, which incorporates secure cycle storage with cycle hire, retail and repair facilities. It is the first of its kind in the UK. In London, a hub at Waterloo will be completed before the Olympics, and Transport for London is working on plans for a similar scheme at London Victoria.
Train operating company accountability to passengers, which was the subject of the second question that my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage raised, is being considered by Ministers—notably, my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, but also others—as part of the refranchising process. The discussions are ongoing, but the point that my hon. Friend made about ensuring that passengers are happy is well taken; it has been taken on board. It is something that we have also pursued in relation to community lines through the identification of community lines up and down the country.
Looped Blind Cords
(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood.
Probably the worst bereavement anyone can suffer is the unexpected death of a child; it leaves a wound among their loved ones that will never heal—a wound made up of grief, regret and longing for a life that has been lost.
In January, my constituent, Tracey Ford, had just such a nightmare experience when she checked on her infant son, Joshua, whom she had put to bed only an hour before. She went to check on him because he always kicked all the blankets off, and she did not want him to be cold. She said:
“I remember walking into his room and it looked as if he was sitting up looking out of the window…I scooped him up in my arms and he was freezing cold and as limp as a ragdoll. Then I saw the cord from the window blind was wrapped around his neck. It was the worst moment of my life. My beautiful baby was so full of life and energy and I just knew he was gone.”
Such experiences are not common, but they are not rare either. At the time, Tracey Ford wrote to me, in February, four other children in the United Kingdom had died by becoming entangled in a window blind cord. The most vulnerable children are those who are the same age as Joshua, who was 23 months old. They are at that wonderful time of life when they are speaking well, doing more and running round. They are curious and playful, and if they see a looped cord hanging down, it is natural for them to play with it.
The number of such deaths in the United States in a 14-year period was 252. The most worrying thing about the 22 deaths that have occurred in the United Kingdom since 1999 is that the majority have occurred in the past two years. There has been great concern about the issue. To an extent, the industry has done conscientious work, and it has made efforts to make the cords safer. Work has also been done in the European Parliament, but the process of changing standards is slow. We have made progress in various areas to make sure that our children are at less risk. Sadly, however, this debate is necessary because there has been an increase in the number of deaths. Tracey Ford asked me with some feeling, “Why did nobody warn me? Why was I not told about this?” That cry could come from other parents in the same position.
David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on obtaining the debate. It is a good debate to have, and our sympathy lies with the parents who have lost their children in these tragedies. Does he agree that the slow process that he describes is unacceptable? We were able to resolve the issue of electric sockets, which children put their fingers into, by capping them. Some time ago, three children died in an unused freezer, but it was possible to resolve that safety issue immediately by putting safety catches on freezers. Surely, in this day and age, progress on this issue should be faster.
Paul Flynn
I think that it should. We all recall the campaign about the tops of ballpoint pens, which some children swallowed and choked on, although, again, the cases were rare. There was a simple technical remedy. Similarly, there are many technical remedies to the problem of looped cords. There are alternatives that can be used, and the industry has acted, but it has acted slowly. Those involved are defensive about their profits and their competitive position, and we all understand that. However, there is no question but that the lives of innocent children are of supreme importance, and that is what should be considered.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Gordon Banks) for his work on this issue, which he raised in 2008, and I am glad that I signed the early-day motion that he introduced at the time. He has run his own campaign on the issue, and he will speak about that in a moment.
We must, however, all ask ourselves whether we have done enough. If we had, the number of deaths would be diminishing, but it is not—it is going up. We must all look at the issue anew and decide which is the best way forward. Alternatives are available, but they are not seen as essential. It is still possible to go into a shop and be sold the most dangerous types of cord—the ones that have caused the most deaths. Alternatives are available, but is the industry pushing them in the way that it should?
I am extremely grateful, as I think all Members are, to the “Daybreak” television programme, which has taken up this case. I pay tribute to those involved and to my constituent, who has bravely come forward and said, “I want the legacy of my Joshua to be the hope that no other child will die in this way.” She is working for a situation in which every parent and grandparent will see the danger in their children’s bedrooms and nurseries and take action to remove it. The “Daybreak” programme is working with safety organisations to ensure that that message goes out.
The purpose of the debate is to make sure that people know about the danger posed by the cords in their homes, and it is the existing ones that pose the greatest danger. There are reckoned to be 250 million cords in British homes, and most of us would be astonished to find that there are perhaps a dozen cords in our own homes—they are almost universal, and they are all potential hazards for our children.
The lesson that we must learn is that we need publicity. We need more action from the Government. They have not been idle in these matters—indeed, they have been active—but they have a predilection for not introducing new regulations. I am not suggesting that we need legislation to tackle all our safety problems, and legislation may not be necessary now. However, the evidence staring us in the face is that what we have done in the past has not been adequate. We need a new impetus from the Government, who should publish information about the danger posed by these cords and, if necessary, put pressure on the industry to make sure these dangerous cords are no longer available and no longer on sale.
Mr Jim Hood (in the Chair)
Order. Has the hon. Gentleman the agreement of the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) and the Minister to speak?
Gordon Banks
Yes. Thank you for allowing me to make a contribution, Mr Hood. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) for securing the debate and adding his voice to those calling on the Government to do something of substance on this matter, and “substance” is the key word.
When the Minister makes his contribution, we will no doubt hear about the product safety awareness campaigns that have gone on in recent years. However, if they had worked, as my hon. Friend said, Joshua and other children would not have died in such a horrific way. I thank all those who have made an effort to tackle the issue, but it has been far too little, far too late.
In December last year, I prepared a brief for the former Minister with responsibility for consumer affairs at his request. That brief started by saying that 16 toddlers and babies had died in the UK since 1999, as a result of strangulation by dangerous looped blind cords. However, that brief is out of date, because the figure is now 22, and perhaps even more. There have been 11 deaths since 2010. Those 22 children were all loved by their mums and dads, brothers and sisters, and grannies and granddads, but they are dead because of window blinds. What are we doing to prevent such deaths? In my eyes, we are simply not doing enough.
I got involved in this matter in 2008 after Muireann McLaughlin, who lived in Menstrie in my constituency, died in a looped blind cord incident in her bedroom. I have since worked with her parents on the issue, but, four years later, these things are still happening.
Through my actions, the issue was brought to Parliament in a 2008 petition in which 3,500 people called for tighter controls on the manufacture of blinds. As my hon. Friend said, there were early-day motions in 2008, and three early-day motions in 2010 also highlighted the danger. I raised the issue with the Leader of the House in 2010, and on 12 March 2008—more or less four years ago, in this very place—I led a debate on the issue. Sadly, I could repeat that speech of four years ago today, because too little has changed. I have to ask why. I do not understand the reasons, although I shall try to contribute to their consideration.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West has done much in his speech to raise the general plight; but I want to focus on three things in the time that I have left that give some light for progress. First, I urge anyone who has not done so to read a communication from the European Commission, Health Canada and the Consumer Product Safety Commission in America, dated 15 June 2010. I assume that the Minister is conversant with it. It states that the CPSC is aware of 120 fatalities and 133 non-fatal incidents in the USA since 1999, that Health Canada has received reports of 28 strangulation deaths and 23 near strangulations since 1986 and that in seven European states 90 children visited emergency departments because of looped blind cord injuries in 2002. It goes on to refer to two UK deaths in 2010 and one in 2008—that of my constituent—one in the Netherlands in 2009, and two in Ireland, one in 2009 and one 2010. There were deaths in Germany as well; but there were more deaths in the UK. As I have said, the number stands at 22, and the poignant thing is that 11 of those have occurred since 2010, even after all the work that has been done.
The three organisations’ statement called for
“a swift and comprehensive process that concurrently eliminates the risk factors causing deaths and injuries from all types of corded window covering products”.
As far as I am concerned, that needs a complete product re-design, which is what I am calling for. That leads me on to the industry itself.
I fully grasp that, as my hon. Friend said, 250 million blinds with looped cords are in properties today. I acknowledge the dangers that they pose, but that is not a reason to do nothing about new products. I have spoken to the industry about designing out the need for cord operation. Bearing in mind that in 1969 we put a man on the moon, it is bizarre that 40 years later the brightest design minds in the western world cannot come up with a gearing mechanism to make cords unnecessary and allow operation via wands to be extended. I guarantee the Minister that, unless he kicks the industry up the backside, he and his successors will be back here in future years, answering questions about why they have not protected our children and grandchildren.
I recognise that there is an international aspect to this matter, with manufacturers located all round the world, but I thought that as the world got smaller and institutions worked together the safety of citizens was paramount. The industry will not change its blanket production methods unless it has to. I refer the Minister back to the letter from CPSC, Health Canada and the European Commission and urge him to use it as a basis for a complete product overhaul—not tinkering around the edges—so that all new products no longer have such a silent killing facility.
The Minister will no doubt talk about snap connectors and tie back cleats as safety products, and I shall consider each one in turn. A snap connector can work as long as it is in place, but when it keeps snapping with excess pressure, as it is designed to do, many people tie the two cords together. They omit the snap connector and, hey ho, they have an unsnappable looped cord. Manufacturers and installers have even said to me that they get repeated phone calls from customers saying that their blind is broken. When they go to the house, they find that the snap connector is broken. They fix or reassemble it, and they get the call again. Eventually, for many reasons, the snap connectors are done away with and the cords are tied together, resulting in a looped blind cord and a deadly, silent killing facility.
What about tie back cleats? Yes, they are fine if they are used and cords are wrapped around them; but we should get real. That does not happen all the time. What about when the cleats are removed for decoration and never put back in place again, for various reasons: “I forgot,” “I don’t have any kids,” “I don’t use it anyway.”? Again, there are dangerously hanging looped blind cords: that silent killer again.
Finally, I want to ask the Minister bluntly why his colleague the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who has responsibility for consumer affairs, and a former Business, Innovation and Skills Minister have refused to meet me about this matter. The former BIS Minister, who is now the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, gave that response in August 2010, and the Under-Secretary has repeated the position as recently as February this year. I am more than a little disappointed. In 2010, I asked the Leader of the House for a debate on the issue in Government time and his reply was rather embarrassing for him. He later had to backtrack from it. Sadly, the Government have got form on the issue and I cannot for the life of me understand why. If the Under-Secretary had met me in private, perhaps his colleague would not be here today in the public glare, having to explain the Government’s refusal to meet me.
I welcome the product safety information provided at the point of sale. I welcome the work done by the British Blind and Shutter Association and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents to highlight the dangers of cords; but as I have said, that is simply not enough. Looped cords must be designed out of production, and it is interesting that the British Retail Consortium supports that call in a brief prepared for the debate today. Only when that danger is done away with can we begin to draw the matter to a close.
If the Minister does not move on the issue, he and his successors will find themselves back in such forums, explaining why children are still being killed by looped blind cords and why the Government are not protecting the most valuable asset that we have in this country—our children.
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Mark Prisk)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) on securing the debate and raising the profile of this issue. I think it is fair to say that many of our constituents are not aware of the scale of the problem. That is a valuable part of the debate. I thank him also for his heartfelt plea, on behalf of his constituent, echoed, rightly, by the work done over the years by the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Gordon Banks), to raise the profile of the issue in industry as well as among constituents. On a personal note, I want to express my sincere condolences to the family of Joshua Wakeham. When we listen to the description given by the hon. Member for Newport West of the horror of finding a young family member in that appalling circumstance, it is difficult to know what to say. As the hon. Gentleman said, his constituent’s words, “Why did nobody warn me?” need to echo in our ears. I am not the Minister directly responsible, but I take that point seriously.
I will relay the request for a meeting, from the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire, to my ministerial colleague. He is new to the office, and I do not know what circumstances may have meant he did not feel able to meet him; but he is a reasonable man, and I shall make sure that he is aware of the repeated requests that the hon. Gentleman makes on that point.
To turn to the core issues about new blinds, designs and consumer information, I shall try to set out information that will be helpful. It will move things along and perhaps update hon. Members about where we have got to; but it will also include key information that may help fellow hon. Members when they talk to their constituents about some of the issues behind the dreadful set of incidents in question.
Window blinds have been with us in their various guises for many years, but we have not been that familiar with the nature of the hazard, for younger children particularly, until more recently, perhaps with the 2004 incident, which I was certainly aware of. The hazard has obviously been persistent. We heard of the dreadful incident in the constituency of the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire, involving Muireann McLaughlin, who I believe was just two years old. Then in February 2010 there were two deaths within five days: those of Lillian Bagnall-Lambe and Harrison Joyce, who was just three. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents has highlighted the statistic on which most of us would perhaps rather not dwell, but on which we should reflect: 22 children have died in the way in question since 1999—two incidents involved curtain cords, but it is the same problem. Eleven of those died since 2010, which is an appalling rate. A comprehensive approach is needed, both to the tens of millions—potentially hundreds of millions—of cords, and, indeed, chains, that are in homes now, and to how to stop deaths in future, and design out the problem.
Let me say where the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is coming from on this issue. Our role is to ensure that we set the legislative framework for consumer protection and for the broader issue of safety. As hon. Members will know, blinds are not regulated by specific safety legislation. They come under the General Product Safety Regulations 2005, which implement the broader directive within the EU. The question is how do we ensure that homes with those fitments can change them and have the information about changing them and using them. Furthermore, how do we ensure that future blinds and cords are designed in a way that reduces, if not removes altogether, the risk that has been described in this debate?
When the Department looked at the standards in the general product safety directive, it found them to be inadequate and in need of substantial amendment. The hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire was right to say that the matter needed not tinkering around the edges, but a fundamental change to the design standard, in a way that changes production design and development worldwide. One frustration is that trying to achieve that worldwide change in design, which is crucial if we are to root out the problem, has taken a lot longer than we would all like.
Gordon Banks
What would the Minister say to the British Blind and Shutter Association? In a meeting with us, it turned around and said, “If we knew how to do that, we would all be very rich men. We have been trying to do that for ages, and we have not come up with anything.” I do not think that there is a desire within the industry to do what my hon. Friend and I want and what, I think, the Minister wants. The industry needs a kick up the backside from the Minister.
Mr Prisk
Sometimes that works. Sometimes a persistent unwillingness not to take no for an answer is the same, but we may be talking about the same approach. I will perhaps use less vernacular language on this occasion. We now expect the European standard to be in place next year. In fact, I am reasonably confident—enough to put it on the record—that we will get it next year. We had pushed for it to happen this year. Importantly, it will ensure that internal blinds with exposed cords will either not be able to form a loop or they will have an integrated safety device to protect against the risk of strangulation.
In addition, the standard will set out that clear and obvious safety information has to be provided at the point of sale on the packaging of the product, on the product itself and in the accompanying instructions for use. There will also be new requirements for the safety devices intended to be retrofitted to existing blinds. I will touch on the issue of snap connectors in a moment.
We are working with business, but we must ensure that we do not just wait for that standard to be in place. Over the next couple of months, with the help of the BBSA, we will write to 6,500 businesses—manufacturers, designers, retailers and installers—to ensure that we do not wait for that deadline to come in and then discuss what we need to do about it; we need to start pushing people in that direction now. I accept that they will not all be willing to adopt one method until they see the final detail, but that is no excuse for doing nothing in the meantime. What we can do is to push and accelerate that progress to ensure that UK industry is ready ahead of time. The redesign of products to remove the reliance on looped cords and chains is essential. We must try to ensure that we get that accepted—well, it is accepted—and developed.
The hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire mentioned the retailers who are a crucial part of the supply chain. We have worked with RoSPA, the Child Accident Prevention Trust and the Trading Standards Institute because we need to inform retailers and their staff that they should be able to source safer blinds, which would be a simple thing for the retailers to undertake, and I welcome the remarks made by the British Retail Consortium. We also need to ensure that parents, particularly those who may be expectant or with little ones, have information at the point at which they are purchasing the product. We have worked with the industry to get the retailers in and to get those matters under way, and we are planning to have a further summit later this year.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the matter of the joint letter of 15 June 2010 involving the Europeans, the Canadians and the Americans. The key is getting the various standards organisations to adopt a consistent and clear approach that the whole industry can adopt. The decision to adopt the European standard from next year will help to accelerate that, and we are working hard on that issue. To get that fundamental shift in the whole industry, we need to demonstrate—I think that we are nearly there—that we have a clear global change in standards. In that way, we will remove the problem wherever the products are made.
Paul Flynn
I am grateful to the Minister for his reasonable response on this issue. We all know from past experience that industry is reluctant to change. Usually that is for good reason. If a company has to retool, that means expense and problems that it would normally seek to avoid. Perhaps we could give the industry some incentive. For example, companies could become more profitable if they were selling cords that were guaranteed to be safer than the ones from the past. Perhaps the Government could give them some encouragement in that regard so that we can have blinds marketed that avoid the use of a loop and that are inherently much safer.
Mr Prisk
I understand that point. My inclination is that the industry, whichever industry it is, should be willing to do this without us having to dangle in front of it tax relief or something of that nature. I am not dismissing the hon. Gentleman’s point, but I suspect that the clarity of the regulatory framework will tip over the action. There is no reason why, in the interim, we should not be persistent in challenging the problem.
Gordon Banks
Let me go back to the point about retailers. A few minutes ago, the Minister mentioned trading standards. May I say that I sat in a fatal accident inquiry and heard trading standards officers say that they did not know how many blind manufacturers, installers or retailers there were in their patch and that they did not go and inspect them and that they did not know anything about such workplaces? Trading standards officers have a big role to play in any changes, and they need to be empowered and financed in a way that enables them to enforce what the Minister wants to see happen.
Mr Prisk
That is a good point, and I will ensure that I bring it to the attention of the Consumer Affairs Minister because he may want to raise it directly with the individuals concerned, including those involved in trading standards.
Let me turn to the crucial issue, which affects many households, of the blinds already in use. We respect the fact that parents cannot watch their children every minute of every day. As part of action in this regard, it is important to make available simple guidance that people can follow to help prevent some of the accidents that we have talked about. I am talking about moving cots away from windows where blinds are fitted; assessing each blind to ensure that the cord or chain is not within reach; and fitting the safety devices—there are strengths and weaknesses with cleats and so on that we need to be aware of, but routine use of such devices can reduce the number of accidents. These simple actions matter as does ensuring that the issue is promoted. Let me flag up the fact that both the BBSA and RoSPA have distributed more than 750,000 safety brochures and packs, and we have been willing over the last year to support them in their promotion, particularly the safe at home programme. Alongside the work of the retailers and the change of the design of future products, it is important that we send out a consistent message. I strongly applaud not only the safety organisations but hon. Members who have contributed to this debate and the media in helping to get the message across that there are some basic, simple preventive steps that will make a difference.
I am aware of time, and I am grateful to both hon. Members for raising the issue. As a Government, we feel that we must tackle the design of the new blinds and promote the safe use of existing blinds as a combined effort. More needs to be done and the pace needs to be accelerated. I will certainly take back all the concerns that have been raised today to my colleague, the consumer affairs Minister.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Ministerial Statements
(12 years, 7 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Export Controls (Additional Measures)
(12 years, 7 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)
Further to my written ministerial statement of 7 February on strategic export control, Official Report, column 7WS, I would like to update the House on progress towards increasing the transparency of the export licensing process. My officials have held meetings with representatives of the exporters and non-governmental organisations—these have been constructive and indicated that there is broad support for the proposals, although exporters understandably have some concerns about the burdens of making regular reports on their usage of open licences. Subsequently, my Department issued a discussion paper and questionnaire in order to obtain the widest range of views on specific aspects of the proposals. The paper and questionnaire are available at:
http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/eco/docs/12-682-transparency-export-licensing-discussion-paper.pdf.
The closing date for responses is 20 April and I would encourage all interested parties to contribute their views. I will provide a further update as appropriate, at the very latest before the House rises for summer recess.
Big Society Capital
(12 years, 7 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)
On 21 March last year, the Minister for the Cabinet Office and I updated the House on proposals and next steps for establishing a big society bank that would act as the central initiative for growing the social investment market in the UK, helping provide a third pillar of finance for the social sector, alongside philanthropy and the state. This is an important element of our strategy to help the sector become more resilient and effective.
The big society bank formally opened its doors to the public on 4 April as Big Society Capital. The new institution has been capitalised with the first tranche of dormant bank accounts and Merlin bank money, and we will thus have met a coalition priority
“to use funds from dormant bank accounts to establish a “Big Society Bank”, which will provide new finance for neighbourhood groups, charities, social enterprises and other non-governmental bodies.”
Today I would like to update the House on how Big Society Capital will work and progress made over the last year.
Big Society Capital (BSC) is the first social investment institution of its kind anywhere in the world. We are keen to support more social enterprise, whether it be new mutuals, social organisations delivering public services or community groups taking over assets. The purpose of BSC is to make it easier for these social entrepreneurs to access the capital they need. A new initiative is needed because the mainstream financial institutions are not yet providing that capital. BSC will build a bridge between mainstream finance and the social sector. It will do this by helping to grow the embryonic market of social investment—money that is prepared to blend financial return with social impact.
BSC will be capitalised using the estimated £400 million in unclaimed assets left in dormant bank accounts for more than 15 years, alongside £200 million equity investment from HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds TSB and RBS.
In line with the social investment strategy that we published in February last year, BSC has been set up with four core principles:
Independent from Government;
Transparent;
Wholesaler;
Self sufficient.
BSC will not be making grants. It will always invest because it needs to cover its costs and the mission is to prove and develop the concept of social investment. The wholesale function means that it will only invest in front-line organisations through intermediaries such as Big Issue Invest, Charity Bank, the Private Equity Foundation, and Bridges Ventures. There is widespread consensus on this positioning. If we were to set it up as a retailer, then we would distort the market and undermine the very intermediaries that we need to grow it. BSC will act as a cornerstone investor looking to support innovative methods of tackling social problems, such as social impact bonds, and encourage others to co-invest, significantly increasing the amount of finance available to the social sector.
Ahead of BSC opening we made early proof of concept investments to build the pipeline for the new organisation. To date, seven in principle investments totalling £7 million have been agreed, including: money to help the long-term unemployed set up their own businesses; two schemes supporting vulnerable young people to get into employment; an affordable housing fund; two community energy projects; and the development of the world’s first ever social stock exchange.
All of these investments will provide jobs and help disadvantaged groups or communities, supporting economic and social recovery.
We are grateful to Sir Ronald Cohen and Nick O’Donohoe for the invaluable support they provided in setting up this institution.
Ministerial Responsibilities
(12 years, 7 months ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
The new list of ministerial responsibilities has been published today. Copies are available in the Vote Office and have been placed in the Library. A copy will also be sent to every hon. Member.
The list can also be accessed on the Cabinet Office website at
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/resource-library/government-ministers-and-responsibilities.
Bilateral Loan to Ireland
(12 years, 7 months ago)
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The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Mark Hoban)
I would like to update the House on the loan to Ireland.
Ireland completed the fifth quarterly review of its International Monetary Fund and European Union programme of financial assistance on 1 March 2012, at which point the utilisation period for the third instalment of the UK bilateral loan began.
Upon request, the Treasury disbursed the third instalment of £403.37 million on 28 March 2012, with a maturity date of 30 September 2019.
The Treasury will provide a further report to Parliament in relation to Irish loans as required under the Loans to Ireland Act 2010 following the end of the reporting period on 31 March 2012. Last year, the Chancellor committed to reduce the interest rate on the bilateral loan while still covering the UK’s cost of funding. To ensure that Parliament has the most useful and up-to-date information, subject to it being feasible to do so, I will lay this report alongside the finalised details of the new interest rate in the coming weeks.
The Government believe that it is in our national interest that the Irish economy is successful and its banking system is stable. The Government continue to support Ireland’s efforts to improve its economic situation.
Neil Heywood
(12 years, 7 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
I wish to inform the House of developments concerning the death of a British national, Mr Neil Heywood, in Chongqing in the People’s Republic of China on 14 November 2011. Mr Heywood’s body was found in a Chongqing hotel room on 15 November 2011.
On 16 November 2011, consular officials from the British Consulate-General in Chongqing were notified of Mr Heywood’s death by fax from the Public Security Bureau of the Chongqing municipality of China. Chinese officials informed our staff that the cause of his death was overconsumption of alcohol.
In line with FCO consular procedure, consular officials provided immediate and full consular support to Mr Heywood’s family in China as well as to his family in the United Kingdom. On 18 November, the family informed consular staff of their decision to have Mr Heywood’s body cremated, and confirmed this to us both in China and from the UK. An FCO official duly attended the cremation ceremony. We continue to provide full consular support to Mr Heywood’s family in China and the UK, including to Mrs Heywood, who is a Chinese national, holding a valid UK visa.
Foreign Office Minister, Jeremy Browne, was in Chongqing on 15 and 16 November. He met Mr Bo Xilai on the morning of 16 November. Ministers are not routinely told about the death of British nationals or other consular cases as they are so numerous. However, we need to make sure that they are told in relevant cases and we will review our procedures.
The Chinese police findings as to the cause of Mr Heywood’s death were called into question subsequently. Foreign Office officials were first made aware of rumours within the British expatriate community in China that there may have been suspicious circumstances surrounding Mr Heywood’s death from 18 January.
Allegations about Mr Heywood’s death were made by former Chongqing vice-mayor and chief of police Wang Lijun during a visit to the US consulate in Chengdu on 6 February.
Prompted by these increasing concerns, FCO officials informed me on 7 February of the case and the circumstances surrounding it. I immediately instructed them to make urgent representations to the Chinese authorities and to seek an investigation into Mr Heywood’s death.
On 15 February, after establishing as much information as possible and contacting the family, the deputy head of mission of the British embassy in Beijing met officials from the consular department of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to convey this message. He informed them of our concerns about Mr Heywood’s death and the suspicion that he had been murdered, and conveyed our formal request that the Chinese authorities investigate.
On 21 February, HM Ambassador to China made the same request to Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Vice-Minister for Europe.
Our ambassador repeated the request a week later to the Director General for Europe. In the absence of a formal Chinese response, on 22 March, the FCO’s consular director raised the case in the same terms with a visiting senior Chinese consular official in London.
On 10 April, before their official public announcement, the Chinese authorities informed HM Ambassador to China that an investigation into Neil Heywood’s death had begun and that proper judicial process would be followed.
I welcome the fact that the Chinese authorities have now committed themselves to undertake the investigation into Mr Heywood’s death that we sought. We now wish to see the conclusion of a full investigation that observes due process, is free from political interference, exposes the truth behind this tragic case, and ensures that justice is done.
We will continue to engage with the Chinese authorities on the progress of the investigation and we stand ready to provide any assistance necessary. FCO officials will remain in close touch with Mr Heywood’s family as this investigation proceeds.
Abu Qatada
(12 years, 7 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
This afternoon I will make an oral statement to the House on the next steps in the deportation of Abu Qatada.
Scottish Law Reform
(12 years, 7 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Scotland (Michael Moore)
I am publishing today a consultation paper that sets out the proposed reform of Scots law on two topics: unincorporated associations and criminal liability of partnerships.
The consultation document seeks views on two topics: first, the proposal to attribute legal personality to non-profit making unincorporated associations where they meet certain statutory criteria; and secondly, reform of the law on criminal liability of dissolved Scottish partnerships and their partners, with the principal intention to address a loophole in Scots law that allows Scottish partnerships to escape prosecution for potentially serious offences by dissolving.
The main proposals for unincorporated associations are that becoming a Scottish Association with Legal Personality (SALP) should not be dependent on any registration requirement and that office-bearers and members will not incur any personal liability by acting as an office-bearer or member. Accordingly, SALPs will have limited liability.
The proposals are based on work by the Scottish Law Commission which led to a report and draft Bill in 2009 on reforming the law on unincorporated associations in Scotland and a report and draft Bill in 2011 on reforming the law on criminal liability of dissolved Scottish partnerships.
The commission has indicated that it supports the consultation process and will continue to work with the UK Government to finalise a Bill that it is hoped will come before Parliament within its current term.